Recondensing is frugal!

Ever so often, there's another flurry of articles published about how obesity is rampant in the poorer segments of society.
Regardless of the veracity of such statements, what irks me about that kind of story is that many people will automatically jump to the conclusion that losing weight has to be an expensive undertaking. And those who are in a financial pinch already could go on to resign themselves to the conclusion that they cannot financially afford to try to lose their excess weight.
Guess what, they are wrong. Completely wrong.
Let's start with food.
Yes, most fattening foods are cheap, while the things touted as " healthy" often come with a heftier price tag.
But an obese person has a much higher basal metabolic rate than a slim one. To put it simply, maintaining twice the weight requires twice as much calories.
Allan of Almost Gastric Bypass has in the past given several vivid accounts of what amounts of food it took to maintain his former girth.
Which means that if you chose to buy non-fattening foods such as vegetables or lean meat, and buy only as much of them in terms of calories as your basal metabolic rate as a slim person would require, you will, for one, lose weight until you are that slim person. And from a point of frugality- you will probably end up spending a lot less on food if you prepare your own nutritious meals from scratch from quality ingredients than if you feed at Mickey D's regularly.
All bets are off, of course, if you go for these ready-to-eat Lean cuisine (tm) meal trays or their ilk. That stuff is expensive. But it's expensive because you pay for the preparation and for the profits of the producers who know that they have an audience of people who are desperate and would pay anything to get rid of their excess weight. While their products, if the nutritional values are right, are not scams, you still end up paying a lot of money for the convenience of using them. So, if money's tight, don't use those products. Find out what healthy nutrition is (shouldn't be too difficult since you obviously have internet access if you read this) and prepare your own food.

Savings potential: From my own experience, by conscious shopping and sticking to the portions slim me would need, about fifty percent of my former food budget. YMMV, of course.

Another place to save is your wardrobe. As a fat person, I was forced to buy new pants about every two months because the material between my legs rubbed through that fast. I also had to keep replacing blouses, shirts, and coats that got torn because they had become too small,or because they got caught on some obstacle course (as in restaurant or even shop) that I was too fat to navigate without bumping into things. Shoes bore my weight only for a short time before giving out. When I started recondensing, of course, there was the initial investment in a set of smaller clothes. But, for one, they came a lot cheaper at a standard clothes store than what the same garments would have cost me in a plus size, and for seconds- I have, in over one year, not have had to retire a single garment due to being worn out, so, I get several times the wear out of a garment, too.

Savings potential:May depend on whether your taste in clothes changes when you become slimmer. If you keep wearing similar garments in your smaller size to what you wore when big, halving your clothes budget is entirely possible ( don't forget the cost of the retail therapy you probably won't need any more when you're more satisfied with your body).

And for the rest? Don't get me started on the extra gasoline you need to move a bigger body, or about the price of things that need replacing when there is an obese person in the house (toilet seats, anyone?).The part about the medical costs has been brought up too often already.

Losing excess body weight isn't expensive. Being fat and staying that way is.



Julia