If you have ever spent any time around horses, you have heard the saying "Make the right thing easy and make the wrong thing hard" ... Well it was only a matter of time before I started relating things to horse training, and I'm not even sorry. That is the theme of this week's blog. I am here to help you learn how to make the right choices easy and the wrong choices hard so that you can be more successful.
In my opinion, there are two types of people in this world. The ones who live for a good grocery shop and the ones who would rather be dead than try to navigate the walls of different options at the store. This post is for the second type of person! so let's dig in and help you conquer the confusion that can come along with going to the grocery store.
Especially if you are new to all of this, it can be very confusing and intimidating going through the aisles and seeing 36 different types of protein bars that are all labelled as “Healthy choice”. I get it. It is enough to make you want to run and hide in the frozen pizza aisle and never look back. I am here for you! So, take a deep breath and let’s start mapping out our grocery store so we can be as successful as possible in our journey.
Here is what you will find in today's Article:
Start from home!
The first step to a successful grocery shop is to have a list and to commit to sticking to it. By knowing exactly what it is that you are looking for before you even walk through the door, it will save you from wandering down that aisle with all the chocolate bars and having one accidentally jump into your cart.
To know what you need on your list; you should have an idea of what you and your family are going to be eating that week. Now, I have a spreadsheet, but that is because I am extra. You DO NOT need a spreadsheet. I will outline this crazy habit in another post. You just need to have an idea of what you will be eating. Most people stick to pretty much the same foods so take stock of what you have and what you might need before you start making your list. This will prevent the urge to impulse buy.
If you are on a budget, like most of us are, including me, you may want to take some time to look at the sales at your grocery store before you start building your meal plan and your list. I find that a lot of the foods I cook in the week are from things on sale. Look at your flyers. If you don’t want to bother with those, you can easily open your store’s website to look at an online version of their flyer.
Map it out!
Once you have your list, you are ready to head to the store. No matter what store you shop at, the basic layout will always be the same. Produce, Meats, Dairy, Frozen and then the other stuff.
80- 90% of your time in the grocery store should be spent in the outside aisles. This is where all the food who either came from the ground or had a mother will live. Start with your produce and work your way around the outside of the store. By the time that you finish this you should have all your produce, eggs, Meat, Frozen veggies and fruits, seafood and milk! This way you will only have to pop into the middle aisles for a few filler items.
Be in control of what is coming into your home
Do you know how many times a client has looked at me and said “Okay that is great but”:
-my kids like the sugar cereals
- My husband will only take Mr. noodles in his lunch
- I must have cookies on hand in case someone comes to visit
- But I don’t really like fish unless it has that breading on it
Trust me, I have heard it all! At the end of the day, yes, those things are challenging and there may be some difficult conversations that need to be had but you need to be in control of what is coming into your home.
The golden rule is: If it is in your house, eventually you or someone you love is going to eat it. So, make sure that the food that is coming in is something that is going to be worthwhile for them to eat. The easiest way to avoid eating the entire bag of chips is not to have it in your house.
Aisles to Avoid
Yes, there are some places in the grocery store that you will want to avoid going to. These are the aisles where nothing good will happen if you go there, and truly, why even torture yourself?
1- Chips and Pop.
2- Chocolate and Candy
3- Cookies and Crackers
4- Iced Cream & Frozen Desserts
Thankfully these are usually grouped together so you are only avoiding a few aisles/ sections. If you are trying to make good choices, there is no need to go down this aisle. Will-power is a muscle, if you keep flexing it eventually it will fatigue so save using it for the times when you really need it, like while waiting in that long line at checkout!
Read your labels
Now that you have picked up many of your items from the perimeter aisles of the store, it is time to venture into the wild west that is the inside aisles. This is where you are going to get many of your filler items. There is nothing wrong with picking up items in these aisles. In fact, some very healthy items come from this area. You just need to be sure you are reading your labels.
Large companies have the upper hand when it comes to packaging. They have coined words like “Healthy” or “Smart” or “Good” to make you think that their product is somehow adding something to you. The frustrating thing is that anyone can use any name they want, regardless of the actual nutritional value of the product. So don’t always trust that something is a smart choice just because the box says it is. Dig a little deeper. I always like to look at a few specific things:
- Is it organic? If it is labelled certified organic, this means that it is. Getting something certified as organic is expensive and time consuming so if a company has gone through this process, chances are, they care about the ingredients that they are putting into their product and want you to know they can be trusted.
-Can I pronounce all the ingredients? What is TBHQ and Lecithin anyway? I don’t know but I don’t really want it in my food… If you cannot pronounce the ingredients in your food, please choose something else. It may be as simple as picking a product from a different brand, or even making something yourself!
- Does this Item have Trans Fat i.e., Hydrogenated oils? If an item has Hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil, this means that someone manually added hydrogen atoms to the molecules of the fat to make it more stable. In simpler speak: They messed with a naturally occurring fat to make it last longer on the shelf. EEWWWW! This is bad for you, and you should not eat it!
- Is This item high in sodium? It is recommended by the government of Canada that our daily intake of sodium be less than 2300mg. It all adds up very quickly, so you want to be very careful of trying to minimize the amount of sodium you are getting from your filler foods.
So, let’s break this down:
If you are having scrambled eggs with Ketchup and toast with peanut butter for breakfast for example: 2 eggs = 248 mg (Natural sodium at that but still sodium), 1 tbsp Butter to fry your eggs in = 98 mg, 1 Tbsp Ketchup = 165mg, 2 slices of Whole Grain Toast= 270 mg, 1 Tbsp Peanut Butter= 65 mg sodium for a total of 846 mg sodium (which is 37% of your daily intake)… At it is not even 9 am.
Final tips and tricks
This is a long post, but the guidelines are simple. Take your time. Make a plan. Execute your plan. Do some digging. That’s it. Oh yes and that old saying is true: Never go to the grocery store hungry. EVER!! The theme here is to do things that make it easy to make good choices and hard to make the bad ones!
I really hope that these tips and tricks help you to feel a little more confident when you walk through the doors of your grocery store. After-all, it can be a beautiful thing to prepare your own food at home, and finding your ingredients is the first steps. Please leave us a comment with how your most recent grocery store trip went!
If you are still feeling a little bit overwhelmed or have any additional questions, please send me a message or keep an eye out for our Coaching page coming soon for some more options for additional support. All of my contact info is listed below :)
Happy Shopping!
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