u/PermitNervous3552

Hello all! This is my first post on this subreddit, and I'd like to share my experience dieting as a college student. For context, I have been dieting for just under three weeks.

There are a few tricks that I would like to share, specifically to those looking to lose weight for cheap (again, I'm a college student so I get it haha).

1. Drink a SHIT TON of water.
   I know, it's easier said than done HOWEVER, my tip with this is simple:
   Get 10-15cal flavor packets from the grocery store and just constantly be putting those into your water. A pack of 6 costs me $1-2, sometimes less because they're always on sale!
   I have a 40 oz water bottle, and I just throw in one of the flavor packets (yes the taste is slightly diluted but it still tastes better to me than drinking regular water), and BOOM, the whole thing is gone before I've even realized what happened.
   Drinking a lot of water every day can also help with your appetite, and of course weight loss.

2. Find side dish carb alternatives.
   Wanna diet but really love rice? No problem! Try cauliflower rice, konjac rice, broccoli rice, you name it!
   Personally, I really love cauliflower rice, yes it can sometimes be a bit expensive, HOWEVER, it is very, VERY satiating! I can't even eat a whole pack if I'm adding some kind of meat and veggies to my meal, I can only eat about half, and one pack is about $3 at my local grocery store.
   I made a homemade poke bowl the other day using cauliflower rice and mistakenly ate the whole thing, and let me tell you what, my stomach was in pain for hours afterwards because I felt so full to the point of bursting, and the whole pack of rice is only 45 calories!!

3. Find your favorite vegetable and eat it at every meal, and constantly throughout the day.
   Personally, though I love fruit, because they are usually pretty sweet, I find myself more drawn to eating vegetables for every meal, and as snacks.
   Being Slavic, I absolutely love cabbage, and so have been adding it to every meal, and sometimes will just sit there eating it as a snack.
   At my local grocery store, cabbage is about $2.79 for a big head, and it usually lasts a week or two depending on how often you use it! I used to use it for a salad every night, and combined with other vegetables, the salad itself was only about 180 calories, but was very, VERY filling, largely because most of it was made of cabbage!

3.5 Eat a lot of vegetables.
Again, I know it's easier said than done! Personally I love vegetables and have loved them my whole life so this is really easy for me HOWEVER, I know that raw vegetables especially are hard for some people to stomach, so this is my recommendation:
Every week (or every two weeks), when you go to the grocery store, pick out one of a single kind of vegetable, and try preparing it in a creative way at home. Whether it be steaming, frying, baking, just eating it raw, find SOME vegetable that you really love and can have at every meal.
For me, roma tomatoes are about $1.79 a pound, so I find myself having those in the morning for a side to a light breakfast, as well as snacking on them throughout the day (tomatoes are one of my favorite foods... don't judge), but there are plenty that I buy repeatedly as well!
My recommendations are:

Tomatoes 4 oz: 19-20 calories

Onions 4 oz: 34-48 depending on type (this is mainly for cooking, I don't typically eat raw onions on their own but if you're into that, no judgement here lol)

Cucumbers 4 oz: 14-17 calories (absolute lifesaver, and great for debloating as well!)

Cabbage 4 oz: 30 calories

Carrots 4 oz: 46 calories

All of these things range in price, of course, but are all relatively cheap at the grocery store if you buy nonorganic, and if you make a salad with all of these things, I promise you will be full to the point of bursting for a very low caloric count.

4. Unsweetened almond milk.
   The bullet point really says it all. I usually drink black coffee, but have recently been getting matchas, or wanting a sweeter kind of latte as a dessert. This is where almond milk comes in: unsweetened, it comes in at about 30 calories for 8 oz, and if you have it in an iced latte, that's basically the entire caloric count of the drink.
   At my local grocery store, a half gallon is about $3, so if you don't find yourself drinking a lot of milk, I wouldn't reallyyyy recommend it, but if you absolutely have to have milk with your coffee (or for cooking or other purposes), then I would absolutely recommend this, and again, it's not too expensive in my books!

5. Make as much of your food as you can at home.
   This one sounds a bit broad, but here me out.
   Wanna have some protein pancakes but don't have sugar-free jam? Make it yourself!
   And I hear you saying, "but berries are so expensive!" and here is the solution that I offer:

Buy things on sale and freeze them, or just buy frozen berries/fruits/vegetables for them to be cheaper. To defrost quickly for a meal, just run hot water over the package, and I PROMISE that the taste will be the same.
Personally, I love making sugar-free strawberry jam, and I can buy a 16oz carton of strawberries for around $4-5 when they're on sale. Usually this means they'll go bad pretty quickly, but not if you freeze them (aside from the fact that you should use frozen strawberries to make jam anyway haha)! They last for a while, and again, are pretty quick to defrost for any recipes you need.

Same goes for meat! An ahi tuna steak piece was about $8, but for the same price, I was able to buy a frozen pack of three of them, defrosted one that same day, and had a delicious and satiating poke bowl with the cauliflower rice that I mentioned above. In theory you are sacrificing a little bit of the quality, but the macronutrients are the same.

Those are my main "life hacks" in my diet journey so far, and I haven't had to spend exorbitant amounts of money on low-calorie alternatives for much. I pick and choose where to spend my money very carefully since I don't have a lot of it, so I wanted to share my wisdom for those who might also be struggling a little bit.

Let me know if any of this helped you in the comments!