How I Cut our Grocery Spend in Half & Stopped Spiraling over Dinnertime Decisions

This isn't a meal prep episode. It's for everyone who's been eating chips for dinner and throwing away rotting groceries every single weekend.

In this very honest conversation, I'm breaking down how we went from spending $1,200+ per month on groceries that literally got thrown away to now spending under $1,000 with a fridge that's actually full, seven meals on rotation, and dinner that takes 30 minutes start to finish on autopilot.

I share the breaking point that finally changed everything (spoiler: it was impacting my relationship, my motherhood, my business, my ability to exercise, and my confidence as a coach), why I had to let go of trying to source the "best quality" foods, and the exact MFK Method I use now: microdecisions, making it fun as fuck, and setting up the kitchen for future me.

If you're spending hundreds on groceries but still piecing together snacks after bedtime... 

If you're tired of making dinner decisions at 5pm after a full day of chaos with a toddler on your hip... 

If you refuse to keep carrying the full mental load of this and you're ready for something that actually works for your season of life...

Stop trying to go all out. Stop acting like you need an apron on churning your own butter. This is plug and play, it's Lego stacking your meals, and it no longer feels like a fucking chore.

MFK: It motherfucking works.

HBA: https://www.mnmfitnessco.com/hba

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What's up, you guys? Welcome back to the Dopamine Diaries Podcast. This is Coach Kate. I've gotten so many requests for this episode. So many requests. Um, and it partially came from I made a post probably about a month and a half, two months ago, um, late 2025, about how I went from never knowing what to make for dinner and basically never making dinner for my husband and I to now having um seven different meal options each week that don't actually feel um like any any mental work for me to do. Like quite literally, guys, I have to tell you. Um, and I like there's a podcast episode I did uh summer of 2025 where I had started to get the hang of this. And I remember the podcast episode was like, I just feel so proud because like I have a meal figured out. And then that was like a one-off, and now it's like a foolproof system, and I'm like so, so proud of it. But like I have to tell you guys that like, oh man, we like we focused so much on making sure our child had something to eat that by the time um, you know, she was fed and we had cleaned up, uh you know, the the mental bandwidth to look in the fridge or the pantry, both of us, right? It's not that like I carry that full responsibility, both of us. We would just look and be like, um, you just want to like piece together some snacks after she goes to bed? And the answer is always yes. So, like most of the time we would have like chips or just like bullshit for dinner. Like we were not having meals. And I cannot tell you the absolute mind fuck that that was for me as someone that um, you know, before having a child, I was a health coach and I worked with a lot of moms, and it's just like so ironic um to now to have then to to basically like have experienced everything that those moms were telling me um in those years that I was coaching them before having a kid. It just like felt like the cruelest, like, hey, hey, remember? Like I could vividly remember the conversations um with the mothers that I worked with um before I had a child and just like like I would spend hours every week coming up with different ideas for them. Like it was all like dinner was always the thing. And it's not that like, you know, I could it's it's not that I, you know, looked at it as like, I don't understand why this is so hard, but I couldn't understand it. So I just kept, I remember, I just kept like, okay, how about this idea? Okay, how about this? How about this? And I just remember it being this very like um hot point for all of the moms and working moms that I worked with um in those years. And, you know, lo and behold, here I am, a working mom. And um, I cannot figure out dinner for the life of me. And the thing was we had food in the house. Like we would do um a Kroger uh online delivery order or app order. We would do that every week. We would spend$250, sometimes$300 every single week. So we had food, but like like if you know, you know. By the time the kid's done the kid is done eating, you both have worked very demanding jobs for the day. You're both sleep deprived because the kid doesn't sleep for the night, and then you're trying to clean up, you've got the dog, you've got like literally everything else, and then you're like, I don't know, I don't know, like, I don't want to cook this chicken. Well, I you know, it's just it was the craziest experience um to spend that much time basically eating chips for dinner. I say chips, it wasn't chips every night, but it was like just random shit every night that was never an adequate meal. And yes, I know some of you guys are probably thinking, like, well, why don't you just make a meal that all three of you can eat? Listen, she wasn't easy eating solids yet, and it was