Healthy Eating On A Budget – Weekly Meal Plan #5

Eating healthy on a budget doesn’t have to be tasteless or boring. This weekly meal plan includes ham & cheese egg muffins, ricotta spinach calzones, grilled pork chops, chicken legs, grilled turkey sausage & red potatoes, and more!

As someone who has lost 100 pounds, healthy eating is important to me, but I also don’t want to spend a fortune doing it. Here is my weekly meal plan – how I can maintain my weight loss with healthy eating on a budget.

It’s just my husband and I eating most nights, so we always have leftover nights planned in and I will be the first person to admit that my meals are only healthy-ish. I try to eat balanced meals with lots of veggies, but I also don’t like feeling deprived. I love to eat a variety of different flavors, proteins, fruits, and veggies and this is what works for me to maintain my weight loss.

I modify recipes all the time to fit my tastes, my budget, and make them healthier, so I include tips for that, as well.

Affordable Healthy Meal Plan

Budget tips for the week:

• Try Meatless Mondays – This is the third week in a row I’ve tried having one vegetarian meal a week. It’s great for saving money on meat and it’s also good to explore non-meat proteins like quinoa, beans, etc.
• Don’t waste the leftover bits and pieces – On Sunday, I chopped some broccoli to use for the egg muffins, but I had a lot of the head of broccoli leftover, so that became our vegetable for dinner that night. When I have the freezer room, I’d love to start a bag for vegetable scraps like onion tops and broccoli stalks to make my own vegetable stock.
• Look for meat sales – Unfortunately, fattier meat tends to be cheaper than lean meats. This week, pork chops were on sale and, though they aren’t an everyday thing in my diet, I like the variety and the savings!

Breakfasts & Lunches

This week’s breakfasts:

Walking on Sunshine’s Easy Scrambled Egg Muffins With Broccoli Ham and Cheese

I modified these a bit to use a lot more broccoli and a lot less cheese, but they were a great high protein breakfast to start our mornings this week.

Sunday Meal Prep

This Sunday, to get ready for the week, I prepped:

• The egg muffins

Lunches

I eat leftovers every day for lunch and so does Adam unless we don’t have them available (which usually only happens once or twice a month).

In that case, Adam loves eating the Starkist tuna creation pouches on multigrain bread with a little bit of mayo.

I usually go for veggies and roasted red pepper hummus.

Monday

Kitchen Cat’s Ricotta & Spinach Calzones w/ mini bell peppers

I used my own pizza dough recipe (the one my mom always made us growing up), but instead of 3 1/2 cups of all purpose flour, I used 2 cups of all purpose and 1 1/2 of white whole wheat flour.

These were so tasty! I found half a calzone to be plenty as long as I had some veggies on the side.

Tuesday

Love to Be In The Kitchen’s grilled marinated pork chops, sweet corn, and zucchini & summer squash

*Healthy tip – Pork chops aren’t the leanest cut of meat, but you can make it a little bit better if you cut the visible fat off before you eat it. It’s a little thing, but it helps!

We are absolutely loving grilling season! Grilling adds such great flavor without adding extra fat.

And, there’s really no beating grilled vegetables! Just a little bit of avocado oil and McCormick Roasted Garlic & Herb seasoning is all the veggies needed.

Wednesday

Leftovers

Thursday

Add A Pinch’s Best Grilled Chicken Marinade w/ baked beans and salad

*Healthy tip – your sides matter. Make sure there’s always at least one vegetable on your plate.

And, just like with the pork, I pull off any visible fat on the chicken before I dig in to make it healthier.

Friday

Grilled turkey sausage, red potatoes, and broccoli

This meal was a quick throw-together meal before we headed up to our family cabin for the weekend. It was on the table in about 20 minutes with practically no prep at all.

*Healthy tip – Use a silicone baking sheet for a non-stick way to use less oil when you’re baking fish, roasting sweet potato fries, and more.

Saturday

Leftovers

Sunday

Qdoba spread @ a friend’s housewarming party

*Tips for making Qdoba/Chipotle a little healthier:

• Skip the tortilla by making it a bowl
• Go for the brown rice (sometimes I get a combination like I did here)
• Go light on the cheese
• Load up on as many veggies as you can (I love the grilled fajita veggies!)
• Watch your portion sizes. It’s easy to fill the container they give you with goodies and eat it all without a second thought. Be intentional as you fill your bowl.

Kitchen Accessories I Used This Week

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