I love shopping. Honestly, I could get excited about going to buy a mop. I think it’s just spending money full stop (More rhyming! Seriously I need to get some poems penned). It has a strange effect on me, which is a problem, as according to an old colleague I try to live a champagne lifestyle on a lemonade income. He may actually have a point – I have recently been doing my food shopping in Waitrose, I like Waitrose, but let’s be honest, it’s not exactly cheap. However, Lidl IS cheap and it has awesome food so before you start telling me you can’t afford to eat healthily – I DON’T WANNA HEAR IT

So food shopping! Tricky stuff when you’re trying to get leaner/faster/stronger. For all my girls and guys looking to get lean you have the battle of avoiding the “buy me buy me I’m healthy” carb laden bulls** and for all my guys looking to get MASSIVE (obvs) you have to work out how many damn kilos of chicken you need to buy to look like Hugh Jackman (P.S. I know nothing about getting MASSIVE – so I’m not even gonna go there).

I want to keep this post clear and concise so let’s get to it. I get myself organised for the week by doing the following (if you don’t believe me ask Phoebe – we had an entire conversation yesterday about vegan meal planning – goddamn that is complicated)

So Phoebe, fair play to her, got onto Google and found herself some high protein vegan meals. Then she wrote her shopping list and went off to purchase. “Should I also plan what exercise I’m going to do?” – SURE! Why not eh? I personally find having a plan means it’s less for me to think/worry about day to day. So…

1. Think about what you want to eat over the next few days and then try and make a leaner/healthier version
2. Make a list and bloody well stick to it
3. Do not be tempted to chuck special offer crap food into your basket. A massive bloody cake reduced to 50p is not a bargain. WALK AWAY
4. Batch cook – my mother taught me well!
5. Have better options on hand so you don’t end up coming in from work and smashing a family sized bag of Kettle chips (I never do that… ever… honestly)

I was talking with a friend this morning about what to write for this post, his response? “Don’t buy crap” – yeah cheers – actually though, good point. I was watching a documentary yesterday (MORE exciting viewing – if you’re interested it was called Fed Up – really good) about the childhood obesity epidemic. Alarming stuff. One of these kids was 14 years old. He was crying, I was nearly crying too, he was crying because he hated being overweight. He said at the end of the programme “It is much better if we just don’t have any of the bad foods around us”. True story pal, I hear ya. You’d be hard pushed to even find granulated sugar to put in a cup of tea at my house. Boooooring. Actually it’s not boring. It just means I have to make the effort to go out and buy treats. It works. I still get pizza delivered a little too often though. Bad Cat.

I laid out a weekly shop for you – aren’t you glad? I thought you might be…

And on your right you will find: 3kg chicken breast, 4 packets frozen berries, 2 bags salad leaves, 2 jars of vanilla paste, tomatoes, aubergines, mango, sugar snap peas, smoked salmon, avocado, broccoli, sea bass fillets (posh bitch), free range eggs, full fat Greek yoghurt, quark, liquid egg whites, cucumber, feta cheese and some chestnut mushrooms – Total cost? 1 billion pounds because I got it all in Waitrose but if you buy the majority in Lidl it’s usually around £30

Now then, vanilla bean paste… praise be the powers that invented this stuff I tell you. A teaspoon of that in a regular size 170g (i.e. not 500g Cat – that’s sheer greed) tub of 0% Greek yoghurt makes it taste like New York vanilla cheesecake. I am honestly not joking. Craving chocolate? Get some dark chocolate chips and throw in a few. Hiya chocolate pudding with protein and hardly any fat – not that we don’t like fat, we just like to be sensible about it.

I know some of you may think this is boring or going too far but honestly – when you are busy and you work every goddarn day you have to be organised. It is the key to winning in life. Ok maybe not but it definitely makes life a lot easier. I probably border on OCD – check this out…

Talk about a wall of foodie-ness… not a word, do I care? No. I love my little wall of “stuff” there’s all sorts in there! Incluuuuuddiiiiinggg…

Believe it or not – this kind of stuff actually has a big impact on my day to day panic levels. It means if I go out after work and don’t get home until late and I wake up at 6am and get my kit on to walk to work it still only takes me around 7 or 8 minutes to throw my food for the day into a few boxes, put them in my bag and get going. Tub of quark *slam* upside down into the Tupperware, handful of almonds *chuck*, two big spoons of chia seed jam that is sitting in the fridge because I made it on Sunday afternoon (just polish my halo a bit more) *slop* – click click, lid on, in the bag – LET’S GO.

So, get your shopping lists written and get down to Waitro– NO CAT! You are not a baller! You cannot afford Waitrose! Get your arse to Lidl!

Happy Saturdays all, I’m starving again, chicken avocado salad? Lovely thanks.

C xx

P.S. Big thanks to everyone that shared my blog on Thursday (If you didn’t share it please do! I will love you forever and feed you)