Financially, the stakes are always going to be completely against you when it comes to eating healthy to accompany working out. A study from the British Medical Journal Open found that an overall healthy diet costs about $1.50 more per day on average, which long-term is guaranteed to result in penny-pinching.

But, we can take away a lesson from this; one in logistics and financial know-how, but another in how to acclimate to a healthier lifestyle. Because, let’s be honest, old habits die hard; this sort of change will never come overnight, and even the best of us will struggle to maintain the progress we do achieve. It’s a fact of life.

Small Habits, Big Changes

You have to begin small. Change the most immediate habits and start with the cheapest things to change that will begin shaping your eventual future eating habits. The best way to do this is to find sources of food that shift out your bad eating habits; for example, I tended to buy pretzels to chew on simply because I have a chewing habits. But in the interest of cutting down carbs, I began cutting my own celery and carrot sticks to keep the habit in check. These are small financial changes that, while they add up somewhat in the long term, are not as aggressive as outright immediately shifting your diet, and is still manageable for the average person to slowly transition outwards.

No Radical Steps… Yet

Additionally, there will be areas where you can outright replace items with a healthier sister food; changing baking potatoes to sweet potatoes, and white bread to wheat bread. This way you’re allowing for your traditional meal structure, and not outright killing yourself financially while giving yourself time to acclimate to the new habits you’re establishing.

As I mentioned above, this is going to be a slow road for anybody. You might slip, you might relapse completely, but that’s part of the process. We’ve talked in previous posts about how progress on the path to better health is smaller steps, and this is no different. The small choices you begin making here are going to help you, your wallet, and your diet going forward, and the payoff is a guarantee. That, I promise.