Back when I was losing weight, I shopped like this:

• Bulk vegetable purchases at a wholesaler, Canton Foods.
• Low cost meats at Food 4 Less.
• Greens from Chinese markets.
• Occasional shopping at Grocery Outlet.
• Low carb snacks from Dollar Tree.

My recent pattern is like this:

• Go with my mom to Japanese stores, one is small and the other is large. She buys what she wants.
• Go with my mom to Walmart. She buys what she wants.

We have a dysfunctional pattern, where she over-purchases, and buys carby foods, and then “force feeds” the good non-carby food to me via nagging. I react by sometimes eating the carby food. She has control issues, but so do I.

I also sometimes pick up orders for R. This isn’t a problem, but aggravates me because her shopping habits are pretty bad. It’s overwhelmingly carbohydrates, and sometimes includes things like breakfast cereal.

The main problem I have right now is snacking. When I don’t have enough “safe” snacks around, I’ll eat what’s around, which includes all the high-carb foods.

I also found myself eating more fast food, because I didn’t carry a supply of snacks.

So, what are ways to wind back to the earlier patterns that helped?

• Proactively purchase vegetables, to keep the overall quantity of vegetable leftovers high, so I can snack on veggies.
• Proactively purchase peanuts – my main snack food. Peanuts are great because they are filling, have potassium (good for heart health), and taste great.
• Buy the discount meat again.

I also need to add features of the DASH diet to reduce sodium and saturated fats.

Most importantly, I need to get the food diary and scale out again.