I had today off from school, so I volunteered to go grocery shopping with my Mom!
If you've never read my blog before I recently went through a lifestyle change and I am living a much healthier, happier life! I've attempted to get my family on board, but with two grown men in the house who don't necessarily have to worry about their weight, tempting food is always in the fridge/freezer.
One of my biggest problems is that I am ALWAYS on the go! I'm sure several of you can agree with me that this is the biggest hurdle in dieting. I need something I can pack in a hurry when I'm running late and when I get home I just want to grab something quick so I can sit down. Keep in mind that a lot of those prepackaged "quick" foods that may be low in calories are usually loaded with sugars and have little to no nutrients.
So, after Mom and I got back from the grocery store I decided that I was going to fix this problem to make it convenient and easy to make healthy choices on the go!
Mom always mentions when we are shopping that we have all these foods we never eat and it just goes bad. I realized that it's just at the bottom of the freezer or covered up in the fridge, so my first step was to take everything out of the fridge and make it visible!
Pull everything to the front of the refrigerator. If you have things that get pushed back to the back they are forgotten about and spoil. Try to have some sort of organization to it as well. I put breakfast foods on one shelf, dairy on the other, drinks down low, and of course, the vegetables, fruit, and meat all have their own drawer.
For the refrigerator we had to think a little differently. We could just pull the healthy food to the front and the not so healthy to the back because we simply don't have enough space. What we decided was instead of throwing out all the unhealthy frozen foods -- pizza rolls, frozen burritos, breaded chicken, etc., we would take it out to the freezer in the garage! BRILLIANT! Especially for those who aren't on a diet! The unhealthy food is still available, they just have to walk to the garage to get it! Win - Win!
Here is a shot of the bottom drawer!
Now that everything is visible, let's talk about convenience. For me, if I can't grab it and go I'm not eating it unless it's on the weekend when I have time to prepare food.
To fix this I decided to organize and prepare food as I was putting it away. For the freezer I put the healthy frozen fruits and vegetables on the top rack so it would be the first place I saw and could reach.
For the refrigerator I prepared and cut the fruit and vegetables before I put them away so I would be more willing to grab those kinds of foods rather than the 100 calorie snacks, or prepackaged foods.
For example, I went ahead and cut the broccoli and celery for quick go-to snacks. I also picked the grapes off the stems and peeled and cut kiwi. The 2 kiwi we had had been sitting in their for over a week! Let's see how fast they go now!
By preparing these healthy foods I'm more likely to grab them when I'm packing my lunch/dinner in the mornings.
Hopefully this helps someone out! I'm excited, but then again anything that makes my daily tasks quicker and more convenient makes me excited! Haha!