it was just she's been a she's a picky eater, okay? And everybody's like, just force her to eat what you eat. It's not that fucking easy, okay? Don't nobody, nobody, nobody, I don't want you to be listening to this and in your head, like projecting your parenting shit on me. Don't just don't think about something else, okay? We've we tried. It was hard. We're better now. She's not as picky of an eater, um, unless she's just in a bad mood or she's sassy, which is, you know, about seven days of the week. So it's, you know, it's just not as predictable as you thought it would be or I thought it would be before I had kids. Before I had kids, it was like, oh, we're just gonna like make dinners every night and she's gonna eat it. No, not the case. And so when she doesn't eat it, you have to figure something out, and then that figuring something out is always fucking chaotic. Um, and so yeah, that's where we were. So I'm at a place now. I put the I made this like breakdown, um, this like step by step by step by step breakdown um of basically what I was doing for dinners now. And like I said, I'm super proud of it because um I have been able to one cut our grocery bill in half. Yes, in half. We are no longer spending upwards, uh listen, we're two adults and a and a toddler, okay? We are no longer spending upwards of like, man, I don't know, twelve to fifteen hundred dollars per month in groceries that I swear I'm not proud of this, in groceries that would literally get thrown away. Like I am not proud of it, but like that's what was happening. We were spending all of that money on groceries, and then they were getting thrown away because we I just didn't have the bandwidth to make anything. And so then they would rot, and then it was just like this shame-filled weekend event where I have to clean out the rotting fridge, and it just feels like I'm throwing money away. So I got so fed up, which normally is like the breaking point of when things change, right? Think about everything in your life that you guys have probably changed or finally like kick-started something to change. It's usually like you hit a breaking point. I I literally listen, I hit a breaking point. We both felt terrible. I didn't like how I was looking. It was impacting my consistency and showing up in my exercise. It was pissing me off every day. It was actually starting to impact my confidence as a coach. Like I started to have this weird imposter syndrome, swear to God. And so I was like, okay, literally everything in my life is being impacted by the fact that I'm throwing rotting groceries away every single week and I'm just pissing money away. Like my relationship, my motherhood, my business, my ability to exercise, my ability to just wake up and feel normal and happy was being impacted. And it sounds dramatic, but when you're somebody that has spent most of your adult life um prioritizing feeling good and eating nutritious food, suddenly when that's not happening anymore and it feels like you don't have any control over that, it fucking sucks. It literally fucking sucks. And so it was really starting to impact me. So I said, okay, enough's enough. Like, enough's enough. And honestly, like I can't even like, I can't even like tell you guys that there was much thought put into um what we're doing now. It was really just a like hail mary of, okay, I'm gonna try this. One of the things I believe was causing a lot of problems was, you know, when you have a kid, um, you start to get really in your head about like food quality and ingredients and where you're getting your meat from and where you're getting your milk from. And so a lot of the things that we were struggling with was I was trying so hard to source um foods that I felt like were the best for my daughter. And it's not that it's not to say that you can't do that, but it's I was not willing to be flexible there. And so the lack of flexibility on what I thought we should be buying was causing a lot of problems. And so I remember, I remember being like, you know what? I like, can we please go to like Costco or Sam's Club? Everybody talks about it. I want to go check it out. I'd always had this impression of it of like, well, it's not as high quality foods. But I was like, I I just I something has to give. Let's go check it out. So um here, I want to walk you guys through what we do now. So, like I said, we've cut our grocery bill in half. We are under$1,000 per month. Um, and our pantry and our fridge is full. It's not even that like we buy bare minimums, like our pantry and our fridge is full. We have plenty of stuff in the freezer. Like I feel so blessed every time I open up that fridge and just see how incredibly privileged we are to live the life that we do that we can do this. And that's like a whole nother thing. Um, but like it matters, like to look at the the things that you guys can provide for your family and actually feel grateful versus feel like it's this chore or pressure makes a big difference. Okay. P.S. So um we've cut our grocery bill in half. We're under$1,000 per month, and like I said, we have more than what we need. We have fun snacks, like we like it's it's ugly, it's like so much better than what it was. Um, and every week, um