Friday 24 September 2010

Week 38 - Savvy Shopping

This week's meeting topic is all about being "savvy" in your shopping habits (hehe, I always think about Johnny Depp in 'Pirates of the Caribbean' when I read that word!)

The idea behind this is to 1) see how the members avoid the pitfalls of shopping without a plan! and 2) give and share our tips for not falling prey to BOGOFS and special offers, or if we do, what happens to all the food/drink? Things like that.

I turned my shopping table - normally in a sort of curve around the corner of the meeting room - into 2 shopping aisles with special offers (Buy 3 for £5, and half price cookbooks!) on the ends of the aisles. The members all commented on how they liked this layout! It worked well at this meeting, not sure how it will fit in the room on Saturday.

We then did an "impulse buy" by the "till" of the product of the week - the Menu Planner - which, strangely, nobody bought, even though we really said how great they were.

Then (and I need to credit a fellow Leader for this idea) we used Supermarket slogans and catchphrases and turned them around to help us with our shopping planning, and also to link back to our WeightWatchers journeys as a whole. For example:

ASDA - POCKET THE DIFFERENCE. Put your Points Calculator in your pocket before you go to the shops and you'll be able to see the difference in what you're buying before you get home and it's too late! Do a shopping list before you go and you won't buy more than you need when you get there, saving you money - pocket the difference with Monthly Pass!!!

TESCO - EVERY LITTLE HELPS. (A lot of these came back to the same thing) I always talk about small steps, changing one thing at a time... so change a small thing like eat before you go shopping so you're not tempted by the food as you go. Plan a menu each week, so you can make a shopping list of JUST the things you want.

ALDI - SPEND A LITTLE, LIVE A LOT. Spend a little time looking through the Shop Guide (or on eSource) choosing your favourite foods / drinks to have as treats and find the lowest Points alternatives. That way when you get there, you know what you're looking for and when you get home you know what you've got in the house and how many Points there are in those things that you love... You're not depriving yourself - you're "Living" but you're spending very few Points too!

MORRISON'S - THE NATION'S FAVOURITE. This was in there just to emphasise the fact that WeightWatchers IS the nation's (and in fact, the world's) favourite - and leading - weight loss service. It is the Gold Standard in weight loss.

and my personal favourite:

MARKS & SPENCERS - THIS IS NOT JUST FOOD..... Losing weight, particularly with WeightWatchers, is not just about food. It's about our four-way approach. You need to eat healthily, up your activity levels, change your behaviour and get support - from home, from meetings, from fellow members.

I linked in with this last one because next week it's all about Saboteurs (my least favourite topic) but support is SO important. If you find something hard to do WITH support, imagine how hard it would be without.

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