Dining Hall Food :'(

I'm not sure where you live, but I live in a large city and only feed myself, and I probably spend about $40-50/week on groceries (unless I have someone over for dinner). I think $325/month will be plenty if you'd prefer to cook yourself. You will probably just have to get used to leftovers. I usually cook only one or two meals each week and then I eat the same thing over and over again until it's gone. If you don't like to do that, you will probably want to purchase frozen meat and veggies so that they keep longer. It also may not be a great idea if you don't have easy access to a place to cook it or if you feel that you will be missing out by not going to the dining court with friends--if these things are the case, you might find you wind up eating at the dining court anyway.

You could probably do $325 a month, but what cooking facilities do you have available (are you in a dorm?) and are you really going to feel like dealing with it after school, rugby practice, etc.? The convenience of the dining hall is very nice.

It's hard to say without seeing the menus, so I'm thinking back to what was offered back in the old days when I was in college. (LOL).

Breakfast -- are there boiled eggs, oatmeal, yogurt, bananas or oranges, cereal? Breakfast shouldn't be too tough. At my school breakfast stuff like boiled eggs and cereal was nearly always available for every meal.

Lunch/dinner:

Is there a deli line? While sodium-wise it may not be the greatest, a turkey or ham sandwich isn't terrible, provided you skip the mayo, and add some tomato and lettuce.

Is there a salad bar? You could bring down your own dressing (i.e Salad Spritzers or Bolthouse Farms), provided you have a fridge in your room to keep it in. I practically lived off the salad bar when I was in college.

Can you cobble together portions of things? I remember there usually being some kind of steamed or grilled vegetable available, some kind of meat. If there is heavy sauce on a chicken or fish, you can scrape it off. There are always raw veggies on the salad bar, sometimes garbanzo beans or tuna.

I think it may be challenging for you initially, but once you sort of figure out your options it may not be so bad.

OP your idea sounds wonderful! I wish I could do that at my school, but everyone has to have a meal plan, even commuters.. -__- I'm not commuting but I just don't like that they don't have a choice...I just have to figure out some other way to lose weight through the school year.

Former rugby player here, so I understand the difficulties of trying to survive on the salad bar and going out to rugby practice after lol. Not sure what's all in your kitchenette but if you have room to cook (oven/stove burners) and store food (your room's own fridge WITH a freezer), I'd ditch the meal plan. If you don't at least have a full size fridge available, I wouldn't do it.

If you don't have a freezer it might be more difficult, it's really expensive and not always practical to always be running to the store to buy fresh meat/fruit/veggies (especially with your busy sounding schedule). Depending on how far you are from a grocery store, the cost of fresh food (especially meat!!!) and the extra gas if you have to drive out there a lot might actually push you close to that $325/month you were looking at (but I doubt it will unless you're eating organic only).

If you don't have any sort of cooking method other than a microwave/hotplate, I'd keep the meal plan too. Most microwave only recipes taste pretty bad and food that's designed to be microwaved tends to be pretty loaded up with sodium...

You can point this out to your family to help convince them if the nutrition side alone isn't enough: whatever school you go to probably has the option for you to buy individual meals without a meal plan for $5-$6 per meal if you do end up wanting to eat at the dining hall. That's actually not terrible price-wise (cheaper than McDonalds!) and it can be a huge relief if you don't have time to cook/go grab fresh groceries. Looking at the high end cost-wise ($6/meal), if you get 1 meal/day for every day for a month from the dining hall you still have $157 left to spend on groceries. Price out a sample week/month worth of groceries at the stores near you, and show those numbers to your parents. If you do that, go really in depth with it (look at specific recipes, plan out all your meals, remember to include snacks and drinks, etc.) so they can't poke holes in your numbers. If your numbers are coming waaaay under that $325/month for groceries, you can pull the "I can save the money for my future/don't have to take out as many loans" card with them.

As a comparison: I live in the Midwest, in a fairly large city, off campus in a house and $160 is probably pretty close to what I spend a month on my own food/drink (not counting alcohol). I buy a lot of fresh (and occasionally frozen) fruits and veggies, not a lot of canned foods, most of the meat I buy is frozen, I always do ad-match/hunt for sales when I'm shopping, and I DON'T buy organic anything unless it's cheaper than the regular stuff. If you're looking to go the organic only route for all your food, you'll definitely be close to that $325/month.

On another note, if you're allowed to have them in your dorm, get a crockpot!!! A few reasons why they're awesome: you can dump all the ingredients for a recipe in it in the morning, ignore it all day, and you'll have hot, delicious food when you finally get home at the end of the day; it's nearly impossible to screw up cooking things in them; you can make a TON of really healthy recipes with a crockpot; if you have a big one (4-6 qt), you end up with a ton of leftovers; you can buy little/individual ones (1-2qt; a lot of them have automatic timers, and switch to "warm" after whatever cooking time you enter is up, so you're food is always hot and never overdone; and you don't need fresh ingredients for a lot of the recipes, frozen or canned ones work just as well.....I'll give you 3 guesses on what my favorite appliance in my kitchen is

TL;DR version: Do it if you have a real kitchen, don't do it if you just have a microwave and minifridge, numbers go a long way to convincing parents, and crockpots are awesome!