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The Autoimmune Wellness Podcast Season 3: Real Food on a Budget. We’re dedicating this season to discussing an aspect of natural healing that often gets left out of the conversation: affordability. We’ll be chatting with experts and peers from the AIP community about how to best balance money with your health priorities.

This season is brought to you by our title sponsor, The Nutritional Therapy Association (NTA), a holistic nutrition school that trains and certifies nutritional therapy practitioners and consultants with an emphasis on bioindividual nutrition. Learn more about them by visiting NutritionalTherapy.com, or read about our experiences going through their NTP and NTC programs in our comparison article.

Season 3 Episode 7 is focused on how to both prioritize your food choices, and make a budget for eating this way that is sustainable longterm. Angie and Mickey share their personal stories of budgeting and managing medical expenses and debt. They also chat with guest Jenny Harris about how to modify AIP for lower budgets, and how to find local assistance for food budgeting concerns.

This is a bit of a tricky topic but we hope sharing our experiences and ideas will help you feel supported wherever you find yourself in your journey. Scroll down for the full episode transcript!

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Mickey Trescott: Welcome to the Autoimmune Wellness podcast, a resource for those seeking to live well with chronic illness. I’m Mickey Trescott, a nutritional therapy practitioner living well with autoimmune disease in Oregon. I’m the author of The Autoimmune Paleo Cookbook, and I’m using diet and lifestyle to best manage both Hashimoto’s and Celiac disease.

Angie Alt: And I’m Angie Alt. I’m a certified health coach and nutritional therapy consultant, also living well with autoimmune disease in Maryland. I’m the author of The Alternative Autoimmune Cookbook, and I’m using diet and lifestyle to best manage my endometriosis, lichen sclerosis, and Celiac disease.

After recovering our health by combining the best of conventional medicine with effective and natural dietary and lifestyle interventions, Mickey and I started blogging at www.AutoimmuneWellness.com, where our collective mission is seeking wellness and building community.

We also wrote a book called The Autoimmune Wellness Handbook together that serves as a do-it-yourself guidebook to living well with chronic illness.

Mickey Trescott: If you’re looking for more information about the autoimmune protocol, make sure to sign up for our newsletter at autoimmunewellness.com, so we can send you our free quick start guide. It contains printable AIP food lists, a 2-week food plan, a 90-minute batch cooking video, a mindset video, and food reintroduction guides.

This season of the podcast, real food on a budget is brought to you by our title sponsor, The Nutritional Therapy Association.

Angie Alt: A quick disclaimer: The content in this podcast is intended as general information only, and is not to be substituted for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Onto the podcast!

Topics:

1. Different levels of budget concerns [2:19]

2. Budgeting benefits on AIP [7:13]

3. Personal budgeting stories [9:41]

4. Benefit of minimalism [15:58]

5. An investment in your future health [18:53]

6. Introducing our guest, Jenny Harris [23:41]

7. Roadblocks and challenges [29:05]

8. Finding local assistance [31:05]

9. AIP modifications on low-budget [35:44]

Mickey Trescott: Hey guys! Mickey here. Welcome back to the Autoimmune Wellness podcast, season 3. How are you doing today, Angie?

Angie Alt: I’m good. Hopefully there won’t be any puppy noise in the background. My puppy is being very naughty today, you guys.

Mickey Trescott: Sometimes it happens. You know, those animals.

Angie Alt: Mm-hmm.

Mickey Trescott: So today we are continuing our discussion related to the topic this season. Real food on a budget. This episode is going to be about how to both prioritize your food choices, and make a budget for eating this way. Today we’re tackling a little bit of a tricky topic, but we hope that sharing some of our experiences and ideas will help you guys feel supported wherever you find yourself in your journey.

Mickey Trescott: So first, let’s talk about the three main categories that people find themselves in when we talk about budgeting concerns. The first, of course, are people who are wealthy. They can afford anything. There really aren’t any barriers to getting what they want, because they can go to Whole Foods and get whatever they want. Or they can afford the functional medicine practitioner. Most of us, sadly, don’t find ourselves in this situation.

The middle is actually where most of us are probably at. That’s where people have resources to allocate towards maybe eating better or better medical care, but it means almost always you’re going to have to make some strategic planning. There is flexibility. So there’s a lot of choices sometimes. And maybe going without something so that you can get something else. There are those options to kind of move things around a little bit, and prioritize.

