Does clean eating pay off?

J72FIT

Being healthy is much more important than losing weight, although the two might overlap. You could lose weight eating nothing but poptarts, if you burned more calories than you ate. However, if you continued just eating junk, you'll become malnourished, have high cholesterol, be at risk for diabetes, etc. When you get older, you'd be at much greater risk for osteoporosis, heart failure, and cancer. Eating clean will allow you to establish healthy eating habits for the rest of your life, long after you've reached your goal weight. Remember that the number on the scale is a poor indicator of health. Eating clean and filling your body with nutritious food helps ensure that you get enough fiber, calcium, iron, protein, omega-3s and much more.

THIS!!! 100% Agree

Do you think "clean eaters" are the only ones who fill their bodies with nutritious foods?

Lasmartchika

Yes, washing your fruits and veggies so that they are clean is the best thing to do. Who wants to eat it with all that dirt? :bigsmile:

s_pekz

Being healthy is much more important than losing weight, although the two might overlap. You could lose weight eating nothing but poptarts, if you burned more calories than you ate. However, if you continued just eating junk, you'll become malnourished, have high cholesterol, be at risk for diabetes, etc. When you get older, you'd be at much greater risk for osteoporosis, heart failure, and cancer. Eating clean will allow you to establish healthy eating habits for the rest of your life, long after you've reached your goal weight. Remember that the number on the scale is a poor indicator of health. Eating clean and filling your body with nutritious food helps ensure that you get enough fiber, calcium, iron, protein, omega-3s and much more.

THIS!!! 100% Agree

Do you think "clean eaters" are the only ones who fill their bodies with nutritious foods?

THIS. I dont do this whole "clean eating" business because in all honesty "clean" means different things to different people. I eat nutritious food but I dont deamonize other food. This means i get to still have a normal social life and enjoy myself instead of obsessing over dirty or clean food.

jeez.

yopeeps025

Nutritious foods is clean eating. LOL

Serah87

I have literally been on a diet all my life. Back and forth, up and down. Slowly, slowly getting to maximum weight 250. I started eating "clean" because my liver was dying and I was real sick of the hospital. Come to find out I have a genetic condition, and my liver, my daughter's allergies and autism spectrum disorder, and my son's lifelong sinusitis/bronchitis/pneumonia, and my last terrible pregnancy were all very related. Now we avoid, folic acid, B6, cruciferous, sulfur foods, gluten, "white foods", dairy (tho this is still hard), we make kombucha, we cook from scratch, all organic, supplement optimal B's, and boom I'm losing weight. It makes me feel so good, oh and that's the biggy. No mood swings, no depression. Still can't sleep, but perhaps one day:ohwell: I'll never eat crap again. If you cook from scratch the calories are so very low, even for like steak and potatoes. It's no wonder we are all plumping up. I don't feel jealous of the people losing faster cause I've been there, they are just destroying their metabolism and muscle tissue, it'll bite them in the butt. I feel sorry for them. :flowerforyou:

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

rsclause

Clean is better than dirty I guess but I really have no idea what clean eating is. To me its whole grains, fruit, veggies and lean meats. I don't really go crazy about organic or research if the cow was read a bedtime story prior to slaughter. I guess the best way I can describe it is I like to eat things that don't have a list of ingredients on the package or even come in a package. I also am not a big fan of the deli meats and chicken breasts that are infused with salt and preservatives. Back to the OP does it help lose weight, I think so. All that extra crap has to go somewhere and a lot of it is sweeteners and fats.

love2lift_85

I like food

dojomax

Being healthy is much more important than losing weight, although the two might overlap. You could lose weight eating nothing but poptarts, if you burned more calories than you ate. However, if you continued just eating junk, you'll become malnourished, have high cholesterol, be at risk for diabetes, etc. When you get older, you'd be at much greater risk for osteoporosis, heart failure, and cancer. Eating clean will allow you to establish healthy eating habits for the rest of your life, long after you've reached your goal weight. Remember that the number on the scale is a poor indicator of health. Eating clean and filling your body with nutritious food helps ensure that you get enough fiber, calcium, iron, protein, omega-3s and much more.

THIS!!! 100% Agree

Dunno about you but eating nothing but pop-tarts sounds like fun!

