grocery shopping

Cooking your own meals is healthy and economical, but making that trip to the supermarket without a plan can lead to high-calorie habits. Make sure you don't make these mistakes on your next grocery store run.

Starting in the middle: You should focus on shopping the perimeter of your grocery store, since you can fill your cart with fresh produce, whole grain staples, and protein-rich dairy without being distracted by frozen treats and processed foods. if you're looking to grab a treat or two, make your way to the middle after you've stocked up on your healthy items.

Going hungry: A recent study confirmed what everyone who's ever shopped hungry already knows — you grab more unhealthy and higher calorie foods (think junk food) when you're ravenous. If it's been awhile since you've eaten and it's time to go to the store, grab a healthy snack before you go like yogurt, a piece of fruit, or a protein bar to sate your hunger until your shopping trip is done.

Going without a list: Winging it can work for impromptu farmers market trips, but going for your weekly supermarket trip without a list can lead to an unbalanced nutrition plan throughout the week. Take time to plan your ingredient list so you know what to buy so you don't stray from your healthy recipes and move to prepackaged dinners.

Skipping all prepared foods: You may think that healthy supermarket buys are only found in produce bags, but some days you just don't want to spend the time on washing, dicing, and slicing your way to a healthy snack. Healthy prepared foods save you time, and if you're unlikely to eat something, like carrots or salad, unless it's washed and ready for you, opting for a few prepared foods can help you stay on track. Read more about the healthy prepared foods worth paying for here.

You're headed to the grocery store with a list in hand and a stack of reusable bags. You grab a cart and are ready to go to town, but if you buy the wrong things week after week, a little weight gain is sure to happen. Keep these calorie-saving tips in mind the next time you go grocery shopping.

• Never go hungry: You probably already know this, but never go grocery shopping on an empty stomach. Eat before you leave to satiate any temptation of buying unhealthy snacks. Not only will it prevent you from snacking while shopping — a surefire way to ingest the trillions of germs lurking on every item you reach for — but foods you don't normally buy are also less likely to make their way into your cart.
• Start with a meal plan: Before heading to the store, map out in detail your meals and snacks for the entire week complete with a list of ingredients needed for all the recipes. It helps you remember everything in one trip so you can avoid having to hit the store later for that one thing, which inevitably means grabbing a few extra foods you don't really need. Here's an example of a weekly dinner menu complete with grocery list. You can do the same thing for breakfasts and the lunches you pack for work.
• The health food store isn't necessarily healthier: While it's pretty awesome that you can find healthier versions of your favorite junk foods like organic cookies and Fair Trade chocolate peanut butter cups, don't be tricked into buying these health-food versions — they contain just as many calories as the conventional alternatives. Also remember that truly healthy foods can also be high in calories, so don't overdo it on the nuts and nut butters, avocados, energy bars, and dried fruit. Here are proper portion sizes of high-calorie healthy foods.
• Avoid the center aisles: Most of the healthy, all-natural foods are found along the outer walls of a grocery store, and this is exactly what you should be filling your cart with. You should have more bagged produce, bulk foods like whole grains, lean meats, and low-fat dairy products in your cart rather than prepackaged foods. Check out even more tips for shopping the perimeter.
• Make your life easier: Some healthy foods come with the prep work already done. If you can buy healthy foods that are easier to eat like cubed tofu, baby carrots, and prewashed and cut kale, then you're more likely to eat them.

Keep reading to hear more ways to save calories while grocery shopping.

Why pay more for the exact same product that you can find elsewhere for less? No one likes to feel cheated, so our partners at Wise Bread have broken down items that are prone to a price switcheroo.

Not dishing out more than you should isn't always easy — it takes a little research and sometimes means getting over the store brand stigma and embracing generics.

A recent question posted to "AskMeFi" — the popular crowd sourced question and answer subsite of Metafilter.com — asked users to suggest products that were priced differently, depending on market and intended use. The example offered was food-grade mineral oil, which is costly when marketed and sold as butcher block oil, but inexpensive when marketed and sold as a laxative (as much as $1.74 per ounce versus as little as $.29 per ounce).

RELATED: 21 Disposable Products You Can Reuse

Same product, different market, different intended use, different price. The next time I buy a bottle of butcher block oil, I'll visit RiteAid instead of Williams-Sonoma. How many other bargains like this are out there? Keep reading.

We are pumped to share one of our favorite stories from Health here on POPSUGAR Fitness.

By Tina Haupert

When I'm hungry, I'm more likely to reach for quick, easy foods in my kitchen, which are not always the healthiest. I've learned, though, that with a little strategic organization and stocking of my refrigerator, I'm more likely to reach for nutritious choices. Here are my go-to tips for giving your fridge a healthy makeover!

