You tell yourself you’re only going in for one thing, and long and behold one hour later you’ve racked up a bill for almost 200 dollars.
Most of the things in your cart you . . .
- Didn’t intend to get.
- Are unhealthy.
- Not needed.
Healthy food shopping is easy to do and is a dependable way to increase health gains and a proven way to lose weight.
A sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet are the two contributors to major killers across the globe right now including heart disease and diabetes.
The best way to protect and improve your health outside of exercising is to eat the right diet. Discover how shopping the right way can be the reason you finally reach your weight loss goals.
“The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine, or the slowest form of poison.”
Ann Wigmore
1. Create a Complete List
When trying to lose weight one of the most important things to do is be strategic with your meals. Remember 80% diet, 20% workout.
Although this post is not about meal planning, when you do meal plan, make your shopping list at the same time for everything you will need to create those meals.
Likewise, this will enable you to see and list everything that you may need without missing any items.
For those of you who normally don’t use a shopping list, start investing time in this process. Before you even leave your house, not last-minute in the car on your way to the store.
Moreover, put time into what you need to get from the grocery store, write it down or make a list in your phone. Writing things down takes your thoughts and turns them into deliberate actions.
To lose weight focus on buying:
- Healthy/Whole/Fresh Food.
- Limit Prepackaged/Canned/GMO Foods.
- Avoid Large Quantities of Salt/Sugar/Starch.
Creating a shopping list will also help with budgeting for your food. You will now always know ahead of time what you’ll spend at the grocery store with no surprises.
Calculate the costs of your groceries and list the cost next to each item, totaling it.
Key tip: Food is one of the most wasted resources that fill our landfills. You should have a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly budget for food. Only buy what you need.
Creating a set budget for food will easily allow you to know how much you spend on food annually. If you’re anything like me the number just might surprise you.
Some stores actually allow you to create your lists on their sites, giving you exact prices and will tell you the location of each item by aisle.
Check out your favorite grocery store’s site and see if they have that function that makes shopping a whole lot easier and convenient.
When you hit those sliding doors in the store, make sure you’re only going to get the items that are on your list. If for some strange reason, you feel that you missed something, skip it and get it next time, it obviously wasn’t that important if it didn’t make it on your original list.
Creating the list maintains focus. Being disciplined with food makes it that much easier to be disciplined in other parts of your health and in your journey to lose weight.
End Goal: Stop Window Shopping and Shop Deliberately. Make a list to save money and feel empowered to make healthier choices.
2. Conquer the Perimeter
Notice how when you first walk into a grocery store you usually see produce. Fresh foods, seafood, vegetables, and fruits are almost always at the perimeter of the store.
Experts agree that most of your shopping should be done in the perimeter of the grocery store to avoid lanes filled with prepackaged, canned, sugar, and salt-ridden food, that truth be told can have you in a choke-hold close to addiction.
Yes, you can indulge, but make sure if you put one pack of Goldfish on your list, you leave with one pack of Goldfish. Make a promise to yourself aloud that you’re only getting what’s on your list.
Don’t go into the snack aisle and think you’re in a whole nother dimension of life.
The most important component here is self-control and creating a list will help aid you to have self-control. This is why it’s important to actually create the list and DON’T JUST THINK about what you’re gonna get in your head.
You should walk into the grocery store with a fixed sense of – “I came in here for real food, unprocessed food, that is nutritious, and will help rebuild my body.”
This is what food is, and this is the purpose of food, not for satisfaction or pleasure. Focusing on buying healthy food and maintaining a healthy diet takes planning and selective exposure to the right choices.
When the right choices are in front of you, it makes it that much easier to choose the right thing. Healthy choices equal healthy weight.
Read The 4 Weight Loss Tips No One Talks About to learn how to make healthier choices, lose weight, and keep weight off.
End Goal: Shop the Perimeter and use Selective Exposure to help you make the right food choices.
3. Consider Food a Secure Investment
Every time you choose to put something in your mouth, you’re either adding to your years, or taking away, and that’s the absolute truth.
Significantly, many of the chronic diseases today that are plaguing society are traced back to food, its effects on the body, and the health of the GI tract.
Ask yourself every day: Are you worth the investment?
You have to make the decision of what you love more. The brief satisfaction of the taste of food, or your life, your health, and your loved ones?
You want to be able to function at your best as you get older, and food is one of the best ways to help aid the aging process. You hear it all the time, you are what you eat.
End Goal: Eat well, eat whole, and eat for life and longevity.
Quick Recap
1. Losing weight is a deliberate action. Plan your meals, and allow your shopping list to reflect your meals.
2. Eat to live, don’t live to eat. Remember self-control.
3. Window shop anywhere else but the grocery store.
4. Food is not for pleasure, it’s for nourishment.
5. One area of discipline can divide and multiply into other areas of your life and weight loss journey.
The best healthcare is self-care.
Until Next Time With Love,
