Last night I cooked a meal to see how many appropriate portion sized meals I would be able to create. I purchased vegetable pasta, ground turkey, and tomato sauce. These three items cost me exactly $8 broken down as $5 for the ground turkey (1.25 pounds), $1.50 for the sauce and $1.50 for the box of pasta.

Let's see how far $8 was able to get me.

This was a neat little experiment since I'm focusing on maintaining healthy eating habits paying particular attention to appropriate portion sized meals. I was preparing all this food with the intent of having travel lunches to use for work or for evenings when I will not be in the mood to cook.

While I was boiling water for the pasta, I started cooking the ground turkey. On a side note, if your local grocery store has ground turkey as a selection, this is a great healthy alternative to ground beef. It is leaner, has less fat, and in my opinion tastes just as good especially when you add a few spices like garlic, Italian seasoning, pepper, and a dash of seasoned salt.

Appropriate Portion Sized Meals Is One Of The Keys To Effective Weight Loss

While everything was cooking, I got my travel containers ready along with their respective lids and laid everything out so I could use them right when I was done cooking. If you haven't used plastic travel containers before they are an inexpensive way to pack appropriate portion sized meals to take with you to work or when you are away from home. Best yet, they are reusable so after spending the initial amount of about $4 for 6 containers you will have them for years to come if they are well maintained and stored properly (lids included).

This is an easy way to save leftovers for another day which in turn could potentially save you $6-$12 per meal depending on what you typically eat when away from home. Plus, these appropriately sized travel meals will be much healthier than the majority of choices since fast food/restaurant portions and nutritional content is generally not the best for our bodies.

After all my food was cooked, mixed, and packed into my travel containers I had a total of six appropriate portion sized meals. One thing to note, just because I have these six travel meals packed away does not mean I need to eat the same thing six times in a row. I've gotten in the habit of labeling and storing my extra meals in the freezer so at any time I can simply toss it in the microwave on defrost and it's ready to eat in five minutes.

Therefore doing the math for six appropriate portioned sized meals for $8 means one meal cost me exactly $1.33 each, and since I recycle my travel water bottles by refilling them at home, $1.33 will be all I spend when consuming these six travel meals. This is the kind of savings you can expect when you pack travel lunches to take with you when away from home. Not only will you be saving a ton of money by avoiding eating out, but you will also be able to have complete control over the portion of food, hopefully making it a healthy sized one.