My Year Of Resolve: Day Two

Tip Of The Day: A Mocha Vente Latte for breakfast is NOT going to trim your butt or budget. Instead, you have to actually EAT BREAKFAST AT HOME. Oh, the horror, the horror. However, you can buy a box of cereal and a container of skim milk, which will last you over two weeks, for the same cash that would net you just two coffee drinks. With the money you save, you can buy a pair of skinny jeans AND fit in them, for once.

Bonus Tip Of The Day, Which Means Two Entries Today, Because THAT’S HOW MUCH I Care About You, The Reader: Where-to-go shopping tips from readers and friends. It’s nice to know I’m not alone in my obsessive need to spend less. Thank you for validating me.

Tip For Tomorrow: Cheap and interesting forms of exercise brought to you by me and my EVIL TRAINER WHO IS TRYING TO KILL ME. Or at least, whip my ass into some semblance of shape. Same thing.

Further Elucidation Of My Cheap Deal: Raise your hand if you missed breakfast. Yup, that’s everyone. However, endless amounts of research and researchers and dieticians and scientists and moms and lab rodents have proven that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. So it behooves us to listen to what they keep yammering about and eat up.

Personally, I try to ignore scientists and their blathering about my health. It is bad enough they made me quit smoking. What’s next? I’m afraid they’ll discover that the combination of chocolate and America’s Next Top Model causes cancer in lab mice. But I digress.

So we need to eat breakfast. And to save our money and waistlines, we need to eat it at home. Eating breakfast at a restaurant or coffee shop will cost you big time in calories and cash. But what should we eat?

First, accept that breakfast can’t always be a fatty, bacony, sugary free-for-all. Second, also accept that to get the healthiest bang for your buck, you have to, HAVE TO, eat something with fiber in it. Like fiber-rich cereals. With the aforementioned skim milk.

If you don’t believe me about fiber, watch Dr. Oz the next time he’s on Oprah. GUARANTEED he will bring up fiber, and in conjunction with fiber, poop. Your poop. And the fact that Americans poop wrong and bad and not enough. Seriously, it’s a big fecal fest when that man is on Oprah. But I digress again.

If I’m going to eat a cereal for it's fiber content (as opposed to the prize inside or the marshmallows), I want to get the biggest bang for my buck. With that in mind, here are my two favorite fiber-rich cereals, available at any grocery store or Super Target. Yes, everything is available at Super Target.

1. Kashi GOLEAN, $2.99 a box, regular price. This stuff tastes pretty good, if a bit dry, so dump on the milk. It has 140 calories per cup, 10 grams of fiber (40% of your daily allowance), and 13 grams of protein (20%). Protein in cereal, along with fiber, helps you stay full longer. One bowl at 7:45 am will keep me full until 11 am. Then I need a snack. And Kashi makes snacks! Of course, so does Dove Chocolate. P.S. The Kashi GOLEAN Crunch is tastier, but has less fiber and protein. However, it’s better than that Capt’n Crunch I see you reaching for.

2. Kellogg’s ALL BRAN Bran Buds, prices range from $3.49 to $4.49, depending on the store. Okay, the name Bran Buds says it all. This stuff tastes like sweetened dry cardboard, so you’ll need much milk to get it down your throat. However, what it lacks in fatty-bacony-sugary goodness, it makes up for in fiber content. Just 1/3 cup has 13 grams of fiber, which is 51% of your daily allowance. That means, if you eat 2/3 cup (measure it out, that’s probably the amount you’d normally eat) you don’t have to eat any more fiber for the REST OF THE DAY. Bring on the chocolate, hold the veggies!

Try eating cereal at home for breakfast for four weeks. At the end, if you’ve saved no money and/or haven’t lost a pound, you have my permission to eat a pound of bacon in one sitting, like I did last week. What, like you've never done that.