Your first grocery shopping trip as a Code Red Rebel is quite the experience, isn’t it?
Maybe you’re excited to start your new life…but maybe there’s some overwhelm, too, since most of the foods you were used to eating, and most of the foods we eat on Code Red, are in different sections of the supermarket.
Plus, it’s tempting, when you’re first starting out, to think you need to analyze the crap out of every food label.
To help you ease into grocery shopping as a Code Red Rebel, here are some of my best grocery store tips for making sure Code Red-approved foods are what end up in your shopping cart:
1) You’ll always find Code Red-approved foods in the perimeter of the grocery store. I’m talking vegetables (both fresh and frozen), meat, nuts, eggs, butter, seeds, and seafood. They’ll be on the sides or at/near the back of the store.
The center grocery store aisles are gonna have all the junk, like cereal, sugar, canned crap, and so on. You might find a few things in the center aisles, but again, the outer aisles are where you’re gonna get the bulk of your Code Red-approved foods.
2) Avoid the following “health foods” that aren’t actually healthy:
Granola bars. Those suckers have tons of sugar (which means they spike a ton of insulin); and because of all their chemicals, they also have a shelf life of forever.
Packaged food that can sit on a shelf for a long time without spoiling is not something that’s good for your body! Eat fresh food that’s perishable.
Crackers are another “health” food that isn’t actually healthy. The grains (even if gluten-free) spike insulin (aka the fat-storage hormone) and feed inflammation.
Plus, crackers are typically loaded with inflammatory chemicals.
Fruit juice, another “health food” that’s not healthy, is pure sugar, even when there’s no sugar added to it. Whole fruits include fiber, which mitigates all the fructose to some degree, but even then, it can be a problem. Fructose can only be metabolized by the liver, and the liver can only handle so much before it stores the fructose as fat.
Take the fiber out, so that all you end up with is fruit juice, and you’re really putting your liver through its paces, as well as spiking that blood sugar.
Fruit juice will do the same thing to your kids. If you don’t want them bouncing off the walls, avoid fruit juice for them, too.
Also stay away from cereal, even if the box design goes out of its way to make the cereal sound healthy. (In fact, from here on out, consider it a red flag when cereal box design bends over backwards to sound healthy.)
Cereals are jam-packed with chemicals and preservatives. Most of them are loaded up with sugar, and if they ain’t got sugar, they’ve probably got grains.
Don’t fall for the “high in fiber” claims, either. The fiber you get in in veggies, and in chia seeds and ground flax seed meal, is SO much higher quality. You do NOT need cereal grains to get fiber.
Most protein bars, believe it or not, are TOTAL crap, and loaded with more sugar than a candy bar. It’s pretty shocking.
3) Here’s some specific examples of Code Red weight loss mode foods to get you started:
Nuts! Peanuts are a legume, not a nut, so avoid those in weight loss mode. But you can get macadamia nuts, pecans, cashews, Brazil nuts, walnuts, and almonds, to name just a few.
Seeds. Sunflower, pumpkin, chia, flax – they’re a great way to add crunch. Chia seeds, along with ground flax seed meal, are part of noatmeal! (Quinoa, though technically a seed, is very carb, so we remove it in weight loss mode.)
Eggs and bacon, avocado (including in the form of guacamole), full fat cottage cheese and cream cheese, heavy whipping cream, any meat, and of course, don’t forget seafood – those are all great options, too.
When it comes to fruits, keep it to blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, and huckleberries, and even then, don’t go crazy. Other fruits have too much fructose for weight loss mode; and you can get all the vitamins and nutrients you need from veggies.
For more grocery store hacks for weight loss, watch my video below.
