I got a lot of responses (four!) to my throwaway post about eating for $10 a week and getting not-fat, most of which were themed on surprise. After all, it’s a measly sum to spend on food, and who the hell can stand being a vegan for a month?

But that’s the thing: it’s really not such a stretch. I figured out what was cheap in my area and customized a diet based on my tastes, preferences, and eating habits, taking into account the price of food. I didn’t make any dramatic changes in my lifestyle or start shopping at some miserable health food store in the suburbs, I just made slight modifications to the way I already lived.

So now it’s your turn, fatty. If you want to lose weight, or if you want to eat cheap and healthy, read on. If not, read on anyway, as I’m sure to make a dick joke or two.

Step One: Bookmark these two websites:

http://www.nutritiondata.com/

http://www.stevenscreek.com/goodies/calories.shtml
The first one has nutrition listings for all sorts of foods in every state (of being, not of the Union) imaginable. Say you want to find out how many calories are in this bean soup you made, and you don’t know the volume of the soup, but you do know you used two cups of dried beans initially. Check the caloric content of a cup of dried beans and you’re good. It’s got frozen meals and canned foods and shit like that too, so you probably won’t be eating anything that you can’t find on it.

The second is a no-frills, highly specific calorie calculator. You can really break down what you do in a given day, unlike most calorie calculators which only allow you to specify exercise. Just check it out when you want to know how many calories you’ll burn by staring at a monitor all day.

Now, if you want to lose weight, all you have to do is use the first website to figure out how many calories you’re consuming in a given day, and then use the second website to figure out how many you’re burning. If you’re burning more than you’re eating, congratulations, you’re losing weight. There’s nothing more to it than that. You can go on some fancy diet that requires you eat nothing but goat testicles, and maybe that’ll kick-start your hidden caveman metabolism, but it also means you’re eating a lot of balls. You don’t need to unlock your body’s hidden potential, just don’t eat more than you’re burning and you’re good.

Now, that’s all well and good, but most of us don’t burn off more than we eat, because we like burritos and pizza and cake. And portion control? Fuck portion control. I like having a full stomach after I eat, and being hungry half an hour later sucks ass.

I’m going to assume that all my readers are adults, and being an adult comes with the capacity to make decisions and stick to them. That doesn’t mean we can’t change our minds or buckle under pain or pressure, it just means we don’t have to follow every little compulsion that comes our way. Following this logic, I’d like to introduce to you a new, shocking idea that will revolutionize the health industry: Filler Food.

The problem with trying to have pizza on a diet without resorting to portion control is, of course, that pizza is fattening, so if you try to fill up on pizza, you’re going to become the world’s friendliest killer whale (Shamu, you’d best watch your ass). This is why we have filler food. You don’t have to control your portions, but you don’t have to fill up on pizza, either. Have a slice of pizza. Hell, have two. But then have something else. Once you’ve had a reasonable amount of whatever food it is that you’re craving, you stop craving it and you stop getting so much satisfaction from eating it. You’re still hungry, though, so you just need to eat something to fill yourself up. Find yourself a filler food that’s low in calories and that you’re okay with eating (you don’t have to love it, but make sure it’s at least a little bit good), and then use that to fill yourself up after having a smaller amount of killer whale chow.

For instance, even on this vegan diet, there are some foods that are pretty damn fattening. I love McDonald’s fries and tend to get them occasionally. But I get a small, and then I come home and heat up some bean soup or have a tomato sandwich. If I’d gotten a large, the fries would have been cold and nasty by the time I was halfway through eating them, anyway.

This same tactic works for saving money. Just make sure your filler food is something cheap (again, beans and rice are awesome), and you’ll be able to eat less of the expensive stuff that’s making you fat. Check out the nutrition facts website to figure out your filler food(s).

There’s an underlying theme to all of this which I don’t think I’ve acknowledged: you’ve got to cook. You cannot expect to save money and lose weight if you’re not cooking a significant amount of your own food. I understand that I have a hell of a lot more time than other people, but I still think it can work for people with no time (what are you doing reading this blog if you have no time?). There’ll be a bit of rehashing a recipe, so be patient with me.

Black bean soup:

I make this awesome black bean soup. It’s easy, I don’t have to measure anything, and it costs about $5 to make about ten to fifteen bowls.