And then lastly there are people who are low income. So those are people who face significant challenges and stress around budgeting for food. And it involves fixed resources without flexibility. So that’s an important distinguishing characteristic between those who truly are low-income. I would say that a lot of people in the middle maybe think they’re a little more low-income than they really are. But the truth is, a lot of us have some flexibility. And that is where a lot of the difficulties come up.

Angie Alt: So in the second segment of the podcast, we’ll be talking a lot more about those in the lowest income group, and some strategies that they can use. We really believe everyone should have access to healing foods. And we want to talk about the ways to make that reality for those in that challenging circumstance.

But in this first segment, we want to focus on the middle category of folks. Because probably most of you guys listening to this podcast find yourselves here. It’s where Mickey and I ourselves land. So we just want to kind of take a stab at the topic that is probably most of us are facing.

We also want to acknowledge that having a chronic illness alone can be limiting to the budget. It’s expensive to be sick. And we totally get that.

Mickey Trescott: Yeah. The different ways even just having an autoimmune disease before you get into some of the diet and lifestyle stuff that you might want to do. I mean, medical bills and medications are expensive. So a lot of that, if you’re someone who has just gone through a diagnosis, you know how front loaded those costs can be. So all at once, you might be going to see different doctors and specialists. Burning through maybe a high deductible, or something. Which is sadly very common these days. Getting through all of that testing, and some of those initial treatments.

Angie Alt: Right. And then there’s also the higher cost of insurance. Even though we have laws that guard against things like preexisting conditions with coinsurance and high deductibles, it means that usually folks with chronic illness do end up paying more.

Mickey Trescott: Yep. There’s also an income loss due to lack of ability to work. A lot of people don’t really realize this lack of opportunity cost. But really, sometimes it can involve the work of your partner or your spouse. Sometimes it can affect your ability to do childcare or household duties. Most autoimmune diseases come with some level of disability, and that can come through in either a lack of ability to actually hold a job at a certain amount of hours per week. It can also mean that you have to pay others or get help from other people in your family to do work around the house, which can be expensive. Both emotionally and financially.

Angie Alt: Right. And then there’s the cost of natural or alternative treatments. Which, unfortunately, means usually paying out of pocket. We don’t have good systems in place that allow proper reimbursement through our insurance system for most of those kinds of treatments. And the fact is that combining the best of those natural and alternative treatments with conventional and do-it-yourself methods means that this can be really; a no-brainer. Something you definitely want to take on so you can heal. But it can be really expensive. This includes things like paying for supplements, and paying for different kinds of therapies. Maybe massage, acupuncture, things of that nature.

Mickey Trescott: All these things considered, why those of us with autoimmune disease have a little more of a tricky time making a budget. Why should we do it in the first place? We have some reasons for you guys.

Budgeting really stops overspending and prevents debt. So when you know exactly how much money you have coming in, and you’ve planned to use that money in a variety of categories and predictably. Of course, you can’t control the future, and you never really know exactly what’s going to happen. But that act of actually planning helps you not to spend too much of your money, and prevents you from needing to go into debt.

How many of us have not made a plan and then unexpectedly, but then actually kind of expectedly being like; oh, this expense came up. And I kind of knew it was coming but I didn’t really plan for it. You might end up in a situation where you have to go into debt for that.

Angie Alt: Right. Also budgeting can help us reach our goals. For instance, proactively saving. Having that budgetary line item in place helps us kind of get there and reach those goals in reasonable timelines instead of haphazardly putting $10 in the savings account every couple of months.

Mickey Trescott: Yeah. It also helps you stop worrying. So, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a lot of anxiety since my diagnosis and initial path with autoimmune disease. Just because, financially it was really difficult for me back then. And even though I’m healthy now, sometimes I worry that if I got sick again, I wouldn’t have the money to kind of figure it out. And I’m anticipating that stress.

So, being able to move towards and reach some of those savings goals might help you stop worrying and relieve some of that anxiety related to it.

Angie Alt: Right. And kind of along those same lines, it helps you have more flexibility. I think when you kind of have planned your expenses, and you have allocated pots of money that are there for certain kind of expenses, it just allows you to be a lot more flexible. And should something really large and unexpected come up, you have more leeway between those different budget line items to kind of move things around, if necessary.

