Clean eating?

Watching.

From what I've read it means if it didn't grow in the ground or have a mother it isn't clean. I think dairy products are a grey area.

This is a response I normally post to some forums:

Your nutrition has to be good too. Ideally you should be eating something every 3-4 hours to keep your metabolism going constantly. Make sure you eat something in between breakfast, lunch and dinner such as a snack of fruits, nuts or low fat cheese. Eat fruits, vegetables, wholemeal/wheat/grain/pulses, lean protein, and healthy fats. Healthy fats are key to weight loss and fitness: soya, seeds and nuts, oily fish, avocados, flaxseeds, extra virgin olive oil etc. You need these in your body.

Example of a day’s food:
Breakfast needs to be wholegrain toast or oats, lean protein and fat like eggs or soya, piece of fruit, add some salad if you like.
Mid morning snack, have some fruit, nuts or low fat cheese or yoghurt (low in sugar and fat).
Lunch needs to wholegrain, lean protein, vegetables and healthy fats (like breakfast).
Mid afternoon snack same as the mid morning snack.
Dinner same as lunch.
Be sure to drink 2-3 litres of water and avoid fruit juices (especially ‘concentrate’ ones).
Alternatively you can have 5 small meals a day instead of the in-between snacks.

Skipping lunch and having a big dinner is just silly! People who do this and are really skinny generally don’t eat enough are the ‘lucky’ ones who eat whatever and still don’t put on any fat. But the years always catch up to them. Look at most of the adults around you, they are all overweight and unfit, and it’s because they spent years eating crap and it catches up with them, even if it takes 5 years for it to happen.

Only choose foods from the top 3 tiers of this guide http://www.teambeachbody.com/eat-smart/michis-ladder and workout 5-7 days a week doing a variety of workouts: cardio and upper body training.

Stay away from coke, pepsi, diet coke/pepsi, chocolate, crisps, doughnuts and takeways eg fish and chips, pizza, Chinese, McDonalds, Burger King etc because this is all poison to your body. The same for alcohol and cigarettes.

To me it just means as little processed foods at all.

I read a couple of books in regards to "cleaning up" my diet. The Perfect 10 and The Metabolic syndrome program. both authors offered similar advise on healthy choices of food to eat and avoid. Both author stated that eating processed dairy products were unhealthy in other words stop eating Velveeta, American or canned cheese spread. I can honestly say without using resource quotes that since I have changed my eating habits from ordinary foods containing trans-fat, artificial flavorings, excessive sodium, and no sugar I feel 100 times better. I can walk without limping and less knee pain. I stopped snoring at night, my entire body doesn’t ache and my skin condition of rosacea diminished; balls in your court…

Check out www.heandsheeatclean.com. They have a whole section on what eating clean means. They also have a lot of recipes which are very good.

I think in practice it just means 'clean' as compared to that persons' prior diet (meaning nutrition).

So for someone new, clean eating may be no burgers and shakes.

For some others it may be locally organic legumes and spinach blah blah blah

In my opinion, being the 'clean eating' police with any other person is an error.

Absolutely.

I think it's worth noting, too, that most people who 'eat clean' are actually 'trying to eat clean.'

For me, it means staying away from sugar, junk food, ready meals; eating refined carbs in moderation (if I have bolognese, I want it with spaghetti, not quinoa; I just have less spaghetti); and cooking healthy meals at home. (Good quality cheese - yes, please. Cheese from a tube - no thank you.)

But, like anyone else, I have good days and bad days - the secret to sticking with it is not to sweat the bad days.

Bump

I think Clean Eating is a kind of silly term. Unprocessed is too. All food is processed.

I used eat 100% organic. I was a fanatic. In fact when I was at my heaviest weight I was an organic fanatic to the extreme. Too much food makes you fat, no matter how "clean" it is.

I'm much healthier now that I'm not obese.

That said, I try to eat as healthy as I can. I pretty much "process" all my own food if I can, if I have time. I try to avoid as much of the chemically processed foods but at the same time it's not going to kill me to have it on occasion if it helps me remain within my calorie budget and not go insane.

Which is healthier, to be obese or fit and healthy with less stress on the body and joints and not carrying around a 60lb pack of fat around with me 24 hours a day but having a few unclean items on occasion?

Even the clean eaters don't all agree on what clean eating means. I'm starting to clean up the way I eat, and what it means to me is what someone else said, I try to do as much of the process myself as I can. In my ideal definition, I would buy products that contain only a single ingredient and then make those ingredients into something. That said, there are some things that I just like too much to give up without a justification. And also, there are times like today where I ended up at work later than planned, so I had a slim fast bar.

Even with my trying to eat cleaner, I'm only aiming for 90%. I don't plan on cutting anything out of my life permanently, and I don't believe that I need to, so long as I keep an overall balanced diet.

I think Clean Eating is a kind of silly term. Unprocessed is too. All food is processed.

I totally agree with you, I think it's kind of silly too. I think it helps some people to have 'rules' about what they eat and I can't knock that if it's what keeps them on the right track, but by far focusing on just being healthy is always best IMO.

I can totally understand the appeal of restrictive diets. When you take away choice, you take away the risk (and responsibility) of making poor choices. A while ago, a faddy doctor in Italy devised a method of consuming your daily calories intranasally. Yes, through the nose. I couldn't see any reason why his vitamin potion couldn't be swallowed, save that it spared his rich, silly patients the trouble of even having to think about eating.

But the responses here show that there are no hard and fast rules to eating 'clean' - just a general principle of minimising one's exposure to overly refined foods.

It's really just another way of saying 'healthy.' Of course, everyone has their own definition of 'healthy', too.

The turning point for me came when I was eating a 'healthy' organic, pro-biotic yoghurt, looked on the back, and discovered it contained 12 teaspoons of sugar. "[Bleep] that [bleep]!" was my response.

I started this journey, not to lose weight, but to help me to manage an existing medical condition. And it has. Weight loss is a wonderful motivator and it's much easier to measure pounds lost than it is to see the benefits of improved health, but primarily I'm doing this for my health.

When you say 'just focus on being healthy' - this is me focusing on being healthy.