282: The Cost of Convenience

Introduction

0:00hello how are you i mean i say that like you're going to respond to me or something or usually anna panics and then you chip in don't you and say hello hello hello do you ever get that when you voicemail though and there's that gap and you're like are they there oh that's so old

Cost of Convenience

0:30school isn't it oh oh now then this is a subject which the world has done some research around but both me and anna were like hang on a second we've been here before the cost of convenience is something that we've talked about with numerous guests actually on the podcast who've talked about how for them when they became some world members one of the habits they needed to work at was moving that switch i guess from the quick press of an app to food arriving at your door

1:05or maybe grabbing a meal deal when you're out and about as well thinking that was the healthy choice versus that switch in how can you actually swap for home cooking freshly prepared and advanced kind of food and perhaps some of the myths that we hold around that do we think that actually buying uh food uh from and cooking from scratch is more expensive do we think healthier foods are more expenses versus the convenience grab and go and uh the research that we have uh to hand from so world

1:39it's really fascinating because they've been interviewing just over 1500 swimming world members to really learn more about what difference that made to them and whether they had also made that shift

Personal Experience with Convenience

1:51i mean anna hit us up what where were you at with convenience when you came to slimming world i was a queen of it i was a jar girl i was a takeaway girl drive-through those things that you thought were like healthy like i used to buy like new potatoes in butter that you put in the microwave i'd buy like a breaded fish or like you know those pots of sea veg that had all the butter in it right through to just the chinese rang me when i stopped going i was that good a customer they

2:26rang to check i was all right like i was that woman if there was a shortcut a convenient way i would absolutely do it like i didn't know how to cook a pasta sauce a curry sauce anything like that so i put most of the letters in the word convenience i made it my middle name really so yeah big big change um in my world joining slimming world learning how to cook properly understanding how to cook but understanding a it took so it tasted much better took less time and actually what it did for my weight

2:58loss was a million times more than a jar had ever done yeah a hundred percent agree i i have definitely been on a real journey of i think just really renegotiating how i see food and yeah i've often said how for me joining slimming world was a bit like um like an education really in what food actually can be and is and how to put together a meal you know whether that be following a recipe plan or learning how to kind of out of the random cans and bits of veg in my fridge how to make a meal

3:34with all of those bits that is actually fairly nutritious is the other aspect i mean they they say don't they that many of us are making 20 000 decisions every day and so i think for me one of the things um when i came to sunwood i was already doing shift work so i was getting up at three in the morning to go to work i was sleeping all over the shop and i was tired so i needed the quick fix grab and go kind of food options food was an afterthought i think often um work came first and then health

4:09was way down the list after pleasure seeing mates whatever but i was easily having three or four takeaways a week i was easily grabbing any meal deal that i could that was left in you know a supermarket i was going out for my lunch break basically because it was actually a way to leave my desk if i'm honest yeah and there was a treat aspect to me oh i've worked hard this morning so i'll treat

4:39myself to that i'll have that cake with that coffee that i'm grabbing so there was a lot tangled in the quickness the ease um i was also kind of just uh outsourcing a lot of the decision making because i think when you get something like a meal deal or a takeaway you don't need to then sit down and maybe put the plan and do the shopping list and then the cooking and for many years when i was starting out doing some more i lived on my own um you know i was in my late 20s so i definitely put

5:11socializing over sitting and doing a shopping list in terms of the priority list and um and i have to be honest it came at a cost not just the cost financially for me but also the cost of how i felt physically emotionally and if i go a bit hippie-ish a bit spiritually as well in just that sense of you know not i'm not necessarily talking about spiritual in terms of angels but my spirit felt low and i felt disconnected and i was ill a lot that was also something that i noticed and the

5:45biggest thing that drew me through swimming world's doors was i wanted to finally feel like i had some energy in my life and that for me the biggest shift out of everything the cost of convenience meat was how much this food was actually taking away my energy because of the processing and the not so great nutritiousness of it all and that my body was constantly having to digest that stuff that when i switched to home cooked food planned and advanced healthy and i had a plan of how to do that wow that

