If 'eating clean' is so easy for you, how did you get fat?

It wasn't easy at first but for some people it gets easier as it becomes a part of your new lifestyle . Thats not to say there won't be days or times where you want to eat something not so good for you. I don't eat clean per say just try and make healthier choices eat more fruits n veggies get more protein and keep my sodium low. Also I think you adjust to eating less calories . When I eat healthier filling foods like protein healthy fats and loads of veggies I do feel fuller then when I was shoving my face full of cake that made my blood sugar go crazy and caused me to probably crave more junk. Processed foods are full of crap that make you want to eat more crap. When you give your body the right nutrition you start to feel more balanced and have less cravings after a while at least I do anyway.

I read your question differently than most. You ask. "If your relationship with food is so healthy, how did you get fat in the first place?"

I would answer that most people who are over weight did not have a healthy relationship with food at the time (i.e. they ate too much processed food, high fat, high sugar, etc.). They have a healthy relationship with food now because they learned how to eat "clean" as it's called. In my mind, eating clean means eating as close to nature as possible. Fruits, vegetables, protein from meats, etc. Try to stay away from excess sugars, processed foods, etc. I lived for my southern sweet tea and still have quite the sweet tooth but I gave up my tea last year for plain tea or water with lemon. I do on rare occasions have something sweet to drink. I have slowly changed to eating more fruit and vegetables in lieu of junk food. You can't live life by depriving yourself but you learn to eat these treats much, much less. Try switching a few items for healthier choices, maybe starting with your lunch and after a while it becomes what you prefer to eat over any junk food. So, people started out overweight due to their bad choices and ended up enjoying eating more nutritious food and in the process lost weight. Good luck on any changes you decide to make.

Well I think most people they didn't know what healthy eating means in the first place. Or a lot of people just didn't care. And then there's the people who think they're eating healthy and they're not. Not to mention you can eat healthy foods and still get fat...there's a plethora of reasons why someone can get fat and it's not always because they ate too much mcdonalds.

Now as for how I gained the weight, I was in an abusive relationship where the guy actually held me down and shoved food down my throat. I'm sure that could even be the case for others too.

Did you guys ever see that controversial movie Supersize Me? That's where a guy ate nothing but McDonald's for 30 days straight. He gained 24.5 pounds, his body fat shot up 63% and his cholesterol skyrocketed by 65 points.

Well, recently a physician in North Carolina ALSO ate all of his meals at McDonald's for 30 days. But he LOST 9 pounds, shed 20% of his body fat, his high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol went up and his blood sugar and triglycerides went down!

How the heck did he do that?

By making two changes, both of which hold the secret to creating unstoppable fat loss for anybody, even if you're stuffing your face with fast food.

Unlike the guy in “Supersize Me” who ate all the meals as they came, this physician NEVER ate starch with fat. That's a deadly combo that creates a belly-fat bulging calorie bomb. Starch is processed to produce many of the sugars in processed foods.

The starch spikes your #1 fat-making hormone insulin. And the fat delivers a megaton of calories for that insulin to convert into fat. For example, he took off the bread from his burger and he didn't eat fries. Everything else was fair game though.

So if you want to block the fat-making capacity of your meals, never eat starch and fat together. http://www.whyicantloseweight.com

As a diabetic I find this completely ignorant, wrong, and biologically inaccurate. Please do some research before you sprout these claims.

Did you guys ever see that controversial movie Supersize Me? That's where a guy ate nothing but McDonald's for 30 days straight. He gained 24.5 pounds, his body fat shot up 63% and his cholesterol skyrocketed by 65 points.

Well, recently a physician in North Carolina ALSO ate all of his meals at McDonald's for 30 days. But he LOST 9 pounds, shed 20% of his body fat, his high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol went up and his blood sugar and triglycerides went down!

How the heck did he do that?

By making two changes, both of which hold the secret to creating unstoppable fat loss for anybody, even if you're stuffing your face with fast food.

Unlike the guy in “Supersize Me” who ate all the meals as they came, this physician NEVER ate starch with fat. That's a deadly combo that creates a belly-fat bulging calorie bomb. Starch is processed to produce many of the sugars in processed foods.

