Are you tired of rummaging through cluttered cabinets?
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Do you know what is in your pantry and where it is or does it look like a grocery aisle exploded?
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What is that in the back of the fridge or in the bottom drawer? It might be too scary to touch!
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Are the foods in your pantry and fridge setting you up for success?
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Meeting your nutrition goals starts in your kitchen.
Healthy eaters have healthy homes, because, as John Berardi, PhD, CSCS, co-founder Precision Nutrition, likes to say “If it is in your home, either you, someone you love, or someone you marginally tolerate is going to eat it.” If our goal is to be healthy and lead more fulfilling lives, then we need to make sure our environment supports our goals.
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I recommend at least once a month cleaning and organizing your pantry and fridge. Not only does this clear the clutter and lighten our load, but I find that you waste less food if you get into the habit of de-cluttering once a month. The first time you do this can be a little time consuming; I would maybe plan two to three hours your first time. After that, I find my de-cluttering in my kitchen takes about 15-20 minutes once a month.
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Step 1: Revisit Your Goals
(Before you even open your pantry or fridge)
Is your goal fat loss? Maybe it’s gaining muscle? Either way, we need foods that support those goals in our home for easy access. We need to make foods like lean proteins, veggies, and smart carbohydrates a priority.
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Grab a piece a paper and write down your goal. After that make three sections on your paper and label them:
- What Food Stays and Why?
- What Food Goes and Why?
- What Foods maybe need to be added and Why?
If you’re looking to lose fat, then a kitchen stocked with cookies, ice-cream, and candy is not going to help you reach your goals. No matter how much motivation and will-power you think you might have, most of our food decisions have nothing to do with hunger but are dependent on our feelings and emotions. The junk food comforts us in some way, and if it’s in our home then we will be comforted with it late at night watching re-runs of How I Met Your Mother.
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We then break our food choices into Red Light, Yellow Light, and Green Light Foods.
Remember, we do not have rules when it comes to our food choices, but we do make grown-up, informed decisions.
- Red Light Foods
- No-go.
- These foods either make you feel sick, they trigger you to eat too much, they are not a good choice to meet your goals, or they are expired.
- Some examples are: cookies, ice-cream, candy, bread, crackers, cheese, beer or other alcohol.
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- Yellow Light Foods
- Approach with Caution
- You can eat a little bit without feeling ill. You can have them as an OCCASIONAL TREAT, or you can put them in a place in your kitchen that isn’t readily accessible.
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- Green Light Foods
- Go for it.
- Foods that add nutritional value, and directly help us reach our goals.
- Some Examples are: Chicken, spinach, berries, eggs, apples, vegetables, almonds.
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Some Examples from my own kitchen:
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Red Light Foods
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Yellow Light
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Green Light
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Girl Scout Samoas, Ice-Cream (any kind) Ill eat it….the whole thing, Expired Foods, Biscoff Cookies, Beer (mostly I don’t like the rate in which my husband drinks it; so, I don’t buy it often)
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Pasta (I don’t really care for it), Bread (not big on this either), Chocolate, Twizzlers (my husbands..they make me want to vomit from the smell), Simply Dressed Salad Dressings, cheese, Wine
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Salad Greens, Apples, Clementines, Grass Fed, Free Range Beef or Bison, Free Range Chicken or Eggs, Free Range (Heritage) Pork, Vegetables like Peppers, onions, cucumbers, asparagus, fresh green beans, frozen veggies with no sauces.
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Step 2: Grab Trash Bags
Now that you have determined what foods need to stay or go. It is time to purge!
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Step 3: Terminate without remorse. Stay Strong!
Review your list of Red Light foods and purge with a vengeance. You might have feelings that you are wasting food, but are you really? Is it food or is it a chemical shit storm?
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Step 4: Read Every Label
- Does this food come in a bag, box, or plastic package? Purge
- Does it have more than a couple of ingredients? Can you pronounce all of them?
- Example: Most nutritious foods do not have an ingredient list. For example, fresh strawberries say “Strawberry” on the ingredient list if it even has one.
- How far away is this food from what it used to be? If it has been through many steps to become something else….it is not food. Purge.
- Is this food perishable? You want your food to mold. If it doesn’t mold, then you need to purge it.
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Step 5: Trade-offs
- What are you willing to keep or not ready to give up but could make a better choice?
- What is an effective compromise for others in your household?
- Is there a way to arrange food, so everyone wins?
- For example, in my pantry, I have a basket on the top shelf that contains the foods on my yellow light list that I am tempted by. I literally forget it’s there and every month “I find” chocolate. Out of sight, Out of mind.
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Step 6: Re-stock the Kitchen
Take your Green Light food list and make a grocery list. I also like to make a meal plan for the week when considering what is already in my kitchen and what is on my Green Light list. Get the good food in your kitchen!