Our environment affects our nutrition, especially inside our homes. If a “bad” food is within reach, someone within your household will eventually consume it. And, vice versa, if a healthy food is in your household, someone will eventually consume it. 

Keep healthy foods near you and convenient. Keep unhealthy foods away from you and inconvenient. Remember, garbage in equals garbage out. You need quality fuel for your machine. Anything that triggers poor nutrition choices should be eliminated from your environment or kept in a less-convenient location. Figure out what triggers poor choices; reduce and eventually, eliminate. 

Create a structure that promotes good health. When your nutrition is structured, you do not have to think, you can simply execute, which creates simplicity. A clean environment will create ease in clean meal prepping each week. 

Once you develop a routine of keeping healthy foods within your reach, it will quickly become a habit and that will make the difference. 

So, between now and when our upcoming nutrition challenge begins, you should follow these tips to stock and organize your pantry into a healthier one. 

• Create Space: You want your pantry to easily display all of your foods. This will create ease when planning your meal prep for the following week. You should also clean out your spice cabinet and organize it neatly (maybe even alphabetically).
• Use Clear Food Storage Containers: These can be used to display your dry goods, such as flour, nuts, brown rice, etc. Keeps things nice and neat, rather than having bulky boxes or bags in a variety of sizes that fall over and never stay where they need to. If buying new containers doesn’t fit into your budget, cheap baskets from walmart can also do the trick for organizing some of these items.
• Group Similar Items Together: Create a system that you can stick to. No more shuffling through canned goods to figure out if you have what you need. For example: 
  • Top Shelf is for your clear storage containers for dry goods
  • Second Shelf can be for Oils, Vinegars, Condiments, Etc.
  • Third Shelf is for canned goods, nut butters, sauces, anything in a can or jar
  • Bottom Shelf can be used for your kids snacks and/or other treats, because let’s be real…we all know they will manage to sneak into the pantry eventually, BUT let’s keep them at a minimum and NOT at eye level. I even suggest putting these in a basket or drawer so they aren’t actually visible every time you open the pantry. 

If you haven’t signed up for our Fall Into Fitness Nutrition Challenge, what are you waiting for? Six weeks of accountability. Six weeks of new recipes. Six weeks of healthy habit building. Six weeks of nutritional guidance to get you on track before the holidays. You only have one body to live in, treat it wonderfully. Make the change. Only you can.