6:20is where the difference and that's something that you don't see in getting your shiny stickers or certificates this is life stuff life saving changing stuff and it's that notion isn't it that sometimes why we get a takeaway is we want it to be a quick fix but i used to spend 40 minutes waiting for the takeaway and then that would happen and then i'd eat my way through the cupboards because i was waiting for so long for the takeaway but it was almost that i needed that burden to be shifted from me i needed someone else like you said to do the thinking the prepping but actually the knock-on effect was it then

6:52it had i would snack more i then wouldn't sleep better and i'd be skinned and i couldn't afford to do like how much takeaways cost how much convenience cost when you work out if you went and made the meal yourself you've got the ingredients in you save a fortune so it's not only psychologically and physically but your bank balance is really affected by this convenience food isn't it yeah do you know

Research on Convenience Foods

7:15what and actually thinking about that just um reading on some of the research which slim world has released um they talk about uh 60 so that what's that three and five people typically spend a 50 quid a week on takeaways and high fat high sugar convenience foods uh almost a third of people spend over a hundred pounds a month on frozen items such as nuggets and chips and i have to say frozen items were one of those things that if i could just grab it out the freezer and stick it in the

7:46oven that i would go but i i have to be honest i'd never ever really read a label to see what on earth was in these things oh terrifying absolutely terrifying when you flip the label on some of these things and you can't say the word you you kind of know that's that's not something you want in your body isn't it um but actually to me that was i'm cooking i've opened that box and i've put it in the oven so i've cooked myself dinner i had no idea of the impact of that for me like i i would eat

8:19meals that were you know beige in color and then feel so much more hungry half an hour after that but i to me that was a home-cooked meal i didn't understand like you said that education of putting the vegetables on cooking the meal from scratch actually got an impact it would have the filling power but the psychological satisfaction of creating that meal cooking it put it together being proud of myself actually that was a knock-on effect that i had never realized that convenience food had taken away from me yeah do you know what i also found refreshing in this uh research that's

8:52come out is that one in five people admit they don't feel confident cooking from scratch i found that really reassuring to read that because i was absolutely one of those people um and you know what lifestyles have changed yeah you know we think back to maybe 30 40 years ago maybe longer where the idea of coming home to a home-cooked meal was much more typical but so many of us are working maybe you've got kids maybe you're looking after family members you know then you've got

9:25maybe aspect of socializing you're trying to squeeze in the gym there's all these things that we feel like we have to do that it's no wonder that so many of us feel overwhelmed with where to begin i think when it comes to making these switches or cooking from scratch and i think that the biggest help that someone will gave me was sitting in group and hearing from other people who were successful in losing weight they lived in my area they shopped in my supermarkets they had they were doing shift work

10:01and stressful lives and jobs managing life around their families as well some people had different dietary requirements and health conditions and it was really inspiring to see these people were finding a way through and just the little tips that they would share of i just cooked this meal this week and it was great here's a link to it on the app you can cook it too i got all the ingredients in the same supermarket that you shop in it just helps make it like actually achievable i think and it's

10:36knowing all those resources around you like one of my favorite things is our 15 minute hero cookbook like everything in that can be made or constructed in 15 minutes you know there isn't a takeaway that i can get delivered in that kind of time i've learned how to make myself really quick easy stir fry in about five or six minutes but that knowledge came from other people that came from group that understanding that actually what i'd always done didn't have to be something i continued to do and actually as easy it is to open a jar of sauce and if you make your own pasta sauce in about three minutes

11:08but actually here's how and that what was that's what was key for me to have everything put together because my mind was so addled with i've got to lose weight now i've got to cut out all the things that have made life easier how am i going to do this so i think it's it's not putting too much pressure on yourself it's starting slow building that repertoire finding shortcuts that are easy like for me frozen vegetables are a lifesaver ready chopped vegetables are a lifesaver for me they're good convenience that actually i can work in you know think about the ranger iceland or dunn stores is something i can

11:44work in that actually is not gonna really affect my bank balance in the way that ordering a 50 pound takeaway is you know i can't afford to do that eat two or three times a week as a family 50 pounds for a takeaway like that's my food budget gone for the week so what i had to bring into my mind was actually what i was doing and when i looked at um i was eating a lot of takeaways before we had apps that's how long i've been a member but when you look at your bank balance and you realize and you see you know the coffee shops the drive-thrus and you realize how much of a hard-earned cash you spent on

