#2. A healthy diet begins with a healthy shopping cart Monday, July 6, 2020. Your fridge, cabinets, and pantry are filled with your future. Open them up and take a look. Are they stuffed with temptations, perched there on the shelves, waiting to seduce you into sinful gluttony? If so, you'll never make it to your health and fitness destination... because none of us can resist life's most alluring temptress: the empty calorie, so shiny and convenient. To achieve our health goals, we must start with their foundation: environment. We have to establish a goal-oriented, health-friendly setting before we can flourish in it. And we do that by shopping as goal-orientedly and health-friendlyly as we can. Let's move on to the tips: Tip 1) Willpower is better exerted at the grocery store than at home. If your fridge is a climate-controlled vault of sin, you'll find yourself behaving healthlessly no matter how resolute your intentions are. The shopping cart -- either that huge chicken coop on wheels or its digital equivalent -- should contain no questionable foods. Because questionable foods are generally processed foods. And processed foods are convenient foods. And convenience is among the most appetizing qualities a food can possess. It determines so many of our dietary decisions. So really overexert your willpower at the store. Tip 2) Plan ahead! Or simply, "Plan!" (since all planning addresses that which lies ahead). If there is an upcoming social gathering that will involve both food and you, prepare for it. Eat heavily and healthfully before and after, and lightly (and sociably) during. Because indulging in the unplanned derails many'a'journey. Tip 3) Surround yourself with people who support your goals. Having a strong social support structure is as foundational to goal attainment as the contents of your rolling chicken coop.