it there's only like one week out of the month where we actually have a grocery bill over um like$150 or like$160. And that's normally because I'm doing a protein stock up. Most of the time we go to the grocery store every single weekend. We've built it into part of our routine. Our child looks forward to it. It's like part of our like weekend routine now, and like so it's just it's just what we do. Um, we go get like little miscellaneous things every single weekend to piece the meals together. Things like more veggies, more fruits, um, or you know, starchy carbs, potatoes, rice, those types of things. But protein is only bought um once per month. And I'm getting all of our um most all of our protein from um Sam's Club in Costco and places like that. Um, because you can buy it in bulk. It's half the price, and then I just throw it all in the freezer. So here's what we do. So I have this magnetic board on our fridge, and it's got seven days a week. It's like you write in your meal plan. And I do not care as much about like, oh, on Monday I said we're gonna have this. I just use it to have seven meal ideas on the fridge so I can see it. I'm always in front of the fridge. I do a nightly kitchen reset. It's where I will see it. That's very important. So I have seven meals that I know we can make for the week written on that board. And basically, the what I do is every single night when I do a kitchen reset, I look at the board and I say, okay, what dinner sounds good for tomorrow? And that's based on our schedule, that's based on what we just had, that's based on what our leftovers were for lunch. Like, you know, I try not to do beef two days in a row. So I look at that board and I said, okay, this one sounds good. I reach in the freezer and I pull out the frozen protein because all of our protein is frozen now. I do not keep fresh protein in the fridge. Um, it is all frozen because it's all bought in bulk and it's ready to go. That is like the base part of our meal. So I look at the board and I say, okay, this is gonna be our deni for tomorrow. I pull out the protein. Now, the sides, I keep our meals very simple. I use an item method. I make sure we have a protein, we have fiber, we have a little bit of fat, um, we have vegetable, and we have starchy carbs. That sounds like a lot, but really you can you can tackle that with like some type of lean cut meat, a starchy carbohydrate, and then a side of vegetables. That will tackle all of it. I keep it very simple. So we rotate things like potatoes, rice, um, lentil pasta, wraps, casseroles, soups, those types of things. Things that require very little prep work, um, or I'm sorry, very little like cookwork, um, but satisfy all of those buckets. Um, the other thing that we do is I buy all of our fruit now in bulk and I wash it, cut it, prep it, freeze half for smoothies, and then keep the other half in the fridge fresh. Very, very easy. As far as like snacks and things like that, I basically just keep what Lovey needs and what I know she's going to eat. And that's what we get on the weekends. And those are just like little stock-ups, right? So the method that I use, I kind of like broke it down. I was like, how can I make this like really easy for people to remember or implement for themselves? And I call it the um MFK method. And I call it the MFK method because it motherfucking works. You get it? It's gotta be easy for you guys to remember, right? So the M, step one, it's a microdecision. Number two, the F, make it fun as fuck. And number three, the K, kitchen for future you. Okay, so let me walk you through how this happens. Um, and I have it all written down here to make it, again, like really, really easy. Um, so protein is bought in bulk. Um, starchy carbs, sides, all of those things are pretty much bought like once a week, once every two weeks. Um, potatoes, you can make potatoes five different ways. Um, you can take grilled cheese and tomato soup and actually add protein to it with a rotisserie chicken in the soup. Don't knock it till you try it. Like, I've given myself permission to take like very basic, simple meals and make them fun. Like, literally comfort meals, but fun and satisfying all of the things that we need. Now, as I started to implement this, I did ask myself, like, what are the two main things that I need? Like, yes, we both kind of handle this decisions, but 90% of the time, I'm the one figuring out what dinner is and initiating it. Now, my husband will cook, but I will tell him, like, hey, will you get the beef started? Or hey, will you do this? So, like, the load of what's being decided is still me, right? So I asked myself, what are the two needs that I have that's gonna make this not feel like a fucking chore to me anymore? Those two things were one, I refused, I refused to keep making a dinner decision on Tuesday at 5 p.m. after literally a full day of chaos. Like absolutely no more making decisions in the moment. Team, one less decision. I want to eliminate decisions I have to make at 5 p.m., 5 30 on a weekday. That was an extremely important need. The second thing, the second need that I had was I was no longer willing to make weekly meal decisions with a toddler on my lap, on my