Hauwai McGahan is a 28-year-old CrossFit athlete living with three other CrossFit athletes in Hauraki, on Auckland's North Shore. McGahan flats with a couple, May and Aiden, and another flatmate Ashleigh. They shop individually but, as they're all eating simlar diets, pool some shared resources such as protein supplements and home-kill meat.
Hauwai shared his receipts with 1News Digital Reporter Emma Hildesley after doing a larger "bulk top-up shop" at Pak'N'Save Wairau in Glenfield.
The majority of my food shop is dictated on cost and what I can afford. I start with a number in my head approximately and try to stick to that, from a budget perspective. To chuck a number out I'd say $120 to like $180 a week, depending on what I need to top up, and that's including the toiletries. But food, if I'm thinking specifically may be around the $160 mark.
The second factor, other than cost of living, for me would be the competitive athlete life that I'm pursuing. When I think about what athletes require in terms of output and maximising performance, often that looks like: high protein, high carbohydrate, high sugar diets. I'm trying to find the balance each week hitting my macros, 3300 calories a day, but also as efficiently and as cost effective as possible.
What that looks like is raw protein, raw carbohydrates and fast sugars, effectively, and nothing in between. Chicken with salt and pepper, with potatoes or kumara that's fried. No sauce, no preservatives. And I try not to compromise on fresh produce, but again, cost of living means that often I have to go from fresh veggies to sometimes frozen.
When it comes to protein, I often try and minimise shopping for protein like meat at supermarkets, and just rely on home kill, or other bits of meat that I can store in a freezer for a while. Probably for the last 12 months just because I couldn't afford it, I’ve been trying to really push hard and rely on networks, people that have deer, people that have home kill, and it's surprising how far I can get with as minimal protein costs as possible.
We're all the same, so [as flatmates] we try to pool our resources together. We don't do food shops together, but we're of the same mindset that we train together, we live together, we eat the same. We do bulk protein powder orders. We also try and top up supplements together so it's sort of a shared pool of 'OK you buy this, I buy that'. We sometimes cook together, but we cook together as in I'll make a meal one week. Ashleigh makes a meal the next and our other flatmates make one the next week.
When we shop, we look at the week ahead and we go 'alright, what competitions have we got on? What qualifiers do we have to make? Are we upping our training or will we be away travelling?' A lot of our decisions when it comes to shopping, actually is dictated by what we have on.
We often click and collect from Countdown, as we’ve found New World was the most expensive. PAK'nSAVE, we try to shop at Wairau but we get anxiety because of how cheap it is and how competitive it is to fight the crowds. We found a really good middle ground is Barry's Point Rd Countdown, unreal for click and collect service.
Everyone laughs that I've got 'steel guts', but I try to buy reduced price meat where possible. I'm that guy that will just eat it if it's, you know, $3 or $4 off per kilo, of mince or chicken.
I don't have the luxury of shopping to a recipe anymore, I shop for what's going to fuel me to train and to live in a really healthy and balanced lifestyle. I think CrossFit is a sport and I have goals to achieve high performance, but also what I like about CrossFit is it translates and carries over into life. I live, in my opinion, quite a balanced lifestyle of: I eat well, I live well, I sleep well, I train well and all that's quite complementary. And I think food is the slept-on part of all of that.
What I avoid in the aisles is alcohol or the organic stuff, just because it's too expensive. Alcohol doesn't really fuel or confirm my lifestyle at the moment, so that's actually out. I avoid the baby aisle, and the cat and dog food as again, pets are a luxury I can't afford.
I recently started using ChatGPT for budgeting. So what I put into ChatGPT is: 'I've got $160 this week. Make me a list of five-to-six meals that have 3300 calories with the right amount of protein, carbohydrates and veggies. Sometimes I also focus it on PAK'nSAVE Wairau, Countdown and maybe one New World specifically and say ‘tell me the specials and deals on’ and then also provide a list. So it spits out a table, and a list of Monday-to-Friday suggested meals, with the breakdown of macros and micros with the per-gram-protein serve within the $160 budget.
Hauwai's total spend this week: $259.51 which included a bigger shop to last a few weeks.
If you would like to partake in our Receipt Reveal series, please email receiptreveal@tvnz.co.nz and tell us where in New Zealand you live and how many live in your household.
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