This whole recipe will be broken down so as to save time and money. You need to get two pounds of dried beans. Do not get canned. I know they’re easier and faster, but they’ll cost you a lot more, and dried beans get to be extremely easy if you follow my instructions. Also, canned beans tend to be farty, whereas you can make dried beans unfarty. Put the dried beans in a pot (don’t bother sifting through them or rinsing them, that’ll be taken care of when you drain and rinse later), and fill the pot up with water about twice as high as the beans go, less if you can’t go that high. Put the pot in the refrigerator (with the lid on) and let it sit overnight. It’s safe to leave it there up to two whole days, but it needs to stay for at least eight hours.

The next day, take the pot out and drain the water. You can do this with a colander, or you can just hold the lid against the pot so that there’s a tiny crack open between them and tip it upside down so the beans don’t come out but the water does. Once the water is all (or mostly) drained, fill the pot up with water to about the same level as before and put it on the stove with the flame (or eye) turned all the way up. Bring the water to a boil then turn the flame all the way down, and be sure to stir the beans every five to ten minutes during this process. You can leave the lid on if you want (it makes it faster), but the water is prone to boiling over that way, so it’s up to you. Add a decent amount of salt to the water when it starts boiling and stir it in (just use as much as you think would be good). The beans should cook in about an hour’s time from when the water started boiling.

Total time actually doing work: ten minutes? Less if you’re good? Not much at all, really. You have to be home for the beans cooking, sure, but you can be doing other stuff and just come in every few minutes to stir the beans for a second.

Moving on. Once the beans are done, drain the water, then add more water until the beans are covered, slosh it around a bit, and then drain that too. All this draining and rinsing and soaking removes the fartiness from the beans (most of it, anyway).

Now. Take a large onion and chop it up coarsely (saves time and it’s all going to cook down anyway). Take six fresh tomatoes and chop them coarsely too, or if you can’t get cheap fresh tomatoes, get two large cans or three regular cans of tomato sauce, tomato puree, crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes, just whatever is cheapest (don’t get stewed or whole peeled unless you’re okay with trying to chop them up, which is very awkward). You should be able to get fresh onions cheap unless you’re living in the future and onions have gone extinct or something. Dump all of that in the pot with the beans.
Add enough water to just barely cover everything (you can add a bit less if you want a thicker soup), then put it on the stove and bring it to a boil like before. Stir every five minutes. When it’s boiling, turn the flame down and add your seasonings. The only thing you have to add enough of is salt. Don’t use fancy sea salt because that shit is expensive and it ends up being no different from other salt. Sea salt is only different in that you get big crystals of it, so it’s good for some dry foods, but it’s pointless in soup because it just dissolves. Use Morton salt or something cheap like that, and just add a little at a time and taste it after stirring it in until you find how much you like (I tend to use what looks like a tablespoon or two).

As for the other seasonings, it’s really up to you. I suggest some sort of spicy pepper (cayenne is good, piquen or arbol is fine, hot sauce can be used if you don’t have anything else), some sort of flavor pepper (ancho is great, chili powder is fine because it has a lot of ancho in it, guajillo is good too), some cumin if you can get it cheap, some oregano, and some garlic powder. But you really should mix it up based on what you like and what you can get cheap (but if you don’t know anything about seasonings, just use what I suggest because it’s really easy to fuck up with something like coriander or rosemary). Be sure to look for seasonings in little plastic pouches rather than glass bottles, because it’s much cheaper that way and you can just refill your old glass bottles with it when they run out.

Stir all that mess in. Use a large spoon to mash some of the beans against the side of the pot to thicken the broth. Let the soup cook for about an hour, two hours if you’re into it, and stir every five to ten minutes (ten is really pushing it).

Congratulations, you just made black bean soup on the cheap. It’s always better the next day, and that whole mess should last you at least ten meals, more if you have it with rice or potatoes or something. It makes a great filler food and it’s healthy as hell. You can adapt the recipe to other kinds of beans if you want. It keeps in the refrigerator for a little over a week without going bad.

In the end, you shouldn’t have spent more than $7, and you shouldn’t have done more than an hour of actual work. Yes, you have to be home for it, but it lasts you so long that I’m sure you can find a couple of hours in the week to be at home and deal with it.

This went on really long. Just remember: use filler food in conjunction with food you like to fill up on and save money. And always look both ways before crossing the street.