Do I HAVE to eat salmon and broccolli?

Hey everyone,

I'm in a good place right now and finally ready to lose the weight - I have 30lbs to go and may decide to drop a further 10 when I get there.

But I have issues.

In the past I've tried eating as clean as possible - think lean meats, eggs, greek yogurt, berries, nuts, vegetables. But I ALWAYS give in to my craving for a Chinese, and spiral downward from there. Eating so healthy is just too overwhelming (I've even tried the 'small changes' thing, but they never seem to stick).

So, what I'm wondering is, if I keep track of my calories, can I be a bit more flexible with what I eat?

Now, for the record, I'm NOT saying I'm going to eat 1500 calories worth of burgers, chips and chocolate. Just to clear that up.

But sometimes, a day might look like this:

Breakfast: Scrambled eggs (160 calories), wholewheat toast (100 calories), butter (50 calories), mocha light frappuccino (150 calories)

Lunch: BBQ chicken wrap from cafe (400 calories)

Dinner: Subway (400 calories) - on the go

Late night snack after dance class - diet coke, chicken nuggets (300 calories)

Total: 1500 calories.

This is not perfect eating - I've got fast food and starbucks in amongst the lean protein and wholegrains. But, I've hit my calorie target for the day and it's not sooo bad.

I'm just thinking if something like this is better to strive for, than clean eating all the time, which I never seem to be able to sustain. The above is maintainable, whilst not perfect.

What do you all think? How do you strike the right balance?

one tincy wincy problem is though that how do you make sure that those calorie values you gave for the chicken wrap etc are the actual values. I mean by law I think they are allowed to have a 20% variance, so it's something to keep in mind with your endeavours.

I was good until I got to the chicken nuggets and diet coke, I cringed a little. You don't have to eat perfect all the time but something like that is taking it past loosening up a little. If you were to eat something like that, especially as late as you say, you're going to undo a lot of hard work. I'd suggest changing that one meal to something cleaner and you should be fine. Most days I eat close to 3 tablespoons on Nutter Butter

I'm not sure where you are coming from. How is the OP going to "undo a lot of hard work"?

A person can eat what they want when they want and stay within their calorie limit and lose weight. Eating clean, as you call it, will not help or hinder weight loss. You can gain weight eating clean if you eat more calories than you burn.

The only thing needed to lose weight is to eat less calories than you burn.

You don't have to eat anything to have healthy weight loss, yes these foods (broccoli and salmon) will help aid you since they are low in unhealthy nutrition and high in healthy nutritional value. If you have negative net calories for the day, you've lost weight. You should also include your BMR (normal metabolic rate)

You can find success eating whatever food you want as long as you hit your calorie goal and your macro-nutrient goal.

This ^

I eat crap all the time and have maintained for 3 years now. As long as you stay in a calorie range it really doesn't matter and eating chicken nuggets at night isn't going to undo any hard work.

Compared to the garbage people ate for the first million years of human evolution (and the eons of evolution that led to humans), we eat pretty high "quality" stuff these days, even the chicken nuggets. Very little in the way of harmful bacteria and maggots 'n such, for one thing. :drinker:

I try to keep my maggot eating at zero. I am pretty hard core about it.

You don't HAVE to do anything. If you don't like it don't eat it. Personally I use moderation. I binge if I restrict myself too much. I keep it reasonable and I do much better.

I was good until I got to the chicken nuggets and diet coke, I cringed a little. You don't have to eat perfect all the time but something like that is taking it past loosening up a little. If you were to eat something like that, especially as late as you say, you're going to undo a lot of hard work. I'd suggest changing that one meal to something cleaner and you should be fine. Most days I eat close to 3 tablespoons on Nutter Butter

Same here ... I was totally with you until the chicken nuggets ... Just try to take things out and add new things little by little. I agree going 100% clean can be very hard ... I've tried it before and binged like crazy ... I pefer to make little changes that I can actually keep up

I just keep thinking of the things that I used to eat compared to what I eat now ... and I can only keep going up! I think you're doing a great job just

This is why I hate the whole "clean eating" fad!

There are NO foods that should be totally off limits (medical reasons excluded) if it means you cannot stick to it. Why do people feel they have to punish themselves to do this?