12:19that and then you realize actually if i went to the supermarket found fine easy recipes how much i could say how much better i feel it really brings it into the forefront of your mind yeah yeah and it shows you how yeah that is so true so important because we're so a lot of us have got so many pulls on our time that actually the reason we love convenience is because it takes something off our list so to understand that you can do things quickly and easily with something i needed here you go anna get a

12:50tin of tomatoes some passata some fresh basil or dried basil some italian herbs and a stock cube and you've got a beautiful tomato sauce actually that was easy for me to do whereas you know actually if someone had said you need 25 minutes in the kitchen you need four sauce spoons and 18 different ingredients i would have gone no so actually it's breaking it down into things that you need that is going to make it something that you can factor into your lifestyle i suppose we should also point out like you say the slimming world food range um is so helpful in that if you are transitioning from that

13:23i don't have a lot of time and i need to make this switch the symbol would iceland and arrange and the range range is that what i call it is in and the ratio is it done stores in iceland yeah it's the slimming world range at most stores but yes yeah but uh that is that is helpful where if you are switching to and you want those grab and go things in your freezer you know that they are 100 food optimized they don't have all of these oils high fat high sugar processed kind of you know the stuff in the ingredients that

13:59you're like i don't even know what that is and then that's what it really gets you doesn't it and for me they are my absolute lifesavers knowing that i can go out pull out my pancakes pull out my naan bread get a curry get a mac and cheese and i'm absolutely safe that stops the temptation of oh we've got nothing for dinner let's just go to a drive-thru because that's my fail safe so things like the kitchen for me have been such a game changer in terms of not having to think the convenience of that little more quite big in my case red box landing on my doorstep and knowing that i've got those

14:33meals that are food optimizing all i've got to do is follow that recipe is easy also another thing that that's given me is joy the joy of cooking the joy of doing it as a family and actually what convenience had almost starved me of if that the irony of that word was that enjoyment of the cooking it the processing it the watching other people enjoy it it was like do you know what i carry in a paper bag in a box and it was a bit soggy and it was a bit substandard you have very few takeaways and this is no disrespect but in my life i have very few takeaways that have stood out

15:07they were just all right and actually i can make a better meal than just all right so that then gave me the confidence to kind of want to go away and do that even more yeah exactly and and you know i mean here it's talking about um when people do cook at home the research shows the benefits are clear 46 say they save money 40 feel healthier 33 enjoy cooking more 29 say their family eats better and 17

15:38have more energy wow and money is an interesting one isn't it because i do think that there can be that conversation we know food inflation is continuing to rise and affect people uh across the country and i think there can be that myth that healthy eating is more expensive um and uh i think that that that was something that i definitely held that in mind but we're definitely learning i suppose

16:10uh one of the things i really gain out of um being part of a an active group and going regularly i think is the key thing is that you almost learn this knowledge bit by bit rather than just expect to know everything straight away um it never continues stopping that learning and sharing even just having some frozen chopped vegetables in the freezer if you haven't got time to go to the to the supermarket learning i think these little kind of helpful things of how can we uh find a way to lose weight but also maintain a healthy active lifestyle on an ongoing

16:48basis these little tips and hacks and switches and swaps that we can make that just make um having a nutritionist nutritional health healthy life i can't even say it because i'm so excited i know exactly what you mean but you know i've learned the tips and the hints so you know looking at things that are in season looking for things that are you know in tins looking for reduced things there's no specialized foods there's no shakes or anything that you need to buy this is just normal

17:19food and actually you know you can feed your family your friends and do this on a budget and i guarantee for the price of one takeaway for you know three or four people you could feed yourself so many different meals that are so nutrient dense so filling so good for you so it's almost rethinking and rethinking that value of money because we think about things like takeaways convenience they do more than the food that's on the plate we feel at the time it's the emotion they ease it's the

17:52stress they take off it's that treat mentality so it's that reshaping

Rethinking Food Choices

17:56reshaping of behaviors isn't it to say actually you know i'm worried about the money but actually is it more than that what do i need to look at in terms of my reward system how my life is set up and a few simple tweaks can really make it work like for us we're big fans of a fake away so actually if you want a pizza actually not going to spend 40 pounds or three pizzas from a delivery making our own pizzas out of like flour for my healthy fiber choice or using a wrap so that we can still have that same feeling but for oh my god it's so little in comparison you know i can make four pizzas out

