What do you do for a living? Is it concrete work or ditch digging? Are you an extremely high output athlete? If not, and you’re American, odds are you eat more calories than you need. Nutrition is one of the most hotly debated areas of scientific inquiry, yet one of the only areas of consensus seems to be that reducing the amount of food you consume makes you live longer. But we crave sensory stimulation, especially when we sit in an office or other work environment designed for industrial levels of focus. Are you capable of satisfying the urge for sensory stimulation without overeating?
Great calculators online will estimate your caloric requirements based on your current metrics and activity level[1]. Here’s an example for me:
Age: 39
Gender: Male
Height 6’3”
Weight 175 lbs
Activity: Moderate (Exercise 4-5 times per week)
Daily Caloric Requirement to Maintain Weight: 2,629 Calories
I have spent a great deal of time combing through supposedly highly nutritional diets. I will share the best diet plan I can find that seems cost effective, logical, and moderate – or at least devoid of any extreme nutritional ideology. I found it in Drill to Win: 12 Months to Better Brazilian Jiu Jitsu by Andre Galvao. Andre is one of the most physically dominant and accomplished combat athletes in human history, and he came up in the world with very limited resources. I believe the diet below works extremely well for me whether I’m training for physical competition, working 10-hour days with a shovel, or spending most of my day at a desk. Of course, the total number of calories will change depending on my activity level.
Breakfast: Fruit, whole wheat toast with olive oil or honey, oatmeal or quinoa, and whole yogurt or whey shake.
Snack (3 hours after breakfast and 30 minutes to 1 hour before lunch): Fruit
Lunch: Complex carb (e.g., sweet potato, rice, pasta), animal protein, green salad, and vegetables.
Snack (3 hours after lunch and 30 minutes to 1 hour before dinner): Fruit
Dinner: Roots/carbs (e.g., sweet potato, manioc) with a lot of olive oil and a little bit of salt, fish/eggs/mozzarella, green salad, and vegetables.
Before bed:
Handful of nuts, whey protein shake, or yogurt.
The table below contains cost data and some details for an example day for me. I costed everything using HEB, which is probably my favorite grocery store chain of any that I have been to in the U.S. Obviously the costs will be slightly different for different areas. I did not specify organic items for anything, recognizing that some people are really trying to be cost-efficient. If you choose to do that, start with going organic for the things that have a lot of calories from fat, or any produce that is on the Environmental Working Group’s “Dirty Dozen” List[2]. These are the food items that are most likely to contain pesticide residues. When I tweaked the table below to specify organic for fatty items and some of the produce, the cost was a little over $8 per day.
| Meal | Item | Calories Per Serving | Cost Per Serving | Comment |
| Breakfast | Fruit | 95 | $0.31 | HEB Fresh Pink Lady Apples ($0.06/oz) |
| Whole wheat toast with olive oil or honey | 210 | $0.13 | Hill Country Fair Wheat Bread ($1.02/loaf) | |
| 119 | $0.19 | Hill Country Fair Extra Virgin Olive Oil ($0.37/oz) | ||
| Oatmeal or quinoa | 320 | $0.26 | HEB Old Fashioned Oats ($0.09/oz) | |
| Whole yogurt or whey shake | 110 | $0.62 | Dannon Whole Milk Plain Yogurt ($0.10/oz) | |
| Snack | Fruit | 85 | $0.14 | Fresh Super-Sized Seeded Watermelon ($7.97 for ~20 lbs) |
| Lunch | Complex carb (e.g., sweet potato, rice, pasta), | 500 | $0.30 | HEB Spaghetti ($0.06/oz) |
| Animal protein | 275 | $0.34 | Pilgrim’s Whole Chicken ($1.34 lb) | |
| Green salad and vegetables | 36 | $0.37 | HEB Fresh Romaine Hearts ($1.10/ct) | |
| 25 | $0.11 | HEB Fresh Whole Carrots ($0.05/oz) | ||
| Snack | Fruit | 105 | $0.11 | Bananas ($0.43/lb) |
| Dinner | Roots/carbs (e.g., sweet potato, manioc) with a lot of olive oil and a little bit of salt | 114 | $0.31 | Fresh sweet potatoes ($1.04/lb) |
| 119 | $0.19 | Hill Country Fair Extra Virgin Olive Oil ($0.37/oz) | ||
| Fish/eggs/mozzarella | 210 | $0.84 | HEB Grade AA Cage Free Large White Eggs ($0.28/ct) | |
| Green salad and vegetables | 36 | $0.37 | HEB Fresh Romaine Hearts ($1.10/ct) | |
| 25 | $0.11 | HEB Fresh Whole Carrots ($0.05/oz) | ||
| Snack | Handful of nuts | 320 | $0.30 | HEB Lightly Salted Dry Roasted Peanuts ($0.15/oz) |
| Total | — | 2,704 | $4.98 | — |
Note that there are lots more opportunities to trim costs here, like eating cabbage instead of salad greens, baking your own bread, eating lentils instead of animal protein, volunteering a few hours at a local Community Support Agriculture (CSA) organization, or gardening vegetables in your yard. Additionally, many nutritional experts (e.g., Bryan Johnson), recommend caloric restrictions of 10 percent or more to reduce the effects of aging, and increase your overall health and lifespan. I am not qualified to make such recommendations, so I’m just noting that they exist for your consideration. With all of that said, my in-laws have always told my wife since she was a teenager to never save money on food. That’s probably not bad advice, but maybe it’s ok to ignore it for a bit while you’re you’re young and getting ahead financially, if you’re intentionally making healthy choices and staying away from processed garbage.
You might be asking yourself why I posted this on a blog that’s mostly about environmental issues. My general belief is that dollars spent is a good proxy for environmental impacts, and most middle-class households spend the bulk of their money on housing, food, and transportation. Becoming more cost-efficient in these categories is likely to reduce your environmental impact, and connecting more closely with your food choices is likely to lead to better environmental outcomes. Because it will lead to better health outcomes as well, that can cause second-order effects on your environmental footprint. Bon appétit!
[1] https://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html, for example.
[2] https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/dirty-dozen.php