Put the healthy stuff front and center
Instead of keeping fresh fruits and veggies in the crisper drawers at the bottom of the refrigerator where I can't see them, I put my produce in a big, clear container on one of the shelves. Whenever I open the door, it's the first thing I see, so I'm more likely to grab an apple or handful of baby carrots over something not as nutritious. Similarly, instead of wrapping leftovers in tinfoil, I store them in clear containers so I don't forget about them when my hunger strikes.

Health.com: Skinny Up Your Kitchen

Keep the more indulgent foods out of sight
I love to splurge every now and then, so I keep my favorite unhealthy foods out of sight (and out of mind). Seeing a delicious food makes me more enticed to eat it, so I store these more indulgent foods in opaque containers or various drawers in my refrigerator. For example, I keep a bag of chocolate chips in the butter compartment on the door, so they're not the first thing I see when I open the fridge. Sometimes, I actually forget they're there!

Do some prep work
On Sunday afternoons, I take some time to prepare healthy snacks for the upcoming week. My favorites: sweet potato wedges, hard-boiled eggs, and chopped veggies for dipping into hummus or guacamole. Instead of grabbing a bag of chips when I need something to tide me over until dinner, these healthy snacks are quick and convenient.

Health.com: Essential Items for a Healthy Pantry

Keep reading for more fridge tips.

Committing to a healthy lifestyle brings a load of changes to your routine. While spending more quality time at the gym is essential, there's another location you might not be expecting to get as well acquainted with: the grocery store.

When you start making big changes in your diet, the days of frozen dinners and junky takeout are occasional occurrences, not everyday activities. Having healthy essentials in the pantry to complement all the fresh produce and protein is a great start, but it's not enough on its own. To offer the body all the nutrients and fuel it desperately needs, heading to the grocery store more often becomes another healthy ritual — and a necessity. The fresher foods that offer the highest quality of nutrition don't last as long as their preservative-laden counterparts and alternatives. Not sure how to make the most of your time at the store? Keep reading for helpful and healthy grocery tips.

Couponing can seem overwhelming, but it's so rewarding. LearnVest shares the inside scoop from an avid couponer.

We've always been intrigued by the idea of couponing.

Extreme Couponers make it look rewarding and fun. We had a mom try it who reported back that it was time-consuming. But we wanted to ask someone who actually knows how to do couponing right.

So we found an expert who spends just a couple hours a week couponing, and saves anywhere from 50 to 70 percent off her groceries. Oh, and did we mention this expert is only 20 years old?

Related: How to Combine Coupons (and Save Big!)

Brandi LaBarre is a student at University of Maryland who runs the blog Savvy Student Shopper, where she shares her saving insights and coupons with families and other money savers like her. Best of all, she's not a crazy couponer — just a girl on a tight budget!

Read on for more.

The savvier shoppers become, the sneakier food companies are in changing how they phrase ingredients. Many items, like high fructose corn syrup and trans fats, are still in foods but listed under new names. Know what's in your food, by being familiar with the following food aliases companies are using.

• Natural flavors: There is no official description of how food companies use the word "natural." Although the word natural isn't supposed to apply for any artificial or synthetic substances, there is still a lot of wiggle room with the rule. For instance, some companies use the term natural additives when describing high fructose corn syrup.
• Organic: Labeling something organic is a surefire way to increase a company's sales. In order for a company to label a processed-food product organic, only 80 percent of the ingredients need to actually meet requirements. Unless the food is labeled 100-percent organic, it isn't made completely from organic ingredients.
• Glutamate: Although glutamate can occur naturally in cheese, milk, mushrooms, fish, and vegetables, monosodium glutamate is an artificial version of glutamate commonly referred to as MSG. MSG does not legally have to be labeled as such, or even as monosodium glutamate. MSG is the sodium salt of glutamate so by labeling an ingredient low in sodium, it could actually mean it contains MSG, which has been shown to have a correlation to both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, among others. Other key phrases include autolyzed yeast, textured protein, gelatin, and barley malt.

Keep reading for the skinny on more tricky terms.

By now, you know that the grocery store can be full of tricks to get you to spend more or otherwise choose unwisely. From extra-large carts that encourage you to buy everything in sight to placing expensive packaged foods at eye level, there are many sneaky ways your grocery store is making you spend (and eat) more. A recent opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine talks about another well-known mind trick that groceries play on you that just may be making you fat: those impulse buys at the cash register.

Impulse buys — usually candy, sodas, chips, and other "emotion-related" foods — spur reflex-like decision-making, much faster than when you mull over healthy foods like fruits or vegetables. Studies have shown that you're more likely to give into these bad-for-you foods since these products are placed at the end of a shopping trip, conveniently after you've exhausted your healthy decision-making skills. The constant barrage of these sugar-, fat-, and salt-laden foods makes it hard to not give in, even if you're normally conscious about making healthy-eating decisions.

The authors make an interesting point: impulse-buy tricks don't just affect people who lack self control, but are in fact so sneaky and permeating that they are hard to resist. Have you fallen victim to these high-calorie impulse buys, or do you usually recognize and ignore the strategic marketing?