For those who have lost 30+kilos what was your must have BUDGET friendly foods?

We always have low sugar yoghurt, salad, fruit, low fat milk and cold meats but im bored and still reaching for other bad foods (limited but still in the house)

So whats your must haves foods for long term weightloss???

Help!

I've only lost 12-ish kgs but I'm only 152 cm so yeah. I'll bow to later responses though.

What are your cold meats? Like what kind of meat? I tend to think of yogurt/meat/fruit as treat type stuff not what I eat as my good food with treats on top, if that makes sense.

My diet food absolute Top 5 necessities are:

1) Spinach! I eat it raw, I eat it cooked, I eat it in whole grain pasta, I eat it whenever I need a bag of snack food (run into grocery store, buy pre-washed bag of spinach, eat like a bag of Doritos...)

2) Boiled eggs. Sometimes soft-boiled, usually hardboiled. I sometimes eat the yolks and sometimes just the whites. Lots of protein, able to be cooked the night before, I crumble them on salads and slice them into sandwiches.

3) Tuna or sardines tinned in springwater. Protein fills me up, tins are so easy I don't end up giving up and eating worse things, they're not very high calorie. I'm conflicted about this as I would like to move towards ovo-lacto vegetarianism, but as far as ease/helpfulness of dieting, can't be beat. Tinned in oil sucks by comparison, obviously, in terms of calories.

4) Dark chocolate. Milk chocolate just makes me want more chocolate. I can have a couple squares of dark and be good.

Those are my big ones. Spinach, eggs, tinned fish, dark chocolate.

Thanks ladidah :-)

Our cold meats are thin sliced ham and chicken, we always have good quality dark chocolate in the house.
Eggs I struggle with as the smell make me sick and spinach only when cooked (steamed with beef for a non gravy pie filling thing)

Im guessing the best breads are wholemeal?

Do you limit your bread/pasta?

I normally only eat bread late morning/early afternoon (two slices) and dinner is very small serve meat and vegetable/salad

ryvita crackers and low fat cottage cheese

I really, really love pasta, so yes and no. Like, I do better when I do, and I drop more weight, so I use it to break plateaus and so on, but I really don't want to live without pasta forever more, you know?

I use alternating regular pasta and whole-grain pasta (which has a different texture but isn't bad), and the tricolour vegetable pastas (the ones that are like tomato, spinach, and regular, in one pack?) but I don't know that the last one is particularly better than regular white pasta, I just like the taste of it. Whole grain is better and has more protein in it. But I don't eat it always.

I do limit my bread. I like bread but I don't eat bread every day. I think the quality of wholemeal varies. I do have regular white bread, thin sliced, not too much. Sometimes one sandwich that's really nice and on exactly the fresh spongy not-especially-healthy-white bread can forestall a craving for me, as it keeps me from thinking longingly of it. I try to make the fillings healthy though. And I don't eat a sandwich a day.

I probably COULD eat a sandwich a day, though, if I didn't love pasta and rice so much!

Do you like broccoli? I find frozen broccoli (sometimes frozen myself if it was on sale fresh at the farmer's market) is about the easiest way to bulk out a pasta with a low-calorie component. Because I'm not going to stop eating pasta, I try to make sure it has mushrooms or broccoli or similar in it to make it a bit less pasta-per-serving while still filling the yawning hole in my heart only spaghetti can fill.

I mean cauliflower does EXACTLY the same thing and I love that too, but my husband does not deign to eat cauliflower, only broccoli.

Lol thanks
I LOVE carbs and all things greasy :-S

We have brown rice and pasta.
We always use zucchini, mushrooms and olives to bulk out our italian foods.

couliflower (sp) for currys (once a month if that)

When broccoli is in season we eat a fair bit.

At the moment we eat mixed lettuce, tomato, cucumber, olives, fetta and sometimes some french dressing as a side to steak/chops etc

Normally sandwich filling is (naughty I know) salad and salami or salad and ham.

Im not big on breakfast so its greek yoghurt and cup of tea with on sugar.

Snacks are homemade muffin (mini size) sliced apple/handful of grapes

My favourite pasta is the premade sides with grated carrot.. We have them max once a fortnight

Oats

Steamed vegetables

Fish

banana, carrot and celery. they give me the sweet/crunching that i want and take away cravings.
i used to train, and never went more than 3hrs without eating (so premade snack boxes) as it stopped me overeating at meals.
i served my plate, then halved it. id drink some water and green tea, and if after 20mins i wanted seconds, id go back.
i never ate from the packet. chocolate/potato chips get served into a tiny bowl, and put away. then its green tea and a 20min wait before i go back for more.

i have a hormonal condition, so have 30kg to lose after this belly bub arrives! (21.5weeks and im still 3kg down on my prepreg weight-yay!)

You can use cauliflower to bulk out mashed potato, or just have cauliflower mash on its own, it's quite nice.

My essentials (I'm not following any particular eating plan, so am happy to use artificial sweeteners etc., others may not be):

Lean chicken, ham
Grainy bread, or low GI dinner rolls from Baker's Delight for sandwiches
Wraps - been using the Wattle Valley lite white of late
Low-cal yoghurt
Fruit, especially bananas and apples (just because they're cheap and easy)
Steam fresh vegie bags for days when I'm out of time/haven't done the groceries
Diet jelly
Plain popcorn, water crackers
Light cheese
Oats
Chicken cup-a-soup (not healthy, but low-cal and I find them good as a filling snack)
Diet Coke
And - don't judge - tinned beetroot, I LOVE it as a snack

And most of all - healthy single serve meals that I've frozen in advance for when I haven't got the time or inclination to cook.

I eat pasta, probably once a week. The biggest different I find is in measuring out my portion; most recipes and the packet state 100g as a single serve, but I usually have 60-70g, and find that it's plenty.