At HotFit, we love fitness. When you challenge your body through cardio, weight training, and self-defense courses, you see benefits in three-hundred-sixty degrees: you feel, move, think, look, and act better. Set aside the purely physical benefits: the discipline and self-control you develop will spill over to every metric of your life. Training, though, is only twenty-five percent of the equation: to be truly fit, you need to eat right. But where does that begin? How do you shop? How do you prepare a grocery list that will keep you ready to move, better-positioned for fitness growth, and skinnier? Read on for tips on how to prepare your fit grocery list.
What’re You Doing Now?
First, you might want to get a pencil and paper. Why? Because you need to quantify what you’re eating now and how you shop for food. What do you eat or drink too much of? What are your non-negotiables when it comes to food? If you can’t get to sleep without crackers and cheese, write it down. If your soft drink or alcohol budget is out of control, start documenting it. A catastrophic change in your diet might not stick. Telling yourself, “I’m only eating salads for the next three weeks” is psychological torture of the highest degree. Sometimes you’re better off redirecting what you eat. A better way of putting it: Record your bad habits so you can replace them with better ones.
Plan for Change
Now that you know what you’re doing, it’s time to strategize what you can do better. You don’t need to be a nutrition expert to improve how you eat. If you’d like that, HotFit can help. If you want general tips for how to “do better tomorrow,” keep reading.
Gorge on Greens
Most Americans’ diets would vastly improve if they ate more vegetables. Pick some greens you like and add them to your list. Does this mean you have to go full vegan? No. However, adding more green stuff to your palate is all upside. There’s a near-bottomless list of vitamins, flavonoids, fibers, and antioxidants you can’t get from a meat-and-potatoes-alone diet. They support heart health, cognition, digestion, muscle recovery, and more. We don’t have the space to get into specifics here. “Eat your vegetables,” though, is the most uncomplicated, most-often-repeated, and least-followed advice in diet-dom.
Pitch What’s Processed
As you put together your shopping list, think about the nasty processed foods you buy all the time. Now, switch them out for fresh ones. Do you stock up on lunch meat? Try chicken breasts instead. Big on soda? Consider tea or coffee. Margarine lover? Trade it for butter; it tastes better anyway. Frozen dinners? You’re much better off taking an extra ten minutes and cooking something less ‘packaged.’ Boxed cereals for breakfast? Steel-cut oatmeal or even eggs.
Snack Sensibly
Snacks can kill us. If you keep Tostito’s in your pantry, munch on M & Ms, or snap into Slim Jims, you might have found the biggest weakness in your diet’s armor. As you prepare your shopping list and plan how you’ll eat through the day, preparing to snack better could be the best decision you ever make. Consider adding these tidbits to your grocery list this week: almonds, fruits, vegetables, small servings of cheese, cottage cheese with fruit. Simply trading a Swiss Roll from the vending machine for an apple can work wonders on your blood chemistry.
Careful With Condiments
What’s your fave special sauce? It’s probably the most overlooked aspect of your diet: the condiments you put on sandwiches, hamburgers, hot dogs, salad, etc. The number one best-selling condiment in America? Ketch—nope, mayonnaise. It’s fantastic stuff; most of us wouldn’t dream of eating a sandwich without that delicious mesh of eggs and olive oil. But it’s also one of the fattiest foods money can buy. Ketchup? It’s less tomato than you think: mostly, it’s sugar, salt, and a checklist of ‘processed food’ ingredients that do you dirty. Salsa’s often a good choice—the more common ones, though, might be too sugary. If you want to improve your diet simply by shopping better, buying slightly different condiments might be the easiest, cleverest thing you can do. Check out this post from The Food Network for tips on shopping smart for them.
Conclusion
Planning how you eat is the most critical decision you can make for your overall health. Make your fit grocery list count. The second-best decision? Planning how you move. HotFit NYC is a whole-health-focused personal training and fitness center on East 75th Street in Manhattan. You’ll find kickboxing, self-defense courses, yoga, general fitness, and more. Above all, you’ll discover coaches that push for success in exercise and diet. Call now at (212) 933-4847 and take the first step in meeting your fitness goals.