Every January for the past few years, my family has undertaken a “Fiscal Fast” (no-spend) challenge for the month. We don’t buy stuff, we eat out very little, we turn off lights and unplug toasters, we turn the heat down to 60. We are pretty good at it. We also do a “use-it-up” challenge, where we try to use the very last of things (shampoo, toothpaste, random lentils and macaronis in the pantry, old frozen veggies, etc.) before having to buy anything new.
This year, we are adding in another challenge: keto! The ketogenic diet, or keto for short, is a way of eating that involves very minimal carbs, high fat, and a moderate amount of protein. We are doing this partly to slam the brakes on our out-of-control holiday eating, get the sugar monkey off our backs, and stop chasing our blood sugar around all day. I personally am also doing this to shed about 15 vanity pounds before we go to Hawaii in May. 🙂
I have no idea if the keto challenge and the use-it-up and fiscal fast challenges will work with each other or against each other. I’d like to buy quality meats (grass-fed beef, free range chicken/eggs, wild-caught fish, etc.), which will get expensive. So I think we’ll do a combination of fancy meats and cheap Costco meats. We’ll also shop for whatever vegetables are in season and on sale at Sprouts each week and make them work, rather than pay $4.99 for some asparagus just because the special keto recipe calls for asparagus.
I think you can do keto fairly inexpensively if you’re smart about it. Meat + veg + fat = keto, right? Chicken thighs are cheap, fatty ground beef is fairly cheap, cabbage is cheap, butter is cheap. Avocados are a good fat, and we got some yesterday for 50 cents apiece. So it could work out ok financially!
Typically, on fiscal fast months, we give ourselves a budget of $50/week for groceries (as opposed to our typical $125+ when we aren’t paying attention). Our first fiscal fast + keto grocery shopping trip will be Jan 4-5, so we’ll report back on how that goes.
Anyone wanting to follow and track their fiscal fast month can do so via the comments sections on each post! Feel free to drop me a note any time and let me know what your challenges and wins are!
Fiscal Fasters 