Friend of Julie: The Grocery Store

I found enlightenment at the grocery store last night...

photo source: The Lost Girls

My plan last night was to buy ingredients to make two new recipes: Crock-Pot Shredded Beef Tacos and Grilled Chicken Skewers. I had my list of ingredients for both recipes in Evernote, a great app that stores all the notes I used to write on tiny pieces of paper and then could never find later when I needed them; I can access Evernote from any computer, my iPad, and my iPhone. I love Evernote!

By the time I stepped into the grocery store it was some time past 6 pm and I immediately realized didn't have enough steam to buy the ingredients or to cook up a storm. I decided I would shop like a European and just buy the items for dinner.  Plus, I'm going out to dinner tonight (Outback - which I love, love, love, now that I'm a meat eater) so it didn't make sense to buy so much food. Those recipes will wait a few more days, perhaps Friday night or over the weekend. I'll post recipes and photos after I make them.

Meanwhile, back to my shopping experience. I looked at my shopping list and decided all the items could wait a few more days and closed my iPhone. Okay, so what's for dinner? Walking along the hot section of  BigY. Fried chicken? No thank you? Baked chicken? No, I've been cooking real chicken for so long now these store bought pre-cooked chickens no longer taste good to me and I end up tossing most of the chicken. I used to eat them weekly. No other hot foods were available, so I continued down the isle to where they had all kinds of chicken wings, ready to be heated up. Yes, chicken wings will do just fine!

Next, I went into the veggie isle and I grabbed a small package of snap peas. It's been ages since I've had them. I headed over to the other side of the store, picked up a few more items, and then proceeded to the checkout.

When I arrived at the checkout area and there were three checkout options. Option one: two guys with an overfilled large grocery cart who were just beginning to put items on the conveyor belt, as someone ahead of them finished emptying their cart. Option two: eight people with small carts full of items. Option three: too far away for me to debate fast enough before someone with a large cart full of groceries stepped into that line. I went with option one.

As I waited for them to finish unloading their cart, I tried to keep busy looking at magazines, but the magazines were boring.

Sigh.

At some point, I felt as if I had entered the Twilight zone, as it seemed like their cart would never empty. It was then that I started to look at what they were buying: junk food, all junk food. I won't name names (labels), but suffice it to say there was nothing there that's on my program. Most items were large colorful bags full of crispy things and air or from the bakery. I could only imagine they are either going to or having a party, but my goodness, what a lot of crap!

The closest thing to protein was hot dogs, I saw buns and then searched to see what they were going to put in them. Oh, they had yogurt too. The kind that has a separate container on top with pebbles of toppings. Nothing in their cart was anything I used to eat, I was more of a Ben & Jerry's kind of girl.

I waited in anticipation to see their total, Meanwhile, there was finally room for me to put my items on the belt: chicken wings, 1 yogurt, 1 stick of pepperoni, 1 package of cottage cheese, and snap peas.

Cha-ching! Their total was just over $300 of junk food!

No wonder Americans have an obesity problem! Both of these guys were skinny, but I wondered what the people at the party looked like.

This morning, as I write this, I think about what my grocery cart used to look like and what others in line may have been thinking about what I was buying, which was sugar, sugar, sugar. I would switch up the place I bought dinner, so "they" wouldn't see me night after night buying Ben & Jerry's. I didn't buy $300 worth of junk food at one pop, but I certainly spent more than that in a month, little by little, one quart at a time. Well, unless it was on sale.

The chicken wings, by the way, were horrible. I should have ordered them at Pizza Palace of Granby, where they make incredible Buffalo wings for less money than the horrible wings I bought from BigY. Good thing I had that pepperoni and cottage cheese to fill the void, as most of the chicken was nasty.

Enlightenment can happen anywhere, even in line at the grocery store. My moment of enlightenment was a reminder of yet another area of my life that has changed. Ben & Jerry's used to be what's for dinner, night after night (hey, I switched up the flavor - most nights).  Today, sugar is no longer my main course, my middle name, or my first name. Sugar no longer calls me by name. I'm no longer an obese woman who spends money on junk food.

What about you? What's different in your life today than when you began this weight loss journey?