It occurred to me today to try something that I hadn’t thought of before.  Since the focus of my life has shifted in the past 2 years from paying “financial stupid taxes” to making the right decisions with my cash flow in order to pay off all of my debt, I have become better and better at the concept of budgeting.

For 15+ years now I have used Quicken to track my finances, which are just a collection of numbers, some in, some out, leaving me with a net balance after every transaction.  So, as I was thinking about how I track money, with the goal being to always have more income than expenses, thereby yielding an increasing balance of wealth, a light bulb went on and I started to wonder what would happen if I were to convert my nutritional budget (my diet) from calories to dollars.

Think about it.  What if one calorie equaled one dollar?  My ultimate goal in the realm of caloric budgeting would be to reduce my “net worth” in caloric terms over a period of time based on my “expense budget” (diet plan).

If I were to look at my eating habits that way, I would start by adding up my net worth with a goal of reducing it to as low as possible.  One pound of fat is equal to 3,500 calories.  Convert that to $3,500.00 and then multiply by your total weight, and you have your caloric net worth in terms of dollars.

For me, after 6 months of time off from triathlon training, I increased my caloric net worth by $59,500.00.  That means that I gained 17 lbs.  This happened because I made more deposits in my mouth than I made withdrawals, so to speak.  Every day I spend approximately $2000.00 in calories just by breathing, and I need to keep my spending in check to ensure that I slowly reach my goal.  There are no large purchases in this world.  It’s a slow, methodical approach, and it will take time.  Sounds about like paying off debt.

Now, thinking of the prospect of going to a caloric net worth of zero, you’d wonder how that could be possible if you have a lean body mass that will never go away (bones, ligaments, organs, etc.).  At 204lbs, my caloric net worth is $714,000.00.  My goal weight is 175lbs, or $612,500.00.  That means I need to “spend” $101,500.00 in calories.  So, I can either set a goal of a “caloric register balance” of $612,500 or just start the balance at $101,500 and shoot for zero.  Or, I could even reverse the numbers and call it a “diet debt” with a balance of -$101,500.00 which I would need to start paying off with the same mindset I have used to pay off the real money debts.

Every day I live, I would track my income and expense (eating and caloric burn) on a quicken cash account, or spreadsheet, since there are no programs that do this type of crazy calcuation, and I could translate my diet plan, into a quasi diet “budget” plan.

The only difference in this budget plan is that my goal is to spend all of my money, not save it (unless I choose to treat it like a debt, then I’ll be paying it off.)  This is just an idea, but I think it might make managing my diet more interesting and more fun, since I’ll be able to spend or pay off as much as I want without worrying about going broke.