Most local Indian places will do you a solid 1500 calorie meal for £10 if you know what to look for.
Versus, go to supermarket... get stuck in a routine every day of "buying stuff", wanting snacks, meat, and so on adds up quickly to the point where sticking below £10 a day becomes a constant battle. It's the routine and constant food noise that really got to me, and when even a chocolate bar can be 10% of your budget for a day the decision fatigue is real.
So by breaking the routine, sticking to OMAD, I lost weight, had much less decision fatigue, and no constant food noise - that was the major change that saved me a load of money, time & effort.
For example yesterday I found a tiny cantonese place, got wonton soup and some duck, vegetables and watermelon for about £8
But the 'routine of supermarket shopping' creates 'noise' that makes you want to eat more / more often? How does that work.
I tend to go to the supermarket once a week and make this buying decision on a full stomach. I've not bought snacks or soda during this type of shopping since I was a teenager, I simply refuse to buy these things, like cigarettes or alcohol. There is no decision fatigue, the decision was made once and stuck to.
The discipline required is about 30 minutes a week. The rest of the time I'm not at the supermarket, and travelling to the supermarket to buy a snack just isn't worth the trouble. This way sticking to the decision becomes easy: I only shop once a week.
Then I have to cook the food (I only buy ingredients). I'm not a big fan of cooking, so I wouldn't go out of my way to cook more often than I need or want, and overspend in this way.
This seems like a lot less noise or fatigue than going out for food 3 times a day and being presented with ready-made menu's of tens or even more than a hundred food options per day, and making a healthy and budget-friendly decision 21 times a week, on an empty stomach -- there's no way I could ever spend less at restaurants than cooking.
I get eating out, I've been doing it solely for the last months due to travel and I love it. But I'm absolutely not spending less or eating more healthy.
Whereas now I almost exclusively eat set menus, thalis, nasi kandar etc. at small family run places and ask for extra rice, pickles and veg at little to no cost, and the staff end up getting to know me.
So most days it's "Oh... it's 8pm, I should eat now" and I'm done in half an hour without really thinking about it and somebody else handles the cooking, shopping & cleaning - sometimes I just sit down and look at my phone and food turns up.
As a weird benefit - I don't really drink alcohol any more. The craving and even desire is gone.
---
Re: food noise, it's irrational craving to fill the time, it's sugar, fats, salt. It is an addiction, a little devil on your shoulder going "IM HUNGRY!!! GO TO SHOP AND CONSUME" even when you're not. It's a choice I've had to make to regain more control, and I understand not everybody has the same relationship or brain so may not experience it the same.
Restaurant food is generally much less healthy than food one cooks at home, but perhaps if it's just one meal that's outweighed by the disciplined calorie control.
i mean it's your experience so it must work, maybe it also differs between countries - absolutely no chance that i could order take-out food and get it delivered to me for less money than buying the groceries myself and cooking it at home :O
(at the start of the pandemic it was almost doable because deliveries were way cheaper and everyone started doing it, but nowadays delivery has become pretty expensive. kind of like airbnb, start out cheap and over the years add a couple of bullshit fees).
I think we're talking apples vs oranges here.
Supermarket food is cheaper than sitting at a restaurant. For take-out, I don't see why it couldn't be cheaper considering whatever you buy and do at home, the restaurant does at scale.
In that way hiring a cleaner to come clean your house is cheaper than cleaning yourself, because they're professionals and take less time than you would yourself.
But if you don't pay yourself an hourly wage to cook and clean (which is true for most people), then paying someone else to do it will require you to spend more cash.