20 ways to spend less on groceries, according to Weight Watchers members

Feel like your grocery bill keeps inching higher and higher? It’s not your imagination — it’s economics. Thanks to inflation, food prices have risen every year for almost the past decade. This can make feeding yourself and your family a whole lot more stressful, especially when you’re trying to prioritize your health. Luckily, Weight Watchers members have time-tested strategies for saving money —  and they don’t gatekeep. Here, the top tips they recently shared on Weight Watchers’ social platform Connect.

• “Buy staples like dried beans, brown rice, lentils, and quinoa, then make a big batch. You can use them in various meals and freeze some for later.” 

• “Do as much of the prep work yourself as you can, like buying whole produce instead of pre-cut fruits and veggies or bagged salads — they’re convenient but so much more expensive. Same goes for beans (get dried instead of canned) and rice (get uncooked instead of the pre-cooked pouches).”

• “Save all your vegetable peelings and use them to make your own veggie broth. And save your chicken bones to make your own stock.” 

• “Buy extra of whatever’s on sale. I keep an eye on the weekly sales flyer for my local store, and when things that I use regularly appear, I try to stock up. For example, every few weeks there’s a ‘buy two, get one free’ sale on my favorite brand of English muffins. So I take advantage, get three packages, and freeze them to use later.”

• “Use the store brand for basic items like canned beans, diced tomatoes, peanut butter, yogurt, and cottage cheese. You can save so much. I switched from brand name Greek yogurt to the store brand and save $3 a carton.” 

• “Try doing your grocery shopping online. It removes the temptation of putting stuff in your cart when you’re walking around the store and makes it easier to remove unnecessary items before you check out to bring the total down.” 

• “Only buy items you know you’ll really eat. I don’t fall into the trap of thinking ‘oh, let’s give this a try’ unless there’s a very good chance that I’m going to like it.” 

• “A lot of grocery stores reduce the price of meat and produce when they’re within a day or two of the ‘best by’ date. If you’re going to cook something soon, this can be a great way to save money.”

• “Sign up for your store’s loyalty program — it saves me at least $20/week!”

• “Capsule meal planning has been a game changer for me. This is when you make different meals using the same ingredients, so you spend less. So I’ll buy beans and use them in tacos and a three-bean salad. Or bake up potatoes and eat some that way, then dice up a few of the potatoes and sautee them with frozen veggies for a side dish.”

• “I used to choose a recipe and buy the ingredients no matter what, but now I plan my meals around what’s on sale. Then I make a list and stick to it. This way I make sure I buy what I need and actually use what I buy.”

• “I buy a lot of frozen fruit and veggies. They typically cost less than fresh and it lowers the chances of wasting money on produce that lingers too long and goes bad.”

• “Stop buying ingredients to use in a recipe that you’ll never use again. I read recipes for inspiration, then sub in what I have or buy what I know I will use up. So if a recipe calls for a splash of half and half, I don’t buy it because it’s going to leave me with most of the container to go bad before I throw it away. I’ll just use whole milk instead, which I already have in my fridge.”

• “My issue has been perishables going bad before they’re eaten, so I treated myself to a vacuum sealer for Christmas. I use it on things like avocado and spinach and now I never have to throw them away!”

• “Cook double portions so that you have an entire second meal to put in the freezer. Having food on hand can stop you from needing to run out for fast food, which is less healthy and more expensive.”

• “I’ve discovered the joy of making and freezing homemade soup. It’s so much more affordable than buying soup from the store and I always have multiple options in my freezer to choose from. Right now I have chicken green chile, Italian spinach and tortilla soup, and chicken noodle soup”

• “I freeze our bread — it’s just me and my husband so we don’t eat the whole loaf before some of it spoils.”

• “Beans can help make expensive meat go further. So when making tacos, I brown up one pound of ground beef, then mix in one can of black beans. It helps make the meal feed more people.”

• “I have what I call ‘free week’ the last week of every month. I take everything out of my pantry and freezer so I can see what I’ve stocked up on or forgotten about. Then I create meals out of those foods for the whole week.”

• “I love to buy rotisserie chicken, since I can stretch it into three meals. The first night my husband and I eat it with roasted veggies, I add it to a slow cooker meal the second night, and the third night I make a huge veggie-filled salad topped with what’s left of the chicken.”

With grocery prices going up and up, figuring out how to bring down your weekly bill can be stressful. But it’s easy to do if you follow a few tricks. Don’t pay more for convenience, meal plan so you actually use what you buy, freeze what you can so that it doesn’t spoil, and buy foods you use when they’re on sale to save money down the road.