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Do you ever wonder how to stop yourself from eating out so much?
I don’t know about you but at times I can think about this until I’m blue in the face like a smurf.
That’s how I used to feel when the activity level of my family picked up when my kids started joining different extra curricular activities.
At times, we all get stuck and don’t know how to get out of a cycle.
A cycle that hijacks your dinner time and empties your wallet.
If you ever struggled to reclaim family meals at home, you’re going to love today’s post.
One reader wrote:
I have problems when it come to eating out. It is just much easier to grab and go. After work, I run around bringing my children to different activities, so we do not get home until around 8 or 8:30. What can I do to avoid this pattern?
This is a common problem many busy families face today. We understand that our schedule is holding you back from eating a home made meal with our families. Preventing you from saving more of your hard earned dollars you deserve.
I call it the Lather, Rinse, Repeat Cycle of Spending. I’ll tell you what it is and how to ditch it for good.
Basically, you’re walking around sheepish like a caveman (or woman) performing random acts of money spending as if a piped piper is playing some mesmerizing tune to make you dump your wallet at the nearest drive thru. You go along with the routine as if you’re in a hypnotic state. When you wake up, you realize you’re stuck in the lather, rinse, repeat cycle and don’t see a way out.
A humorous as it sounds, there’s some science behind this.
According to Charles Duhigg, author of How Habits Work, MIT researchers discovered a simple neurological loop at the core of every habit, a loop made up of a cue, routine and reward. Duhigg explains to understand your habits and how to change them, you need to identify the components of your loops. You can then look for ways to replace old vices with new routines.
It’s interesting stuff.
It’s easy to get trapped in a cycle especially when you’re short on time.
Here are some tips that may help:
- If you are able to stop at home, grab items that don’t need to be refrigerated. This way you and your kids can fill up on decent snacks that you can grab and go.
- Use your slow cooker to make meals on the weekend. This way you can just heat up what you made as soon as you get home to have food on the table.
- Block out time on the weekend and get two slow cookers going at once. This way you squeeze one or two meals out of one slower cooker recipe and then freeze the other meals from the other slow cooker for later in the week. You can double the amount of meals you make in practically the same amount of time it would take you to make one. A little preparation goes along way for the week.
- If you aren’t able to stop at home before driving kids around to activities, go in a grocery store to buy food. It will mostly like cost less and hopefully, you can get food that you can bring home as a part of your grocery budget.
I came up with 5 more tips to help you start a new routine to start eating from home, saving more, and graduate from the Lather, Rinse, Repeat Cycle of Spending.
Now that you’ve learned about them, it’s time to follow the five tips. Let me know what you think in the comments below. Would you like to add something? Feel free. That’s where it gets more exciting too.