Tales of a Love-Hate Relationship

Grocery shopping Love In:

Bring it on. Where are we going today?  I am looking to get some good foods for some new recipes. Have we been to Whole Foods lately? C’mon, get in the car and bring the environmentally friendly bags! I’m shopping hungry, my favourite time…Let’s do this!

Grocery shopping Hate On:

Ugh. Not tonight. Now now. Why did we leave it so long. I am tired, grumpy, wanting to get home to watch Modern Family. You go. No, you go. The kids NEED lunch stuff. Okay, let’s do this….sigh.

The Reality

Get the point? Yep, and in both cases bad decisions are made. Think about it. You have time and you’re happy to be there, you get ‘handsy’ with the treats and generous to the kids wishes. Also, you find yourself at a gourmet type store like Pusateri’s or Whole Foods and you’re buying up the stuff that you don’t normally cook for yourself forgetting to even consider it’s ingredients.

Or, you are pressed for time and you grab a can of Pam, spray the grocery cart wheels to speed them up and zoom through the aisles following or not following a list but just popping stuff in the cart trying to get out as fast as possible. You end up at home wondering why the hell you bought some of the things you did.

Even Farmer’s Markets have their share of vendors whom peddle tasty baked good, pastries, ‘good for you’ breads, that are no more than glorified white breads with things like cheese in them. There’s alway someome selling sweets.

Needless to say, I enjoy the times when we have time and energy and treat it like an adventure, a day trip if you will. We have gotten pretty good at reading labels. We have built up a fairly vast knowledge of what certain foods should and shouldn’t have so this week’s challenge to compare brands was already in our brain’s data-banks.  That and I was too busy/lazy this week to actually tabulate anything!

So Anita was away and it was I that shopped this week. Of course, under the pretense that we NEEDED lunch stuff. Since we’ve been doing well lately with our eating habits and lifestyle choices, I was in control and didn’t want to break the good streak I am on. Cam, our 10 yr old and I were in and out in 25 minutes including checkout and the worst thing we got was potato wedges. We were en route to Cam’s hockey game and he was looking for a quick hot snack to get him through until after the game so I let it slide. I was good and stayed away whereas I would have, in the past, consumed half the box! Most of what else we bought was not packaged other than the breads where we have been sticking to multi grain and 100% wheat varieties. Snacks were fruit, fruit and fruit. Our house has been a safe zone lately with nothing to accidentally, mindlessly consume. That’s the way I like it. The kids can live with it as long as we cut up the fruit for them.

If you have yet to read Ace Your Health,  please do so. It’s worth it for so many reasons, as a guide book among other things but this week, chapter ’9 of Spades’ has a great list of what you should be putting in your grocery cart along with where in the book you can read about the reasons they are good choices.

Next week, things get tough. I am in Australia for an all inclusive food and drink work conference. Anitais home with the kids to feed, cart around and well, it won’t be easy. Let’s see how disciplined we can be!

Dave & Anita

At age 43 and neither unfit, nor of perfect health, we have a lifestyle that requires constant focus. The “go, go, go” lifestyle of a being working parents gets the better of us. 5 years ago, we made major life decisions to quit smoking and get healthy, which for the most part has been successful. Anita, is an outstanding partner in our busy lifestyle and manages to be a dedicated mother. As a full time worker who travels regularly, she is no stranger to the dangers of living the life where meals are being fit into tiny windows of time each day. Together, we are making this journey even more interesting as we move through the Ace Your Health program and share how they apply it applies to our entire family. As a recreational runners, you can follow along to see how this quest of 'Ace Your Health' improves our marathon performances - click here to visit my running and fitness blog

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