Healthy Grocery Shopping – Follow This 1 Simple Rule

Stop for a moment and think about the areas in the grocery store that you shop most. Do you find yourself going up and down all the aisles mostly? Do you tend to avoid the aisles and shop around the perimeter?

Healthy Grocery Shopping

As I briefly alluded to in The Don’t Diet Diet, where you shop is highly correlated to your dieting success. Healthy grocery shopping involves shopping for foods that are found around the perimeter of the grocery store. These are the foods that tend to go bad after a while. They usually need to be refrigerated. If you want success, this is the area you need to be shopping in.

So what foods do we typically find if we were to walk around the perimeter? Well, if we were to take a virtual walk through my grocery store of choice (Whole Foods), you will walk in and find fresh produce. Organic fruits and vegetables are abound. There’s plenty of negative calorie foods, along with tubers (potatoes) and other freshly picked foods.  If we keep going, you will see fresh meat of all kinds, from fish to chicken to beef to even more exotic meats. As we keep walking, we come to the dairy section. I see milk, cheese, and omega-3 eggs.

Healthy Grocery Shopping Foods

Every one of these foods is packed with essential fats and nutrients that your body requires to survive, let alone run at an optimal metabolism. They have omega-3s and omega-6s, and they have abundant protein and fiber. They have all the necessary vitamins and minerals. Most importantly, they don’t have what you don’t need. They don’t have foreign “objects” that your body doesn’t recognize. They don’t have hydrogenated oils, they aren’t packed with sugar, and they definitely aren’t processed (man-made).

Here is a list of the world’s healthiest foods. Look over it and you will realize that the majority of these foods are found around the perimeter of the store. Most of them don’t even have a food label on them. That right there is a sure sign that you are eating something healthy.

Are there items in the aisles that you may want to eat? Of course. These tend to be whole grains or legumes. But 90% of what you find in the aisles of a grocery store is processed food, and if your diet mainly consists of these so called “foods”, you will never reach your goals of a healthy lifestyle, nor achieve the body of your dreams.

So the next time you try to do some healthy grocery shopping, look at how your grocery store is laid out. Take some time to familiarize yourself with the foods that are around the perimeter, and start making different choices when it comes to what goes into your body. Where have you been doing most of your shopping?