You shouldn't if it has negative financial or medical effects on you. I eat out exclusively, and do so for less than the cost of groceries and with fantastic effects on my health, and I'm doing so in a very high cost of living city, too.

Can you elaborate on this? I'd be very curious to see how you're managing that, unless your cost of groceries prior includes bulk shopping at Whole Foods.

Sure. My food cost per day varies between 6 and 12 dollars, on average ending up at 8. I take advantage of end-of-day sales, packaged food discounts, etc. In short, I'm able to time my food purchases so that I eat one to two meals a day in a 4 hour window between 4 and 8pm, which gives me the benefits of intermittent fasting and also provides me with caloric restriction on the basis of availability. During the week, my two meal cost is just under $10. On the weekend, most of the overstock opportunities are gone, so instead I visit a local ethnic grill which has full platters for under $10. If I get fancy and want more exotic meat, the cost goes up to $12.

Most of the foodstuffs offered on discount end up being fresh prepared salads w/ salmon, whole chicken, roasted vegetables, etc. The time cost for preparing all of these properly at home is substantial.

Given that I don't buy groceries anymore, I don't have food available at home to snack on. If I want food I need to prepare rice or some other primary grain. These dishes have a significant lag-time between the impulse to eat and the dish's completion, so this prompts me to ask "am I really hungry or just bored with what I'm doing?". Often, I'm bored. I'll pop open a new book or change up what I'm doing instead of downing 400cals. Even if I do give in and prepare a bit extra, I'm still under my daily limit by a substantial amount.

The alternative, grocerywise, costs me approximately the same amount when accounting for spoilage and time. I love cooking, but the time cost associated with shopping alone (let alone preparation) puts the expected monthly cost of preparing food at home over 11$/day for me.

Accordingly, it doesn't make sense for me to shop for groceries. I'll keep a few vegetables (cucumbers, cabbage, etc.) or soups available for moments when I'm in a pinch (sick/extra hungry/very active days etc), but otherwise I just wait.

I'll likely look at adding pure-protein home-cooked options when I start hitting the gym hard in a few months, but I've bulk purchased fish and steaks from importers and local meat packers respectively at 1/3rd of their normal retail price anyways, so I'm good to go on that front.

Appreciate the in-depth reply. I've also practiced intermittent fasting and it was the best way to crush my snacking/candy habits, which can add up $$ incredibly quickly.

Depends on your city, most urban restaurants focus more on "comfort" food than nutrition.

It’s not everywhere that you can find cheap, healthy and clean restaurants.

I was doing this for years paying well over $1.5k for food alone monthly until I lost my Bitcoin "savings" which I lost with lame trading and at the same time my company started not doing so well.

It's irritating to change but after a while you start to appreciate when you can just keep yourself within your daily cycle with work and location you're accustomed to.

I take it as a lesson to know how to soften the next hit.