Grocery Shopping Idea
Start your grocery trip in the produce section and take in all the wonderful choices we have. Do the strawberries look good today? What about grapes, or blueberries?
You can make great choices at every turn. I go to the grocery store with a list. There are whole aisles I don't need to visit. If I already am stocked up on oatmeal, I don't need to look at anything in the cereal aisle. I'd rather have a real potato than potato chips, so I can skip the chip aisle without giving up what I love. I like eating high quality chocolate, there isn't much at the local grocery store that falls in my favorite food list. A favorite chocolate would be something like a chocolate chip truffle from See's candies not a bag of Hersheys. If I am going to indulge, I go all the way -- I don't want second best.
Throughout my twenties as I was trying and failing to lose weight, when I was picking the deprivation diet plan path and saying, no more dessert, no more alcohol, no more cookies, no more sour dough bread... I would stick with it for a while, lose some weight and then give up.
Through it all I was making bad choices every day, but I was really struggling with those choices.
I remember sitting in a diner around the corner from my work and looking at the breakfast menu and wondering which would be smarter, bacon, eggs and hash browns and whole wheat toast, or bacon, eggs and pancakes. I wasn't even thinking skip the bacon hash browns pancakes and hold the butter on the toast. I would order, the food would arrive, I'd say, I'm only going to eat 1/2 the toast, or 1/2 the pancake, or just 1 piece of bacon, and then I would get down to that part, still want to eat and feel like, well, I paid for it -- I might as well eat it.
Eating this way wasn't enjoyable. I felt self conscious ordering the food, I didn't fit into the booth, I felt out of control about what I was eating and I was making all these little deals with myself and they weren't working. I was causing myself a lot of needless pain.
I remember a co-worker of mine who was tiny. She was my dream size, and I remember seeing her sitting at her desk with a piece of fruit and that was her breakfast and I wished I could be satisfied by something so wholesome looking. Some days she would have grapefruit and the smell of it was so comforting. My family ate grapefruit from time to time, when I was a little girl, but usually covered it with in a layer of brown sugar -- which though delicious was not the best idea.
I have stared eating an apple for breakfast and I eat one as a snack some days. I managed to lose 100 lbs in part by giving up those diner breakfasts of hash browns, bacon, pancakes, sour dough toast and eggs and instead eat a bowl of low sugar instant oatmeal. I liked the instant oatmeal because I could buy it in the single serve packs, and I only eat one package. Now, I eat 1/2 cup rolled oats, not instant that I cook with 1 cup boiling water and add fruit to. I don't know if I would have been able to make such a huge leap to start. It would have depended on what I thought about what I was doing. Knowing how you react to what you are doing is very powerful. It is your clue that either It works for me/I enjoy this, or it doesn't work for me/I don't like it. I strongly recommend trying new things, but if you have a strong aversion to oatmeal, pick a healthy cereal like Kashi Go Lean, or have some fruit and a piece of whole wheat toast with some almond butter.
Keep searching for the best choice that will meet both your taste bud's and your waist line's "It works for me/I enjoy this". Skipping breakfast entirely used to land me in hot water when lunch time rolled around and I was starving, now I arrive at lunch full of energy and the good nutrition I eat actually boosts my brain power and gives me a second wind.
Everyone has their own autopilot stories. If you have eaten the same thing for breakfast the past three days, then you know what I am talking about. It is how regular customers can go into restaurants and say, "the usual".
If you are like me, and find that you tend to have favorites wherever you go -- you can use this to your advantage. Instead of giving up the thing you love entirely, is there a way you can keep the part of it you love best and substitute something else for the other part? If you need help with this, post your comment and I will brainstorm with you to come up with a better alternative. Better because it will help you reach your goal of maintaining a healthy fit body easily and enjoyably.
What's your favorite breakfast,lunch, dinner?
Jennifer
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