You could do a New Tax Year Resolution as the tax year starts in April.
My Recipe for Stew is
Tin of Supermarket Value Vegetable Soup or packet vegetable soup
Tin of Supermarket Value Baked Beans (does not matter using value items for stew)
Stock Cube
Handful of Dried Pearl Barley
Salt and Pepper
All of these items can be kept in the store cupboard
plus whatever is available in other vegetables - potatoes, tomatoes, onions, peppars, anything you like really. Even if vegetables going a bit bad you can cut the good bits off them and use for the stew. If you like meat you can put meat in the stew.
If you can't get to the shops you can just make it with the store cupboard items and tins of anything else suitable and still have a meal to eat.
My Mummy taught me this.
I always make a Resolution in March as I notice that my spring clothes have unnaccountably shrunk (in the wash no doubt) and they seem to have gone particularly small this year 
I am stepping up the walks but oh! I do wish I liked salad more. And that strawberries were just as nice without cream. And that cheese tasted just as good on crispbread as with a handful of Kettle Chips. (a handful? a bucketful, let's be honest.Oh OK then - the whole packet.)
Beth, you must let us know if lipobind actually works. I'd certainly like an easier method.
It is all about motivation. I can put up with going without if I am determined to do it and I surely will... starting next week or maybe the week after.... 
Furby, we used to eat a lot of stew when I was little. As you say it's variable according to what you have. You can make it as filling as you like (and stretch it if a lot of people) just by adding potatoes etc.
We always had meat in it, but maybe not a lot of meat and the cheapest stuff since it didn't matter so much.
Easier to prepare in advance and reheat as well. At one point before my older sisters left home there just wasn't room for us all to eat at the same time. Those meals where the hostess pops out to make sure the soufflé is ok were never going to work out with nine of us.
My mother used to make these pies too. Which now I think about it were pretty much stew with pastry on top. 
I loved em though!
I don't make stew these days, or rather I do, sort of, as my home made curry has onions, tomatoes, peas, carrots and mushrooms plus whatever diced meat is on offer at the supermarket, usually turkey. I used to get all the various spices before finding out that a can of Patak's tastes better.