Eating healthier doesn’t just happen by accident. You have to plan for it to make it happen. Part of that plan should involve the food you already have on hand and making a list of food that you need to stock your pantry with in order to bolster and ensure your success in the future of your weight loss journey. In today’s article, we’re talking about just that! Tips on revamping your pantry to help you and your family eat healthier.
Out With The Old
For many of us, if not all of us, if you are not currently eating healthy and want to lose weight, then you probably have a pantry full of unhealthy items. We may hesitate to throw these things away because wasting perfectly good food is like throwing money down the drain, but we have to break a few eggs in order to make this proverbial omelet. If you really don’t want to toss your current supply of unhealthy food, then you can box it up and donate it to your local food pantry or homeless shelter.
Start by going through your pantry and tossing out everything that is easily considered junk food, like prepackaged cookies, potato chips, sugar cereal, candy, and so on and so forth. You will also need to ditch the sugary drinks, even diet soda! Get rid of any sodas, fruit juices (those can have more sugar than sodas!), and any other packaged drink item that isn’t milk or water.
If you have other highly processed meat food items like potted meats, frozen dinners, hot dogs, then you can just go ahead and toss those too. Those are not nutritionally viable and contain way too much sodium.
In With The New And Healthy Foods!
Once you have purged your pantry of the bad stuff, it’s time to start bringing in the good! Start by doing an audit of your spice collection. Spices are all typically zero calories and go a long way, of course, to adding flavor to food. Toss out any spices that are older than a year or anything else that is showing signs of being out of date. Then, it’s time to stock up! Here is a good spice starter list:
- Kosher Salt
- White Pepper
- Fresh Ground Black Pepper
- Garlic Powder
- Onion Powder
- Cumin
- Coriander
- Paprika
- Oregano
- Basil
- Za’atar
- Sumac
- Cinnamon
Other Pantry Staples To Consider
- Grains And Rice
- Whole grain wheat flour
- Steel cut oats
- Organic whole grain pasta (multiple types)
- White rice
- Brown rice
- Canned Goods
- Low sodium canned vegetables
- Canned tuna
- Canned chicken
- Canned beans like black beans, pinto beans, cannellini beans, garbanzo beans, fava beans, and others
- Low sodium refried beans
- Canned lentils
- Pasta sauces
- Broths and stocks (low sodium)
- Regular olive oil and Extra virgin olive oil (the regular for cooking and the Extra virgin for use on salads, dips for bread, etc.)
- Assorted roasted nuts for snacks
For The Road
We hope you enjoyed learning about revamping your pantry. If you would like to know more about this or anything else along these lines, we are happy to help. Just contact us and we can go over your options and help you find the best path for your health and nutrition goals. Schedule a consultation for any of our amazing services by reaching out to us here. We look forward to hearing from you.
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