I had to scroll back through my list of blog titles to see if I had shared this before. I was looking for a simple nutrition tip to write a blog on for tonight and thought I had for sure already covered this. Turns out, I haven’t. It’s the most simple, basic nutrition tip I give to just about anyone I do personal training or goal setting with. It is one that is easy to follow, easy to understand and ease to execute. No fancy measuring. No reading labels. No counting calories.
Shop the perimeter of the grocery store.
Now, this gets a little bit complicated in the new super grocery stores we have all over the place now but I want you to think of the grocery stores from even three or four years ago. The perimeter of the store, or all the stuff on the outside walls of the building. What’s out there? You know what I’m talking about.
Right when we walk in the store we have our fruits and vegetables. Go nuts in this department. While we don’t want to overload on the fruits, within reason, you arne’t going to do any harm loading up there. Veggies, have at it. Eat as many as you want. The more variety the better. You aren’t going to be able to eat “too many” vegetables. So, pick a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and try to have a choice of any two of them with every meal of the day. Easy.
Behind the fruit and veggie department is the bakery. Now there’s a big difference the type of stuff that comes out of the bakery. Cakes, cookies, and sugary baking; I don’t think we need to go into any reasons why we should stay away from there. Some fresh bread and/or buns aren’t going to hurt you however. This is, of course, provided we don’t have any intolerances to gluten and those relatively refined carbohydrates. But generally speaking, we need a carbs in our diet and some fresh bread or a fresh bun with a meal isn’t going to hurt us.
Keep going. We made a turn at the back of the store now. Where are we at? The meat department. I want to capitalize the word “Meat” because it’s my favourite part of the store. All the fresh meat that came out of the butcher shop in the back. Basically if it is on one of those styrofoam trays and covered in Saran Wrap, it’s pretty darn fresh and it’s a great choice for protein! What we want to avoid is any of the meats that come in a box. If they’re in a box, they came from a factory and are very refined and most likely a far lower quality than the fresh counterpart. Trays and Saran Wrap.
Alright, we have loaded up the cart with a good amount of meat. We keep going. Dairy. Just like the meat, we have to be careful here. While we can find heavy sour cream and refined coffee creamers here, what we’re after is milk. Milk is a healthy way to get dairy in our diet. Some people can do without dairy, but again, very generally speaking some lean dairy in your diet is a good thing. Some 1% milk or some low sugar yogurt for example. Our cart should just about be getting full and that is all the money you have available for groceries this month anyways haha.
The best part of the perimeter of the grocery store, depending on which way you turn when you walk in the front door, you can either get yourself a nice Starbucks vanilla latte to sip while you are shopping or to go on your way out the door. Your welcome! Happy shopping.