My Top 5 Grocery Store Items (And How I Finally Figured Out What Food Was Doing to Me)

Today’s WordPress prompt is: “List your top five grocery store items.”

Another one of those “what are your favorites?” questions that I’m sure all of you have been lying awake at night wondering about.
Seriously—who writes these things?

But the more I sat with it, the more I realized this question actually says more about a person than it seems to on the surface. What you buy, over and over again, is a snapshot of how you live, how you think, and in my case, how I used to live versus how I live now.

So here they are:

Coffee
Half-and-half (for the coffee)
Eggs
Boneless chicken breast
Broccoli
Ice cream

Yes, that’s six. I’ve never been great with rules.

Now let me explain how a kid who grew up in a traditional second-generation Italian family outside Philadelphia ended up with this list.

When I was young, food wasn’t just food—it was love, tradition, and identity. Our table was always full. Pasta. Bread. Meatballs. Sausage. Gravy (and yes, in our house it was gravy, not sauce). Cheese on everything. And then more cheese, just to be safe.

Portion control wasn’t a concept. Saying “no” was borderline disrespectful. Being skinny was suspicious. If you weren’t eating, someone assumed you were sick or upset.

And dessert? Forget it. Dessert wasn’t optional—it was expected.

I grew up in a house where food solved problems, celebrated wins, softened hard days, and filled every quiet moment. And it worked… until it didn’t.

By the time I was older, I had spent most of my life overweight. Not dramatically, not dangerously, but consistently. The kind of weight that creeps up and never really leaves. The kind you normalize because “that’s just how I’m built,” or “everyone in my family is like this.”

Except that wasn’t actually true.

What was true is that I never questioned what I was putting in my body. Food was emotional. Habitual. Automatic. And it followed me right into adulthood.

What changed wasn’t some dramatic diet or miracle plan. It was awareness.

At some point, I finally connected the dots:
What I ate wasn’t just affecting my weight—it was affecting my energy, my mood, my sleep, my joints, and how I felt moving through the day.

So now my grocery list looks boring. Almost suspiciously boring.

Protein. Vegetables. Simple foods I recognize. Things that fuel me instead of entertaining me.

Coffee is still there—some traditions are sacred.
Half-and-half stays because life should still taste good.
Eggs and chicken because protein matters, especially as you get older.
Broccoli because… well, it works.
And ice cream? That’s not a mistake. That’s intentional.

Because the goal was never punishment.
It was balance.

I didn’t abandon how I grew up—I just stopped letting it run my life.

So maybe this wasn’t such a ridiculous question after all. Because if you really look at someone’s grocery list, you’re not just seeing what they like—you’re seeing where they’ve been, what they’ve learned, and how they’ve changed.

And apparently, you’re also seeing that I still believe ice cream deserves a permanent spot in the cart.