18:31of a packet of wraps some fresh tomatoes some cheese some ham and some small chips and a salad we've got a beautiful meal for less than 10 pounds that feeds all of us so it's just reframing for a lot of us i think yeah what's really helpful is a summer world app actually has a food search and a barcode search that you can find out okay let's think about wraps for instance you said not all wraps are necessarily covered under the or recommended under the healthy fiber choices under stemming world but learning kind of to know okay well what's actually in these ingredients and how

19:06many of uh you know swips is what slimming world calls their kind of balanced part of the plan um how many will that cost me and understanding yeah this calcium choices fiber choices healthy fats choices this language of stuff that often how many of us have just literally bought something forgot about it eaten it just you know got rid of the the guilt i think of hiding evidence of takeaway boxes hiding evidence of like my secret eating going through drive-thrus in my car and actually you don't

19:40need to have any of that if you find this new way and you are open to learn new habits of how to make these swaps and that's where swimming world can hold your hand i think in helping you guide you and the cool thing is i think there's so many different food plans out there which will tell you if you do this if you eat this you will get you know x becomes y but part of the way of i think making these swaps and making these changes that work with your lifestyle is finding that flexibility and finding

20:11what you like i mean our favorite meals for tea are probably going to be quite different i'd be intrigued what's your okay right favorite meal phil's got the candles out daisy's gonna play like waitress and you're gonna sit down come home from a long day at work anna and your favorite meals on the table what is it i'm probably going king prawns and garlic to start and then a nice lasagna and a big salad with some chips oh my goodness guess what mine is what not king prawns it's not king prawns

20:44um a vegan lasagna oh it's got everything you need in it isn't it there's there's there's one particular recipe on simwood app and it's jackfruit enchilada lasagna it's very it's very rare that i can find jackfruit but we can swap in some of the kind of protein bean butter beans we tried the other week i love the spices the flavor i love any kind of pastory stuff with cheese and then a nice colorful salad i want maximum color on my my plate which is so funny isn't it because those years of eating

21:17convenience foods of how lacking color a lot of those foods have beige boxes i should also say though we're not saying like takeaways are bad like we still get takeaways but just the choices i make are very different so we might get a japanese takeaway now or a turkish takeaway something that's not fast deep fried high fat food so it's not demonizing that kind of takeaway culture because there's definitely a place for that still in my life it really is but it's for me it was knowledge of what

21:49was in it knowledge that it wasn't saving me money and the time that it saved actually really probably wasn't very much it was just the the pleasurable experience of just wanting to shift that burden of another stress so it's fascinating when you go and look back because when i realized what i spent on alcohol and takeaways in a year was you know a five percent deposit on a flat it soon made me realize shape up you know what i mean so when you put it in that context it can be fantastic on it yeah and you know that was that was one of the things i was gonna pull out here because it

22:22highlights in this research how it did some research how um uh before joining some world 88 percent of people surveyed were spending up to 100 pounds a week on takeaways wow and convenience foods um and so by changing these purchases either changing them or cutting them out all together you could save more than five thousand pounds a year while supporting healthier eating habits and i agree that was the

22:52first thing i lost four stone in a year i hadn't had a car for eight years and i'd saved every single month for the first time in my life i saved enough money that i could finally at the end of that year go and buy my first car in eight years i remember when we were getting our first mortgage at the mortgage device and look through my husband's bank statements he was like mr mangan i think the costa might be something that needs to be dropped their coffee shops and what you're spending every day a fiver on a coffee you know a couple of pounds on a flapjack and actually cut that out you can pay your mortgage love

23:26oh my goodness phil's been outed i know literally he's like okay it was every other entry in my bank statement but you don't realize how many of us do go and buy or did go and buy a coffee and a croissant in the morning going it's quick yeah it's quick but actually how much have you spent it now that's interesting because i think one of the things of like buying everything on a card for instance you don't realize you just kind of tap and go don't you and um more recently i've actually started kind of going through my my bank account and i have a bank where you can categorize each spending

24:00so i can actually really see how much am i spending on groceries every month how much am i spending eating out how much am i spending on entertainment shall we say as in having a cheeky uh beer you know in the pub yeah whilst going to watch a gig or something so um i think actually just seeing and observing things for where are you at right now regardless of you know whether you're further along your weight loss journey or maybe you haven't even began and you're just like opening your eyes to

