week 2 summary stats

For the first two weeks of the experiment, my average daily food cost has been $8.15, with a range of $5.57 to $13.80.

Calories consumed have averaged 1,744, with a range of 1,453 to 2,258. Exercise has averaged 402 calories per day, with a range of 0 to 761 calories burned (calculated using FitBit).

Weight at the end of week 2 was 168.5, a loss of 7.3 pounds.

The cheapest additional calories I have used so far are macaroni (675 cal/$), peanut butter (665 cal/$), and minute rice (517 cal/$). I'm not sure even the chip aisle provides calories at that price, which I think is interesting. Of course you could drink a bottle of canola oil and possibly get more calories/dollar, but I'm thinking of stuff that is near complete in itself (you could conceivably eat a bowl of plain macaroni, or a spoon of peanut butter - you hopefully wouldn't up-end a bottle of canola).

So given those statistics, I could conceivable increase average calorie consumption from 1,744/day to 2,000/day by consuming an additional $0.42 of ingredients - or an average cost of $8.57. The key to keeping cost/calorie low is to buy foods that can be prepared at home, and to stay away from the store coffee and sandwiches. The high cost outliers have all been days when I have purchased store-prepared items like sandwiches and salads. Unfortunately, salads are only available in prepared form, but sandwiches are relatively easily prepared at home.