I don't know if it's been brought up but when you eat fast food/junk food you tend to over eat it in the first place. Fibrous whole foods seem to keep you feeling satisfied longer than something that's loaded with salt and sugar. I mean you start to have more cravings for more junk when your sugar levels spike. I think that's the theorem behind clean eating. People tend to take it to the extreme but I say just hit your macros in whatever you're eating and don't over eat anything, regardless if it's clean or not.

Canwehugnow

I'm sure it pays off to wash off all the dirt.

cardinalsfootball

Clean eating, especially with lots of plants, is for your health. Especially long-term disease prevention.

You can lose the exact same amount of weight eating fast food. You just won't be as healthy.

J72FIT

Nutritious foods is clean eating. LOL

Depends who you ask...

k8blujay2

I understand that the number of calories consumed is a number regardless of what it is, as long as you eat within your deficit you will lose weight. So what impact does clean eating have? Will you lose weight faster, is it better in the long run? I feel better when I eat clean and feel like I am actually changing my nutritional lifestyle and eat about 1600 cals a day and get frustrated when I see people losing weight faster than me that eat less calories and their calories are from junk or packaged or diet foods. Does anyone else share this frustration? Does anyone have insight on the benefits of clean eating with weight loss or is it really just the number.

Does it nourish you? Give you energy? Satiate you? and does it taste good to you? If it does and you consume only as much as your body needs... then yes it pays off... just like any other dietary changes might.

lemurcat12

So EDUCATE people. Rather than just using churchy words. That's all I'm saying. ASK people, in a want to share way how they construct their diets. And then point out the flaws in their logic. Are january bananas good for you? Probably. Are they "natural" no, perhaps the term you want to use mr MFP user is "nutrient dense"....
And since you DO know why sprouted grains are better for you than wonder bread, explain that to someone who's dumping them because they're "white".:flowerforyou:

ETA: I have to wonder how many folks who innocently post or ask about "clean" eating are turned off and leave the forums based on all the darned arguments....

Hmm. I do agree with this for a new user who innocently asks about "clean" eating. I actually think that's what I try to do, and even what I started with my first post in this one (the one where I said I don't know what "clean" means but if you mean "eating healthy" that's not actually how I understand "clean" but is great blah, blah). I was hoping to open the door to what "clean" meant if not just healthy or if healthy why "clean" wasn't really the right term. But then we got 87 posts about how clean eating is better than eating Twinkies 24/7 or some such, and it's that false dichotomy (yes, if I don't care about organic bananas or think non homemade yogurt is fine or even--gasp--eat my friend's homemade biscuit at book club and veggies out of season I must be some junk food junky who never eats a vegetable) that drives me batty.

Also, if you don't see the sanctimony we are reading different threads. I mean this started with negative feelings about people who can lose lots of weight without eating "clean."

Do you also see "sanctimony" in the "I eat whatever I want" threads?

What thread specifically? That's the thing, I don't recall any "I eat whatever I want" threads. There are 500 threads about what foods we all gave up or not eating sugar or fruit or potatoes or "white foods" or whatever.

I do think that it's reasonable to cut things out for a while because they are trigger foods or to see if you feel better and I also think it's reasonable (good, even) to try and focus on nutrient dense foods or cut down on stuff and sometimes people who are doing that get told they shouldn't or that they will binge or when they ask for other food ideas are basically told that's not worth doing, and I think all that is an overgeneralization based on "this worked for me, it will work for you too," also. Not sure it's sanctimonious in the same way, but I don't especially care for it either.

If you mean the "I eat 1800 calories for breakfast" posts I mostly don't pay much attention, because I have far fewer calories to play with.

__freckles__

Holy hell. These threads are so silly.

If you want to eat clean, eat whatever the frick you think is "clean eating." If you think it helps you stay in your calorie goal or you think it will help with long term health, then great. Keep doing it and be happy.

That just means there is more gelato in the world for me.

lemurcat12

THIS. I dont do this whole "clean eating" business because in all honesty "clean" means different things to different people. I eat nutritious food but I dont deamonize other food. This means i get to still have a normal social life and enjoy myself instead of obsessing over dirty or clean food.

jeez.