hip, screaming at my feet, or, you know, sometimes tap dancing on my last fucking nerve. Okay, right? I know this is crazy to like prioritize what the mother needs, but I'm telling you, try it. It actually does make a difference. So those are my two things. Like, I refuse to keep trying to decide this when my toddler needs my attention because I cannot multitask in that way. I will just get frustrated and overstimulated and then nobody's happy, right? And um, second one is I'm not making the decision um the day of. Like I need to eliminate the need to make that decision. So the way that we break it down now, on a typical weekend, we shop, we get home, I make her lunch when we get home. So she is occupied. That's a very important piece of this for me. Because while she's eating lunch, my husband's with her, and I am unloading everything and I'm grabbing our weekly board and I'm looking at what we have, what we still had prepped from the week before, what is still in the freezer, what we still have on hand, and I'm saying, here are seven different ideas, and I'm writing this down on the board. I'm cleaning and washing the fruit, I'm prepping the fruit, I'm putting things in the freezer, I'm putting things where they go to make it so much easier. I do this on the weekend and I do this while my child is occupied with my husband. That matters. Now, again, this is a fun part of our routine because she really enjoys going. Like we go to the same place, like she gets to see the same workers. Like it's all this, it's it's now this thing that just feels really exciting versus this thing that has always been um a chore. And it's satisfying both of those needs for me. I don't have to figure this out while my toddler needs me, and I don't have to figure this out on a Wednesday. It's being decided on a Sunday. Okay. So the micro decision, that is like the what decision can I make for me now on this weekend that's gonna set me up for the week entirely. And that is writing down seven to eight meals that are easy and take minimal prep work to make. These are simple things. I am not playing Betty Crocker in the kitchen. This is not the season of life. If I did not work, maybe it would be a different story. But like I let go of the expectation that I needed to have a fucking apron on in churning my own butter and making fucking sourdough. It is not in the cards for my family right now. Okay, so like I can let that go and I can focus on simple, nutritious, balanced meals that take minimal time and can all be decided on the weekend. Period. That is my micro decision, that is my micro choice for me throughout the week. Again, this looks like I'm buying staples, chicken breast, ground turkey, ground beef, frozen pulled chicken, chicken meatballs, veggies. I only buy frozen veggies. I was tired of throwing away rotted veggies. Only frozen veggies, most of our fruit gets frozen, carbs that are interchangeable. Again, rice, potatoes, lentil pasta, bread, wraps, things like that. And then snacks, veggie chips, yogurt drinks, hard-boiled eggs. A lot of my snacks are protein based as well because that's how I like to snack. Getting back to my roots, right? The thing with buying the staples is once you do this, when you're making your weekly dinner plan, it's literally Legos. You just pick the pieces that you want to put together and you call it a fucking day. You write it down, you move on. Game changer for me. Yes, I'm making the decision on the seven meals, but the energy it takes me to make those decisions, it's not big. It's like, these are my options. Here's how we're gonna pair these together. Here are the spices that we're gonna use. Here's how we're gonna make this burger bowl a burger bowl. Here's how we're gonna take this burger bowl and actually make it fiesta style. Like, it does not have to be rocket science. If you're not in the season of life to go all out, stop trying to go all out. Maybe, maybe that's part of the solution for you, right? Again, we're buying a lot of our um heavy cost items, proteins and fruits. We're buying those in bulk now versus getting those every single week at fucking Kroger and paying double the price. This has been the thing that has cut our bill in half alongside using what we eat. I don't throw away rot, like rotting food anymore. Do you guys know how satisfying it is? I am not somebody that wastes. I am frugal. I like to make use of my money. Like, I don't like throwing things away. I hate throwing away food. And I rarely have to throw away old rotted food. We're using what we buy. It's like so satisfying to experience. Like, I can't even explain it, okay? Um, okay, so that's the micro decide. The F, the fun, making it fun. That was the example I gave of like, stop acting like grilled cheese and tomato soup can't be nutritious. Add a rotisserie chicken to the soup, okay? Taking meals that are very easy to meet to uh make and that a toddler or your children would enjoy, and asking yourself, what could I change about this or what could I add to it to satisfy every bucket that I would require for a meal? And really with something like that, it's like I just want more protein with the grilled cheese and tomato soup. It's comfort food, but how can I make that