24:32i need to make a start somewhere but i don't know where to begin i think the first part of the process is let's just take a snapshot of where you're at and really capture what is happening you know small stuff like when i first began i measured my inches just to kind of see where i was at i took those photos of me i looked at my maybe my habits of okay if i took a photo of what was in my fridge before i joined slimming world versus maybe what 10 years in how does that fridge look quite different um and i

25:06think that is all part of like this progress and this is what i mean about this is the stuff where you don't necessarily get stickers and certificates for but it's these are the lifestyle habits that ultimately make life more enjoyable exactly and imagine now just this thought for you imagine now you cut out your takeaway once or twice a week you could pay for yourself to go on a beautiful holiday you could buy that new garden furniture all those things that perhaps you don't think you've got the money for you could go in and save so just a little thought do you know um uh a geeky little thing

25:42that i occasionally like to do is if you go to a yellow label corner of a supermarket yeah and uh you see whatever's there and then i don't know let's just say like last week i went and it was on oh it was like a around bank holiday time it's a good time to go i went yeah and there was swede and there was a massive swede for eight pence eight p and i was like swede what could i do with swede so i open up some world app go to recipes and type swede and all of these recipes in the end what i did was i made

26:18a massive batch cook of like a shepherd's pie with swede in the mash exactly and you know i use pretty much the whole of this swede for eight p but that was one of those days where old me you get those reminders don't you at friday at 5 p.m or a bank holiday monday the emails from certain places and they time it's like they know oh she's going to be tired right now they lure you in we fall into

26:51these marketing traps and actually you know just by stepping away and having some space from that but knowing what to do knowing how to make these swaps knowing what your options are just allows you to make better choices exactly and better choices that are only ever going to make you feel better physically and mentally which is a really big and important buy-in isn't it because no takeaway if i ever lay back on the sofa if it's been a really like you know high fat one and gone oh brilliant i feel like you need to lie down don't you so actually it's recognizing

27:23it might give you instant gratification but not long-term joy yeah that is true i think it's like it's about like taking back like control i think taking that choice power and really losing more weight than you ever thought was possible like this can be done you can make these changes slimming wool will support you will hold your hand along the way you don't have to do it all in the next week just take that time take that first step get to a group or check out the online digital experience

27:53such than ward offers that is the one thing that we would just say just lean in and be open-minded

Taking Control of Food Choices

28:00to just try something different exactly who knows you could buy your first car at the end of the week or go on a luxury holiday i feel like that's like a game show kind of moment isn't it so true though isn't it you know you buy a cuddly toy yeah 187 of them in my child's bedroom if anybody wants one that's 187 members yes sorted um yeah they don't talk in image therapy those ones yeah i think i think this is an interesting subject because so many of us i think can be locked in this habit of convenience

28:35um in potentially quite a shameful addicted kind of guilt-ridden way that we're when we peer under the carpet we're not really sure where to begin and i think by talking about this stuff it kind of just opens up that that door for people to say there is another way and this is possible and if we can do it you know if you if you could see how claire and i used to previously eat to how we are now it's like incomparable so slow and steady wins the race one change at a time yeah like that yeah

29:11quote of the day she knows what she's doing um if you are not a similar world member what i will do in the episode description um on our public feed is i'll put a link into um the website where it talks about some world kitchen and also um some of the food range so if you want to explore that and see if that might possibly be just those first changes that you make even if you're not necessarily ready to join a similar group that could just be where you begin um so any ways that

29:45we can help if you are someone who has uh found a way through of this switch of convenience i mean we've spoken to people before haven't we rachel and craig consultants in the northeast talked about how they went and bought all the the foil little tins and they create their own fake away friday night experience by cooking it from scratch but serving it in the foil tins to trick themselves and their family that they're having a takeaway brilliant daisy said to me though the other night she said i don't like real pizza i like your pizza money which is a pizza made of a wrap so yeah she's a cheap date

30:22she just she's a cheap date she's got her headphones on she can't hear you but she doesn't know any different now because that's what her lifestyle has been so that's a really important thing for me is that she eats well as well yeah exactly right whatever you get up to hope you have a great week eat some amazing food and uh we'll be back with another episode very soon take care bye for now

30:52you