Food Shopping

Following this newly strict eating discipline has made me change my shopping habits. I had gotten in a rut so I could wisk through the aisles on autopilot, with just a quick glance at my list before beginning.

Now, I'm really focusing on those fresh vegies. Buying fruit for the rest of the family, but greens for me. I'm having to think through complete meals instead of dishes. It slows me down, but I need this level of planning and concentration to not end up with nothing I either can or want to eat.

I do most of my food shopping at Whole Foods despite the expense. I buy organic often, but only when its as easy as conventional. (It's less about my health than the impact on the earth and health of the farmworkers for me.) I don't stick to local there - not much to choose from in our grey fields. So bumping up the green food, this week I got:
- two big boxes of ready to go salad greens, plus one of spinach for my egg cheese casserole
- avocados on sale
- snow peas and other stuff for a stir fry
- matchstick zucchini to go with spaghetti
- spaghetti squash
- cauliflower for making pureed cauliflower with cheese (like mashed potatoes)
- Meyer lemons for juice
- blueberries for a special treat

That took a long time and wandering around and backtracking.  Then to the meat - I try to only buy all my poultry and much of the rest of my meat at Whole Foods based on animal welfare - though many of the high protein diet folks talk about the much higher value we get from animals raised on their natural foods.  By then I was tired and ready to quit. Last week I spent long minutes examining the labels of sauces and salad dressing looking for minimal carbs. I don't buy foods labeled low carb - they generally have some form of fake sugar in them. Instead, I look for use of ingredients that don't include sugar or starch. There are sauces made that way, but they will sit on the shelf right next to a sauce sweetened or smoothed out with ingredients I don't want.

Whew. I need to develop some new habits. I need to know which bottles to reach for on the shelf. I need to be in a rhythm of "spaghetti on Tues, get the zucchini, stirfry on Thursday, make sure you've got the greens".  This will speed things up and make it less burdensome.

So sure enough, two weeks is not enough to make a new habit, but is about the maximum period I can sustain the focus and consciousness of how I want to be eating. I ended up last night with nothing cooked and nothing planned - so dinner for me was deviled eggs and avocado. I've got stuff for breakfast now for the week, some tuna for fall back lunches, and need to start up cooking dinners to make sure I've got the leftovers for the rest of lunches.