Eat a balanced diet. Set a reasonable calorie goal and meet it over the course of a week (single days can be higher or lower). Eat foods that allow you to get to your micronutrient goals. Eat a variety of foods so you hit your macronutrient goals.

That's it.

Allow yourself to eat Chinese once in a while if you like it. Eat chicken nuggets. Salmon is icky. Just make it fit.

This doesn't have to be so complicated people!

You have said something similar in more than one thread and I think it is important to distinguish your opinion from science. YES. You can lose weight while eating processed foods as long as you stay under your calorie goal, but this site is not called MyWeightLossPal, it is called MyFITNESSPal, and there are real, compelling reasons why people should eat cleanly. So I really wish that you would stop assuring people that it is fine to eat whatever they want as long as they are under their calories when clearly this is not the case except from a weight loss standpoint.

http://www.yaboga.com/paleo-metabolic.pdf

Actual science. I'm not sure what that site is, but you can also get the article from the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition if you want to pay $30. http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v63/n8/full/ejcn20094a.html

Results: Compared with the baseline (usual) diet, we observed (a)significant reductionsin BP associated with improved arterial
distensibility (!3.1±2.9, P¼0.01 and þ0.19±0.23, P¼0.05);(b) significant reduction in plasma insulin vs time AUC, during
the OGTT (P¼0.006); and (c) large significant reductions in total cholesterol, low-density lipoproteins (LDL) and triglycerides
(!0.8±0.6 (P¼0.007), !0.7±0.5 (P¼0.003) and !0.3±0.3 (P¼0.01) mmol/l respectively). In all these measured variables,
either eight or all nine participants had identical directional responses when switched to paleolithic type diet, that is, near
consistently improved status of circulatory, carbohydrate and lipid metabolism/physiology.
Conclusions: Even short-term consumption of a paleolithic type diet improves BP and glucose tolerance, decreases insulin
secretion, increases insulin sensitivity and improves lipid profiles without weight loss in healthy sedentary humans.
European Journal of Clinical Nutrition advance online publication, 11 February 2009; doi:10.1038/ejcn.2009.4

Firstly: not all clean eating is going to be paleo, so I'm not sure your citation is 100% relevant here.

Secondly: that is one study of nine people who ate paleo for 10 days. Not exactly a gold standard. The guy who did the Twinkie study also saw improved markers of health too. [http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/]

Third: their diet included carrot juice. Where did paleolithic people get juicers from?

Fourth: the paleo diet isn't. We don't know what paleolithic people ate. We do know they lived in different places and would have had access to different foods, so there was no one monolithic paleo diet. We know that foods that are available now are not what paleolithic people would have had access to - they have been modified by human selection over the past few thousand years. Also, the idea that we never ate grain is just silly. Do you think the paleo people woke up 10,000 years ago and said "hey, lets farm these things we've never eaten before!" Or did they maybe eat them when they could, and gradually began farming them? With dairy, we know that humans did become lactose tolerant within the past 10,000 years. Evolution does happen! And what of changes in our gut microbiota that could help us digest food? The Mediterranean diet is a "blue zone" of longevity, and yet people there eat (amongst other things) dairy and grain, showing that these things are not themselves detrimental to overall health.

Fifth: humans are omnivores. We eat all the food.

Sixth: Fallacy of the excluded middle. I never suggested that the OP should live on only chicken nuggets. In fact, I specifically said "eat a balanced diet" and "eat foods that allow you to get to your micronutrient goals". As long as all our nutritional needs are being met (sufficient fat and protein, sufficient vitamins, minerals etc), we don't get brownie points for getting more "nutrition". Eating chicken nuggets occasionally as part of an otherwise "healthy" diet isn't going to kill you. Single foods are not the issue: the issue is with the general overall diet.

Seventh: I never said clean eating was bad for you. Or paleo for that matter. But I do think that for many (not all) people, compliance will be an issue. We see many times on here people say "I cut out X and then I ate it and binged!". Overly restrictive diets are not good for most people. [Medical issues excluded, of course.]

Eighth: The one thing that has been shown to help people improve their health consistently is weightloss. How you get there doesn't matter - the simple act of bringing your BMI (despite the flaws in that system) out of the obese range will improve overall markers of health for most people.