Mickey Trescott: Yeah. And lastly, it gives you more control over your money. You know exactly where it’s going, instead of feeling kind of like a passenger every month, paying all your bills and kind of not understanding where everything goes. You understand, actually, now that I have a budget, I know exactly where everything is going. And you can make changes and be informed in that way.

Angie Alt: Right. So, Mickey, maybe we can share a little bit about our personal approaches to budgeting and especially how things looked when we first started on this path.

Mickey Trescott: Yeah. So I talked a little bit about my diagnosis, and how that financially impacted us. It was very stressful, understandably. Just the diagnosis in and of itself is really stressful. But at the time, my husband and I were both working minimum wage plus tips jobs in a major city. Living paycheck to paycheck. By all means, we were not poor. We were able to pay the bills that we had. We were able to have a great lifestyle that we were happy with.

But when I started to get sick and I wasn’t able to bring in that income, I lost my job. And then we added in all the medical stuff. Which, when I got diagnosed, I didn’t have insurance. So I was paying everything out of pocket. I ended up going into a lot of debt because I didn’t really have any savings, and I didn’t really have a budget, and I didn’t really plan. That kind of threw me for a loop, that six months of my life.

But coming out of it, I learned that I needed to make some big decisions. Like that flexibility piece we were talking about. My husband and I made some decisions that were able to help us pay back that debt just by choosing to go without certain things. For instance, we didn’t have a car. At one point we relied on just using the bus or riding our bike.

Another thing we did was we had roommates in a house that we rented instead of having the house to ourselves. Another thing we did was not go out to eat ever. And we didn’t go on any vacations. So I consider even making so little money in that phase of my life, I realized the position of privilege that I was in being able to be flexible in that way. And yes it was stressful. My husband was then the sole provider. We were taking on debt. We didn’t know how long I would be sick. And then the food budget was just increasing, increasing, increasing. Which is really what we’re going to be talking about today.

But in the end, it all worked out. We were able to pay off that debt. I was able to go back to work. And me feeling better was a really important part of that process; to realize that I was one day going to be able to recover enough to then go back to work and kind of get the cycle working out. So I kind of didn’t have a plan. And got caught in a little bit of a hard place. But that flexibility was really how we got unstuck. What about you, Angie?

Angie Alt: So, for me, the flexibility piece didn’t exist as much. When I started to get sick, we had already come into our marriage with pretty significant education debt. And we had good jobs. Especially my husband, had a great job. And we had really great insurance. We were very, very lucky to have such good insurance coverage. But it meant that I was really limited to pursue anything kind of outside of what was covered within our insurance situation, because we had a lot of debt already to deal with.

So it meant that I had to be really creative within the insurance; what was covered within the insurance. And I had to get really high mileage, basically, out of all of my appointments with my doctors, and be really, really well prepared, and be a really strong advocate for myself. I had to spend a lot of time working with the insurance company, trying to navigate that process. Which can be really frustrating and really difficult, especially when you’re sick. But I was limited in terms of the flexibility.

And later, when we decided that we would choose to take on some more debt for some of those treatments and some of that help that was outside of the insurance system, we really had to buckle down in other areas in order to be able to meet all of our responsibilities with that debt.

Over time, that has eased a lot. We’re not in quite the same situation as we were before. Especially because I was able to go back to work and make a better living than I did previously, when I wasn’t so sick anymore. That made a really big difference for us. But it was not a simple process.

Mickey Trescott: And a lot of these transitions, and during the diagnosis and kind of what followed. We’ve gone without a lot of things and made a lot of choices so that we could afford good food. Would you say that applies to you, Angie?

Angie Alt: Yeah, for sure. For instance, until only about three years ago, we only had one car. We drove an early 2000 Honda Civic, and that’s all we had. My husband commuted back and forth to his work in the city using the commuter buses, or the train. We were really just relying on that. We didn’t really take any significant vacations. Anything that was more than a weekend drive or something away. We also really kind of cut certain line items from our budget. Things like new clothes and those kinds of extras. We just made do the best we could with what was in front of us.

Mickey Trescott: Yeah, something that really shifted for us, as far as that flexibility pieces....