Applause!

lemurcat12

Nutritious foods is clean eating. LOL

Nope. That's the whole point. Clean eating has no actual meaning--or at least it means different things to different people (most commonly "what I eat is good, what you eat is bad" except for some who use it to feel guilty about their own choices). BUT if you ask questions about it, the common theme seems to be cutting out "bad" foods, usually either along paleo lines or some kind of anti processed thing or an anti sugar or anti high fat kind of thing. In other words, cutting out foods, what foods depends.

To focus on eating nutrient-dense foods or "eat healthy" or eat a generally nutritious diet made up of nutritious foods, there is no earthly reason to cut things out, and I'd like it explained why eating 1500 calories of "clean" foods makes you more healthy than eating 1450 calories of supposedly clean (and macro fitting!) foods plus, say, a 50 calorie Café Tasse Orange chocolate.

Saying there are benefits to eating healthy is not hard to defend. Benefits to eating clean may exist for individuals, sure, but all this nonsense about how you have to "eat clean" to be losing weight the right way or to have shiny hair or not feel bad or be on the road to illness or the like is foolishness.

Sabine_Stroehm

So EDUCATE people. Rather than just using churchy words. That's all I'm saying. ASK people, in a want to share way how they construct their diets. And then point out the flaws in their logic. Are january bananas good for you? Probably. Are they "natural" no, perhaps the term you want to use mr MFP user is "nutrient dense"....
And since you DO know why sprouted grains are better for you than wonder bread, explain that to someone who's dumping them because they're "white".:flowerforyou:

ETA: I have to wonder how many folks who innocently post or ask about "clean" eating are turned off and leave the forums based on all the darned arguments....

Hmm. I do agree with this for a new user who innocently asks about "clean" eating. I actually think that's what I try to do, and even what I started with my first post in this one (the one where I said I don't know what "clean" means but if you mean "eating healthy" that's not actually how I understand "clean" but is great blah, blah). I was hoping to open the door to what "clean" meant if not just healthy or if healthy why "clean" wasn't really the right term. But then we got 87 posts about how clean eating is better than eating Twinkies 24/7 or some such, and it's that false dichotomy (yes, if I don't care about organic bananas or think non homemade yogurt is fine or even--gasp--eat my friend's homemade biscuit at book club and veggies out of season I must be some junk food junky who never eats a vegetable) that drives me batty.

Also, if you don't see the sanctimony we are reading different threads. I mean this started with negative feelings about people who can lose lots of weight without eating "clean."

Do you also see "sanctimony" in the "I eat whatever I want" threads?

What thread specifically? That's the thing, I don't recall any "I eat whatever I want" threads. There are 500 threads about what foods we all gave up or not eating sugar or fruit or potatoes or "white foods" or whatever.

I do think that it's reasonable to cut things out for a while because they are trigger foods or to see if you feel better and I also think it's reasonable (good, even) to try and focus on nutrient dense foods or cut down on stuff and sometimes people who are doing that get told they shouldn't or that they will binge or when they ask for other food ideas are basically told that's not worth doing, and I think all that is an overgeneralization based on "this worked for me, it will work for you too," also. Not sure it's sanctimonious in the same way, but I don't especially care for it either.

If you mean the "I eat 1800 calories for breakfast" posts I mostly don't pay much attention, because I have far fewer calories to play with.

Watch for them.

Sabine_Stroehm

Yes, washing your fruits and veggies so that they are clean is the best thing to do. Who wants to eat it with all that dirt? :bigsmile:

wow. how original.:yawn:

jeffd247

For me it's about food volume. for 500 calories, I can either have 1/2 of a decent cheeseburger and be starving an hour later, or I could make a GIANT plate of vegetable-filled, well-seasoned lentil curry & rice, and eat myself silly.

This is how I feel about food too. I'd rather have a huge bowl of salad than a "cup" of of something like pasta. That naturally leans me towards eating what seem to be more nutrient dense foods (lean white meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, etc).

However, tomorrow I'll be hunting a cheeseburger and pretzel nuggets... and beer.

Bry_Fitness70

Eating clean is about having standards for what you consume – ideally that includes high nutritional content and high food integrity (organic, natural, less additives, and minimally processed / un-processed).

I don’t consider my stomach a garbage disposal that I can use to just dump anything in, as long as it is a set amount of calories. But if you have been here long enough, you'll notice a lot of people seem to do that and are fine.