Well, this is one way to cut down your grocery bill.
This week, a writer posted on Reddit that she had found a new way to save “so much money on grocery bills.” In fact, their food budget is now just 60% of what it used to be.
The trick: the recently trendy practice of intermittent fasting.
It’s “not for everybody,” the writer, who goes by “Kelly_Jelly_11,” said. But in her experience, “Skipping breakfast and switching all my drinks to water and carbonated water has been a huge blessing.”
Kelly_Jelly_11 fasts from 9 p.m. to 1 p.m. the next day, she wrote.
“Losing weight and saving money has never felt so good! I still eat lunch and dinner but I meal prep for the week and so I’m spending less time/money on those meals as well.”
Commenters weighed in quickly, some with concerns for the writer’s health. Others asked for tips, mentioning they had been wanting to try intermittent fasting.
“Just make sure you’re not denying your body the calories and nutrients it needs to function,” one said.
Others seemed to think the tactic was extreme.
“I’ve stopped eating. I’m dead,” one wrote, presumably not from the grave. “I can save on food and electricity.”
“I stopped showering, save a lot on water bills. Am also now recently single, it’s great because I need to spend less on dates,” another said.
Kelly_Jelly_11 said she is “very healthy,” and has confirmed that with her doctor and with blood work.
Intermittent fasting has picked up in popularity, at least if pop culture and online chatter are your measures.
Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter TWTR, -0.74% and Square SQ, -1.20% , recently said he only eats between 6:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. on weeknights, and during the rest of the day he takes supplements. He doesn’t eat between Friday evening and Sunday evening at all, and breaks his fast with bone broth.
He said he does so to increase his focus.
Other celebrities including Lance Bass and Halle Berry do their own forms of intermittent fasting, according to Us Weekly magazine.
Large and long-term studies are still needed to determine whether intermittent fasting is beneficial, according to the Mayo Clinic, a nonprofit medical organization based in Minnesota.
And depriving oneself of meals, especially as Dorsey does for an entire weekend, can be a red flag.
The National Eating Disorder Association lists skipping meals, only eating small portions of food at regular meals and engaging in fad diets that cut out entire food groups as common symptoms of an eating disorder.
As for those singing the praises of intermittent fasting on Reddit, they said they consume more or less the same amount of calories as before they started. They just focus more on what they’re eating and cut out snacking during the rest of the day.
One commenter, “tbe170,” also said he’s taken a different approach, instead of using the diet to save money.
“My grocery budget has remained the same,” they said. “Way less food but much healthier and better quality grub.”
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