3 Ridiculously Cheap Things that Change My Life Every Day

I've mentioned a few times before that Tarver and I are on a budget. We owe more in student loans than... well. It's embarrassing, honestly. It's kind of a lot of money. We've first had to take care of our credit card debt, which was also quite substantial. With some encouragement and a Dave Ramsey education (which I suggest) I am proud to say that we will be credit-debt free by the end of next month.

Dave, my man, you look a little manic in this picture. WHERE did you get those giant scissors?!

Even after we crush our credit cards-- we have (count 'em) eighteen separate student loans ranging in value from around $150 to $10,000. Now we are creative and hilarious and have named each individual loan after a video game villain, so at least it will be a little fun to vanquish them.

You think this picture is terrifying? Our Robotnik loan alone is worth more than a used car.
Did your little golden rings just explode everywhere? Mine did.

Anyway, as I'm sure I don't have to explain to you how dangerous Bowser and GLaDOS and Team Rocket are, you understand that we have to pay off these loans as soon as possible. This means that we have limited funds available for other things.

However! The best best things I have made use of in my process (except my fitbit, which was admittedly a little spendy yet invaluable) have been really cheap.

1. Crushed Red Pepper. People who have been to our house will tell you that we don't have salt on our table. Instead we have black pepper and crushed red pepper.

This should be my desktop wallpaper. I seriously love this stuff.

Here's what I love about crushed red pepper-- it is good and spicy. I don't need a lot of it (by my standards) to completely change how something tastes without adding any more calories. I have added crushed red peppers to:

• Fancy organic skettios
• Mac and Cheese
• Salads
• Bread/Breadsticks/Pizza Crust
• Red and White sauces of every kind
• Vegetables of every kind
• Pasta of every kind
• Rice of every kind
• Tacos/burritos/quesadillas

Basically if it's not a fruit, drink, breakfast cereal or a sweet pastry, I've utilized crushed red pepper. And when it comes to losing weight, this is actually something awesome. I love how crushed red peppers taste-- when I steam vegetables, I don't need butter or oil-- all I need is these spicy little dudes. OMNOMNOM. 

2. Measuring Cups. Most folks already have a good set of these. I got an extra set that I keep out just for the purposes of doing neurotic things like measuring ketchup, milk and anything else that's even vaguely calorically dense. I know this may seem odd or extreme, but I have/had a serious, serious, serious binge eating problem. I mean, really. This is what I have to do to keep myself at a decent calorie level every day. Actually, I would love for you all to give this a try, just for a day, to see how odd and specific serving sizes really are. 

I was really hoping to find something trippy and delightful for this graphic.
Sorry... it just looks like an advertisement from the early 90's.

For instance, I don't think I'm the only one who simply fills the cereal bowl up and pour some milk on it (or did until I fell in love with my measuring cups). That's probably a serving I would think, and chalk it up to the 150 calories on the box "One serving with 1/2 cup skim milk." well, the average cereal bowl holds approximately TWO cups of cereal-- which is about TWICE the serving size for most breakfast cereals on the market. With twice the cereal you utilize twice the milk-- so your 150 cal snack turned into a 300+ meal. For one bowl. And I know not all of you struggle with binge eating like I do, but if  you're at all like me, you aren't going to eat just one bowl of cereal.

Anyway, I challenge you to give it a try for a day-- just see what's up with it. I need ALL of the stuff pictured here to measure my calories. Some things are measured in cups, tablespoons, ounces, grams... I need all of these things to accurately know what I'm eating, which is a little terrifying, as far as our food culture goes.

I know I showed this picture the other day. I just love my station a lot.

3. Truvia. I don't really like to push any particular product, but dang if I don't love this stuff. I don't use a lot of sugar anymore, because I haven't had candy or cookies for several weeks... but I do still have a sweet tooth. Most of that gets taken care of by my "breakfast drink" (carnation instant breakfast, for those of you not familiar with that particular Lizism), which is quite sweet, and my dedication to eating whole fruit (which is delicious and has TONS of sugar in it). I have even given up fruit juice for the most part, as that is mostly sugar too. I now drink water, green tea (PLAIN) and, bizarrely, chocolate almond milk.

Anyway. Sugar=Much Calories. I also don't use aspartame as it's mostly in pop, which was easy for me to give up. I never liked it much anyway-- I love water. But sometimes, I do still want sugar. One of the things I have never been able to grow out of is putting sugar on my cereal (that is, branchex, crispix, grape nuts, plain cheerios--- Momma would never have let me put sugar on like, frosted flakes or froot loops! That is  A+ parenting, mom! :) Not that I didn't want to, not that I didn't try, when I was a kiddo). So nowadays when I carefully measure out a cup of strawberries, an ounce of rasberries and a cup of crispix and my 1/2 cup of skim milk, I want to put sugar on it. Whether this makes any sense or not, that's what I want. That's how I want it to taste. That's where my green little packet friend comes in!  It's cheap, it's easy and it doesn't have any calories! It also makes me feel better. It makes me feel like I'm not changing everything in the universe all at once. Which is pretty awesome, just like you guys! :)


That's it! Anybody else have cheap and easy tricks or want to share their serving size/measuring stories? :)