Grocery Shopping Tips

My mother has always cooked at home and going to the grocery store with her as a child was one of my favorite errands. To me cooking is a sign of love and devotion, perhaps its our Italian roots (uh, yeah definitely our Italian roots).  I have always loved helping in the kitchen, so sometimes I take for granted the ability to grocery shop, whip up a quick dinner or my swiftness in a kitchen setting. Oh yeah not to mention, in college I took about a billion hours of nutrition and food courses that made me feel pretty comfortable with cooking - that one time I almost burned down the food lab kitchen making fudge does not display my abilities, I promise.

All in all, food to me is easy. It makes sense. It just clicks in my brain. I don't always understand how or why, but it does. So when my patients ask me how to grocery shop or cook - at first I used to look at them with a blank stare. My response, "Uhh..." until I started thinking...How do I grocery shop and how do I cook?"

My first thought tip is always...trial and error. Don't be afraid to make mistakes and when in doubt put the oven on 350 degrees. These skills take patience and I am not a patient person so I know you can do it.

Below are some of my grocery store shopping tips...

1. Plan, plan, plan - look at your week ahead and determine how many dinners and lunches you will likely fix. Make a list!

2. Plan for 2-3 easy grab and go breakfast. I am not a morning person so I always get individual oatmeal or yogurt/granola/berries.

3. Get at least 2 options for lunches - I always get items for a turkey sandwich, bring left overs from the night before, or items for a salad.

4. Make sure you have plenty of shelf stable items - this will prevent you from not having a starch, vegetable etc. Yes I prefer fresh, but life sometimes needs self stable items.

5. Watch out for marketing....end of the isles, special displays, just avoid them unless it is an item you typically purchase.

6. Do not go down isles unless an item on your list is in that isle. I am bad about this one, I always add unnecessary items to my cart which can get expensive.

7. Stay away from pre -washed, bagged, or cut fruits and vegetables. You are paying for the labor. I always cut fruit right when I get home and sometimes even portion into containers for lunches. That way it is not such a hassle.

8. Don't be afraid of the freezer. If you don't use a protein that week just toss it in the freezer when you realize and use it for the next week.

9. Get your grocery store's app, you can connect it to your reward card which puts coupons directly on the card so when you buy those items you receive the discount. Not going to lie, I love the Kroger App - sometimes they have specials on the app that you won't receive in the store.

10. Check out this article for more tricks - http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/spendingandborrowing/biggest-shopping-mistakes-at-the-supermarket/ss-BBivk71?ocid=iehp

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Recipe Inspiration

I love trying new recipes, but it definitely takes more time than preparing my go to meals. You know its been way to long when my fiancé asks when I am going to try something new out again...so I have been collecting recipes recently so when I find the time I already have some ideas.  (Click images to get recipes)

Cleanses & Juice Fasts

Well as you probably have guessed there is a new diet fad.  I cannot count the number of times people ask me about cleanses/juicing/juice fasts. Bottom line: I do NOT recommend any cleanse, fast, juice fast, etc for any person for a handful of reasons.

1. There is ZERO scientific evidence that cleanses or juice fasts do anything beneficial for your body and they can actually cause quite a bit of harm.

2. You will probably have diarrhea. Diarrhea can cause the body to not absorb the nutrients in our food. Having several bouts of diarrhea through out the day might make you feel as if you are losing weight or “cleaning toxins” from your body, but that is completely false. Also no food specifically creates toxins in your intestines. Lets leave cleaning toxins from our body to our kidneys and our liver. It is what they are designed to do.

3. Dehydration. When an individual has diarrhea for a length of time the body is not reabsorbing enough water in the GI tract.

4. Potentially not enough total calories, carbohydrates, protein, and/or fat to provide your body with what it needs on a daily basis. Although some fasts and cleanses do promise that you are consuming x amount of calories, most are lacking in one, if not more, macronutrient. Inadequate macronutrient content can lead to slowing of your metabolism, muscle wasting, and break down of organ tissue to use as energy … just to name a few.

5. Vitamin and mineral deficiencies out the wazzoo. Many people may think that vitamin and mineral deficiencies would not be a problem because a lot of the time the cleanse/fast consists of fruits and vegetables, but we get a lot of a vitamins and minerals from dairy, grains, meat, fish, etc. Also if we do not have enough dietary fat in our diet our bodies cannot absorb certain vitamins.

6. Lack of protein. Protein is the building block of our bodies and you cannot meet your protein needs with green leafy vegetables. There may be some protein, but no where near enough.

7. Cleanses and fasts decrease your body’s metabolism. Any time we do not eat adequate amounts of food our body goes into starvation mode. This means that the body decreases its daily energy needs (read: burns less calories) in order to conserve energy.

8. The weight loss you see is most likely from fluid loss and muscle wasting. Muscle wasting is caused by the breakdown of protein stores to be used as energy.

9. You will gain back the weight you lost once you resume normal eating (See number 8 again).

10. You will have increased physiological and psychological cravings for food because you are not meeting your needs, which will likely result in a binge.

I hope you find this helpful and please feel free to comment with any further questions!