I have a confession to make, I eat out way too much.  And it’s mostly fast food, which makes the matter even worse.

Overweight

I’ll have short periods of time when I don’t eat out because I’m trying to save money or loss weight, but it typically seems that after a month or two I return back to my old habits and driving to the local drive-thrus, again.

I would like to say that I’m stopping, and this is the end of this trend, and I’ll never eat at a fast food restaurant again…  But I know that’s not true, I will eat at a fast food restaurant again, especially if I’m crunched for time.

So what is a fast food junkie to do?

Creating a Personal Food Budget!

Synergy is a word that I heard back in college which means that the the combination of the parts is greater than the counting of the parts independently.  You may have seen it defined as 1 + 1 = 3, basically the idea is that elements combined together is stronger or more efficient than if the elements were just grouped separate.  And excellent physical example is the alloy metal “steel”.

So, I’ve decided to create something I’m going to call a Personal Food Budget!

In my Personal Food Budget, I’m going to track what I spent on the food I consume (like any other type of Spot Budget), but I’m also going to track what I eat as well.  Now the “Personal” part of the title is obviously, I’m just doing this budget for me personally!  So I’m not going to track my family spending habits (besides they all look great, I’m the weight offender).

With this “Budget“, I’ll track my food costs and also my weight readings for some type of repeating time period (probably weekly and monthly).  I’m not going to track calories (too much trouble), and once I reach a certain weight range I may stop recording my weight and just focus on the costs of what I eat, and if I eat out or not.

I decided that I’m not going to record this budget on paper, instead I’m going to do something online.  It may be as simple as a google spreadsheet, or you may see a new feature on my blog that will enable me to create something new.

Why a Personal Budget?

My Personal Budget is definitely to lose weight while keeping costs under control, but also because it would be simpler than going all out with a full budget.  If I make the process accessible from anywhere by keeping the data entry online, I’ll be more apt to record the information instantly.  With paper I might forget the costs of what I ate (who wants to remember those details anyway… it would be a waste of a memory).

Keeping it personal, means I don’t have to badger my wife and kids to determine what they eat.  Plus, as I said above, they look great (athletic really), so a Personal Budget won’t hold as much value for them.

If I find the process is very successful for me, you might find that I open it up for everybody to use.  And expect a few simple recipes that I might discover along the way!

Have a great weekend!

MR