Making perfect cents - the surprising result of healthy living posted about an hour ago in the artslim forum,  by Meralo 
If you are looking for a forum with an emphasis on allowing healthy living rather than  dieting and the scale you use is the one where you strive to have a life in balance, then Meralo and I would love to have you jon us in the NEW artslim forum.

Practical self paid Inner self a visit today. As one of the facets of my personality, Practical self was neglected and ignored for far too long...you see it’s hardly practical to shove massive amounts of empty calories down your throat while living a sedentary life, and I wasn’t in the mood to listen...so I ignored her.

Today Inner self wanted to listen.

“Hello, what have you got there?”

Practical self looked down at the 2 slips of paper in her hand. From where Inner self was, they looked very much like cashier slips. Practical self held them up, “I wanted to show you something.”

“Ok, great, what is it?”

“Well, you see this slip here?” Inner self nodded, intrigued in spite of herself. “This was from the McDonald’s meal you bought for the family about a month ago.”

“Oh yes, I remember that, you must have cleaned out my bag. That was our once every 3 months treat when I cave in to the kid’s requests for those blinking Happy Meals. You know I had the Crispy Chicken Deluxe Burger, and was shocked to find out that it holds almost twice the number of calories of the Quarter Pounder Deluxe. I figured that out later, is that what you wanted to show me?”

“No. I want you to look at the whole slip, every item ordered, the money tendered and the change returned.” Inner self gave Practical self an impatient look, but she wanted to give her a chance to explain, so she took the slip in her own hands.

“What do you see?” Practical self asked.

“Uh, 3 Cheeseburger Happy Meals with Apple juices, 1 Quarterpounder Deluxe medium meal with Coke Light, 1 Crispy Chicken Deluxe Burger.”

“What else?”

“The whole meal cost 131.90. What is the point of this conversation? I’m a bit lost!”
Practical self didn’t often get a moment to shine and she was dragging this out a bit. But even she knew when to bring it to a close. She held up the second slip of paper and read from it.

“3 queen pineapples (very sweet at this time of the year),
½ kg baby carrots
1kg gem squash
2 pkts peeled and diced pumpkin
1 kg new potatoes
1 punnet spanish tomatoes
1 english cucumber
16 bananas
1 kg golden delicious apples
1 10kg pocket of potatoes
1 box of clementines (36 in total)
1 bag of oranges (24 in total)
Do you remember this?” Inner self nodded. “You bought this on Saturday, for the week ahead, and it’s really quite a mountain of food don’t you think?” Again she nodded. “Here, have a look at what it cost you.”

Inner self took the paper and stared. It made perfect sense now; the fresh produce had cost the same as the meal at McDonald’s.

1 unhealthy, artery clogging, trans fat yielding, tasteless, rubbish meal had cost the same as it cost to feed a family of 5 for more than a week on a healthy, nutritious diet. And there would be mountains of leftovers for freezing and eating at a later stage. Inner self had always heard that a lifestyle like this saved you a fortune, not only in health bills but in actual cash in your wallet...but it hadn’t been made clear until that moment.

If it’s hard to make the choice to move towards healthy living because you like McDonalds (or insert the name of any fast food chain here), then surely you would think twice when it hits your pocket so hard? Fast food may be convenient..but cheap it’s not!

(SPECIAL NOTE: I use a different currency to the US$ or AU$ but I'm pretty sure you would have similar results if you did this exercise) Carol Willis
"In striving for perfection, we often achieve excellence."