Grocery Shopping Tips For Healthy Weightloss

Tell me if you relate to this experience: you have a long list of errands to run, you need to go to the grocery store, your stomach is growling (how long ago was breakfast?), and you decide to put off eating until you get home because you spend enough money already.

So, you don’t eat, you grab your reusable bag and head into the grocery store with a short list of food. You walk out 25 minutes later with a shopping cart full of snacks, sweets and junk you do not need and a wallet lighter than you wanted it to be, because the jerk (that’s your growling, empty stomach), told you it was a great idea.

Why Does Healthy Grocery Shopping Matter?

Why should you care? Because if food is in your house, someone (you, your S.O., your kid, your dog), will eat it. If that food is healthy – awesome! But if the food that you bring home from the grocery store and fill your fridge and cabinets with is junk, someone is still going to eat it.

Keeping the junk food, the trigger foods, the emotional-eating-go-to foods out of easy reach ensures one thing: you won’t have easy access to them. Keeping your counters stacked with fresh fruit, a bowl of nuts and other healthy snacks ensures another thing: someone (you) might eat them.

Sometimes, that’s enough.

How to Grocery Shop to Lose Weight

Don’t shop hungry

Read: story above. We’ve all been there. We all know how much extra money we spend at the store when we walk in hungry. Our stomach take over the trip and overrides the good decisions we try to make and encourages the unhealthy decisions we don’t really want to make.

What goes in your cart will end up in your home. If it ends up in your home, you’re more likely to reach for it when you are starving and short on time. If you’re hungry before you head in to the grocery store, grab a snack. If it’s lunch time, eat first!

Make a list, and stick to it

Keep a notebook in the kitchen, or use an app or notepad on your phone, to keep a running list of items that you need to pick up. Plan the meals that you want to eat over the next couple of days and make a list of what you need to make them. Stick to it. If you pass something in the grocery store that is not on your list, write it down, walk away and decide before you leave if you really need it.

Need a little extra help? Use my ready-to-go Healthy Eating Grocery List. It’s already organized into sections to help you shop more efficiently.

Shop the perimeter

Think about the layout of a grocery store (yes, most grocery stores are laid out in much the same way). The real food is set up on the perimeter. The fruits, the veggies, the fish department, the meat department, the dairy cooler – they all live outside of aisle 1-12. Everything else, the shelf-stable products, fill…you guessed it…the shelves. What makes those products shelf-stable? Preservatives, additives, added sugars and sodium – ingredients that your body has zero need for.

Fill your cart as you would your plate

Veggies first, then lean proteins, then healthy fats and complex carbs. If you shop this way, you’ll be more likely to eat this way. Spend most of your time in the produce department and keep an open mind. Buy a few foods that you know and love, and grab something new to take for a test drive. Move on to the fish and meat departments. Buy what looks the best and has the best value. Talk to the butcher and fish monger to learn the best way to cook what you buy. Healthy fats can be found in many forms: olive oil, nuts, avocado and whole fat dairy are some of my favorites. Finally, the cheapest complex carbs you will ever find come in the bulk bins. Bulk rice and grains, quinoa and oats and beans – these are the kinds of carbs you should never be afraid of!

Be strategic in the frozen food aisle

Frozen foods are a convenient and often cost-effective way to eat healthy, especially in the winter months. Fruit and vegetables are frozen at the peak of ripeness for flavor, but the happy side effect of that is that ripe fruit contains the most nutrients. You can find great products like riced cauliflower and frozen edamame that make healthy eating both fun and easy.

What lands in your grocery cart will probably end up in your stomach. Health starts here.

 

If you live in Vermont and realize you could use some help navigating the grocery store (and maybe even your own kitchen), in a way that benefits your fitness goals and fat loss, I offer this kind of help as a 1 on 1 personal trainer. Send me a message below and let’s set up a time to nail down the nutrition basics!