Hey friends Bradley here, we all know that one of the major factors to your health and fitness is your eating habits and that all starts with the supermarket. We all know that if you buy good food, you are going to eat good food. So today I’m going to give everyone my 6 rules of success at the supermarket.

Rule #1: Shop The Perimeter. All the best foods are found in the outside aisles. Your fruits, veggies, your lean meats, your eggs and your dairy. The only reason that you should be going to those inner aisles is for your coffee, organic oils and cleaning supplies. Other than that the bulk of your time should be spent on the outer perimeter of the store.

Rule #2: Look High Look Low. It’s no secret that all of these companies with all of these commercials and marketing campaigns are in the middle shelves because they are paying for that eye level space. If you have to be in there look towards the higher or lower shelves that may contain food that is better for your health. Such as organic oils etc. etc.

Rule # 3: More Packaged Less Nutrition. The more processed, the more refined the food is the more we strip away essential nutrients and the more we get empty calories and filler foods. We want to avoid these types of when at all possible. Here at Optimal we do not promote packaged, processed foods in everyday diets.

Rule # 4: Label Lingo. Watch those labels. Do you know the difference between whole wheat and multi-grain? If you haven’t answered yet, you probably don’t know the answer. These companies are highly marketed to have slogans and have sayings to fool us into thinking foods are healthy when they really aren’t. We all know an apple is healthy, but it doesn’t say healthy on the sticker because it doesn’t need to. If a food is actually healthy for you, why would it have to promote it as being healthy? Don’t get fooled by these high level commercialized companies. If something has to pronounce itself as being “healthy” make sure you look into that and really find out if it really is a healthy food or not.

Rule # 5: Shoot For The Single. We want to eat single ingredient foods as much as possible. If you are eating packaged foods with multiple ingredients make sure you know what those ingredients are and if you can’t pronounce the ingredient or if you don’t know what it is than there is a very good chance that it is not good for you.

Rule #6: Go Full: When you go to the grocery store on a full stomach it’s a lot easier to control yourself around all of that junk food that is around you. Don’t even temp yourself and take my advice by eating a nice big salad before you go!

So that right there is my six rules for shopping at the supermarket. That’s all I got for you today.

Thank you,

Bradley B. Becker B.A. CPT-NASM (USARMY)

Medical Exercise Program Director

Optimal Health Medical Fitness,

Weight Loss of Naperville, Personal Training of Naperville, Regenerative Medicine of Naperville,