comfort food um a bit more satiating and a bit more nutritious? Cool, add a rotisserie chicken. It's it's actually really good if you've never done that, right? And an analogy I like to use for this is like think about how Starbucks sells the same 10 ingredients, but they mix them all together in different ways and then give them fun names. And we're all like, oh my god, new drink. It's the same thing with my meal process. I buy all the same stuff, but I pair them together in all of these different ways. So it feels like a new, fun, variety-filled meal every single week, but it's the same, same basic staples. Again, minimal energy going into this. Dinner is the motherfucking same every single week, but it still feels new and exciting with the same boring staples. Okay. Now, I will say too, hot, potentially hot take here. Um, when me and my husband stopped eating snacks for dinner, the way our daughter ate did actually start to improve a little bit. So, like two parts. Yes, you have picky eaters, but like there is still a value in figuring out a way to make these meals be um family oriented. Yes, she's still, you know, your kids are still gonna be picky with certain things, but like if you can figure out a way, simplify it enough to where that you can check the box on that, you might just start to see some improvements there. And we have started to see some improvements there with her, which is a really like again, rewarding and satisfying thing to experience. The last piece of this decay, the kitchen for future you, the kitchen for future me. I reset the kitchen every night. I know this is like a hot take. Some people are like, I just don't have the energy, I don't need to do a house reset. I work from home, I reset the kitchen. Every single fucking night. I have to. Okay. I have to. I don't have to. I choose to because it makes me feel really, really good. When I do this, I check the board on the fridge. I ask myself which one feels good and easy for tomorrow. I pull out anything that's frozen that needs to fall out, put it in the fridge, done. I'm not adding another task to my plate. The list just hangs on the fridge. It takes me zero bandwidth to pick one. And when I'm resetting the kitchen every night, there's a guaranteed chance I'm going to see it. So it jogs my memory and it's no longer a situation of, well, I forgot to set the chicken out. Well, I forgot to set the chicken out because I'm inconsistent on making sure we have a clean kitchen every night. Is the rest of the house clean? No. But is the kitchen clean? Yes, because that fucking matters. It's easy for me to remember, right? So future me wakes up feeling really prepared. Future me always wakes up. I wake up every morning already knowing the dinner is taken care of. And game changer. I cannot tell you how easy and like how much of a difference that makes throughout the day. So dinner from the minute we get home from work, the minute dinner starts, prep, cooking, sat down to eat, 30 minutes. Easy. And it's autopilot. It's literally autopilot. There's not this like back and forth on, well, should we do this? No, we see everyone sees what's on the board. My husband has a say in it. He can influence things on the board. We know the way, we know that this is the system that works. It's plug and play. It is autopilot. Dinner has gone has gone from being this thing that was like so incredibly stressful to now it's like, I don't stress about it. I literally don't stress about it. And guess what? On the days that we're like, hey, let's just do Chick-fil-A, we do that. And now I don't feel bad about it anymore because it's truly a one-off versus a, well, we've done Chick-fil-A four nights this week. We should probably pick something else out. Do you know what I mean? Like we're still allowing that flexibility and freedom. Um, but we're saving so much money. We're wasting way less. And more importantly than any of those things, my mental health, the one that is basically carrying the responsibility of this, of deciding and planning, this no longer feels like a chore to me. And I finally feel really proud of the system in place that is helping my family. So I'm sorry this episode was a little bit longer. I wanted to keep it under 20 minutes, but it was very, very, you know, important that I explain this. But, you know, the MFK method, make a microdecision that's gonna end up solving the biggest problem you have, make these meals fun, but satisfy the nutritional basis that are important to you. And then always, always, always look at your kitchen and set your kitchen up for dinner time you the next day. I promise you, Lego, Lego stack your meals, stop overthinking it, be realistic with the season of life that you're in, and make the system fun and inclusive for your whole family. When you do that, it no longer feels like you are the one, the mothers, the women, carrying fully the responsibility for it because you aren't. It's a family event. Everybody is bought in, everybody understands how it works, and it's autopilot for everybody in the home. So I hope this helps. If you have any questions on it, just find me on social, DM me. I would love to explain it to you a bit more. But otherwise, talk soon. Okay, bye.