Grocery Shopping

Your kitchen plays an important role in your weight loss effort. So does planning. I use this menu planner to help build my shopping list and plan out my meals. Planning meals ahead of time just makes life so much easier & helps me stay on track. I get asked a lot about what I eat & with Weight Watchers, I can eat normal food, I just try to make smarter choices. These are some of my favorites that I usually have on hand all the time. This picture may look like ingredients for a very weird recipe but it's just some of my favorite foods!
1.Sara Lee 45 & Delightful. 2 slices are 2 Points Plus Value (PPV). More pricey but worth it.
2. Hillshire Farms Pastrami lunch meat. Hands down my favorite lunch meat.
3.A little hidden but under the Pastrami is salsa. I LOVE salsa!! This kind is Mrs. Renfro's Ghostpepper salsa, it's super hot, just the way I like it!
4. Oscar Mayer Real Bacon Bits. 1 tablespoon is 1 PPV. I love putting this on my eggs or in salads, I even cook up fresh green beans with onions and sprinkle this in. Super good!
5. Diet Gingerale is my all time favorite drink right now, then Coke Zero.
6.Tyson Grilled Chicken Strips. These are amazing. I heat them up & put Frank's Red Hot sauce and put it over rice, or BBQ sauce and baked potato. Teriyaki and pineapple chunks & stirfry. I just like these because I can take what I need & keep the rest in the freezer.
7. Trader Joes Plain Non-fat Greek Yogurt is my favorite plain greek yogurt that I've found. I use it in place of sour cream. I put it on everything.
8. String Cheese, my go-to snack when I'm in a jam. My favorite is the black pepper <3
9. Land O Lakes Light Butter....This stuff is soooo good! 1 tbsp is 1 PPV & it's spreads super easy.
10.. Morning Star Soy Crumbles. SO GOOD!! I use it in place of ground beef.
11. Laughing Cow Light cheese, my favorite flavor is the queso, these are good in place of mayo, good with hamburgers or I use it to dip carrots or celery in it.
12. Silk Light Chocolate Soymilk. This stuff tastes so good and is 2 PPV per serving.

Besides fruits & veggies for snacks, which I have on a nice fruit stand on my counter ready to go.

I usually have these on hand:

1. Quaker Popped chips, these are yummy & I like to throw them into my lunch bag.

2.Special K Multi Grain crackers, for only 3 PPV you get a nice serving size of 24, as opposed to Ritz where you get only 15 crackers for 6 PPV.

3. Jolly Time Healthy Pop. Believe it or not, I do not buy this because it is WW endorsed, I buy it because it's less expensive & I usually have a coupon, besides that it's yummy! Popcorn is a great snack, I add different seasonings to spruce it up in awhile. I also love to eat mine with jalapenos. Bit of advice, don't eat it the day before a weigh in or you'll likely be up on the scale. 

4.Fiber One Brownie bars. The Peanut Butter ones are nasty, the cookie ones are okay but the original brownie. Bomb.com. I am addicted to these.

5. Trader Joes Cinnamon Apple straws, there is another brand that makes these, I believe their brand is called "Simple Servings", they're in the chip aisle, that you can get at Wal-mart, they were sold out so I picked these up instead. If I'm craving something sweet, these are my go-to.

My tools! Measuring is super important when you first start out because then you realize what a real serving should be, yes, you might be surprised what you think a serving was. I use mine all the time! When you measure, make sure you skim off the top and make it a true measurement! Underneath the measuring cups is my digital scale. This particular one is WW's and it tells me the PPV of items & I can store items in there too, which is great if you're a WW member but if you're not, any food scale works. I really like the digital ones though, this is a life saver when it comes to measuring things out like chips, pasta, meats, etc. I also pictured my WW calculator, which if you're not a member, then you don't need this tool. Baggies! When I am done grocery shopping I chop up my celery, cucumbers & divide up my baby carrots into snack baggies so they're ready & on hand to go in my crisper drawer.

Here is what my grocery list and menu plan looks likes, my snacks are not planned out, which is also nice to do sometimes but I don't always have time to think about that so I try to make my snacks as easy & grab & go as possible.I go grocery shopping once per pay period. Produce is where the bulk of my food budget goes. This list is particularly light because I got my tax return last pay period and was able to stock up on a lot of stuff so I did not need a lot. 

Some other tips for grocery shopping:

Stick to your list, don't shop hungry & chew gum! That way you're not tempted to try samples or break into a box early & snack. I'll be posting tomorrow after I weigh in! Adios :)