A good way to implement the idea of “eating clean” is to make sure you are shopping smart. The dummy-proof rule for shopping smart is: Shop the border of the store, not the aisles! Think about what they place around the border of the store: the produce section (veggies and fruits), fresh nuts, the meat and dairy section, and that’s about IT! Conversely, what occupies the central aisles? Boxed items, cereal, soda, frozen dinners and convenience items. These items are purposely pre-packaged to taste delicious by including a higher amount of simple sugars and carbohydrates, more dietary fat, more sodium, and more preservatives. These items will never do your body as well as natural foods.

When shopping, make sure you have a pre-planned list. Do NOT just wander into the store with a “mental list” of what you think you need, and then allow impulse to pull you in eight different directions. If you stick with a list of healthy items, and don’t deviate, it will be impossible to pick up all the garbage.

Also, do NOT shop on an empty stomach! If you know you have to go grocery shopping in an hour and you haven’t eaten in a while, MAKE SURE YOU EAT A HEALTHY MEAL BEFORE YOU GO! The human animal, while very sophisticated and intelligent, is STILL an animal! If you are ravenous and you smell items in the bakery, you WILL cave to them, regardless of will power and oaths to the contrary! Besides, why put yourself through the misery? If you are full of nutritious food, you will not be NEARLY as likely to be lured to bad choices while shopping.

Insofar as you have to shop the aisles for various items (like bread, cereal, food for the kids, whatever), you will probably have to get into the habit of reading nutrition labels. This doesn’t mean you have to be a label-hound for the rest of your life. But doing so for a short period of time can be very educational and help you to make better choices for you and your family. Stick to these rules:

1) When you pick up an item, first check to see the total calories per serving, and how large that serving actually is. The serving size on certain foods can be incredibly deceptive. Think for a second about the last time you had pasta for dinner. The correct portion size for pasta is ½ cup! That is incredibly small! The American Diabetes Association would recommend dividing up a pasta meal so that your plate was merely ¼ pasta, ¼ lean meat (poultry, fish, or read meat), and ½ watery, non-starchy vegetables (http://my.clevelandclinic.org/heart/prevention/askdietician/portionsize.aspx). Beginning to pay attention to portion size can be eye-opening, to say the least.

2) Look at how much protein is contained in the item, and then compare the percentage of protein to carbohydrates and fats. Remember, carbohydrates turn into sugar in the body, and the more sugar present, the higher one’s insulin levels will be. We want to control blood sugar and insulin so we can be in a state of fat loss, and one way to do that is to include protein at every meal. If the item in question has no protein and is pure carbs, you will have to combine it with a protein source at your meal to make the meal metabolically optimal.

3) Look at the ingredient list. Again, this comes back to the idea of “eating clean”. If the ingredient list is populated with thirty names that you can’t begin to pronounce, chances are good that it’s much more of a “food product” than a true food. If the ingredient list, by contrast, is fairly simple and common-sense, you can at least be confident that you know the source of the nutrients contained.