The starch spikes your #1 fat-making hormone insulin. And the fat delivers a megaton of calories for that insulin to convert into fat. For example, he took off the bread from his burger and he didn't eat fries. Everything else was fair game though.

So if you want to block the fat-making capacity of your meals, never eat starch and fat together. http://www.whyicantloseweight.com

Wrong. He lost weight because he ate below his TDEE.

On the same note, I also don't understand the "I struggle so hard to reach 1200 calories!" people.

Really?
^^^^This!!

The exact mechanisms of satiety are way beyond me, but there are foods that make me less hungry after I eat them and foods that make me more hungry, and I'm determined to stay away from the latter. It's working so far.

Also, I just started eating vegan, fairly minimally processed (just some raisins, extra virgin olive oil, sesame seeds toasted in oil, and sun dried tomatoes). Then some germy human gave me a cold. My appetite has been gone for several days. But I guarantee if I were eating ice cream and cookies, I'd have no problem putting 3000 calories a day of them down, snotty nose or no snotty nose.

Meanwhile, I'd be pretty scared to put 3000 calories of roughage down my gullet on any day. Because the next day, all that fiber is going to have to find the exit, isn't it?

How did I get overweight to begin with? Bad choices. Too much unhealthy restaurant food, too much processed food, simply too much food. In the beginning of our marriage, when we were broke and just getting started, it was things like hamburger helper and cheap beef. As our income increased, it became more and more restaurant food.

^ I completely relate to this. Very similar situation for me, too. Grew up eating lots of restaurant food, convenience meals, etc. That was the norm to me and I didn't go to great lengths to change that. When my ex husband and I saw our incomes grow, our waistlines did too...more dinners out, more alcohol, more of everything. It just seemed "normal" to do that, at the time.

There was a thread last week about "what did you eat before changing" and it kind of opened my eyes to the reasons and ways I became morbidly obese. Little things truly do make a difference. The amount of cheese and mayo you put on your sandwich. What is a "normal" amount of baking in your household (for me it was 3-4 times a week baking scones and cookies and other treats). I didn't eat huge portions. I didn't eat all junk. I liked and regularly ate veggies with hummus and fresh fruit for lunch. I just did not realize how many calories I was eating and until joining this website, by which time I'd lost 45 lb stabbing in the dark at "healthier eating", I had no clue if I needed to eat 500 or 3,500 cal per day...truly.

I do not eat "clean" - I guess compared to some people I do, about 80% of the time - but not by my definition. I also do not follow Paleo or any other specific dietary philosophy.

I am "addicted" (NOT SERIOUSLY ADDICTED) to sugar...meaning, I take huge pleasure in my square of dark chocolate every 2nd day, or scoop of ice cream once or twice a week, or banana-Nutkao homemade crepes for dinner once a month. But the majority of the time I really do think of food more as fuel, and I'd just as much like to have broccoli and tilapia for dinner tonight as a burger and fries.

calories are what make you fat. it is the whole premise of how MFP works.
I was vegan and semi-raw vegan at my fattest.
you might not get colon cancer but you can get fat on any type of calories.
there were obese people before refined sugar was ever invented. before ovens were invented too probably.

I started eating clean recently. I got fat after eating boxes of brownies, bags of cookies, 3 sandwiches in a day, anything and everything from the frozen section, pasta (mac and cheese and those sidekick type of things), chicken fingers, cheese and crackers (not in moderation), and eating fast food almost every day.

So eating clean made me lose weight because I'm not eating so much cr@p. 57lbs lost in 5.5 months. Yea I'll stick to eating clean.

actually it was a calorie deficet that made you lose weight....

sorry eating "clean" is a buzz word and will have no impact on weight loss if you don't do it in moderation too...

:flowerforyou: Thank you for that :flowerforyou: someone was bound to say the truth sooner or later.

Apologies for using 'fat', but overweight was too long to fit in the title.

I keep seeing so many threads about people who eat 'clean', avoid processed sugar, follow their hunger signs etc, and it seems so easy for them.

My question to those people is... if your relationship with food is so healthy... how did you get overweight in the first place?

I mean, I got fat because I love food, I'm obsessed with food (notice I didn't use 'addicted'), and it's just a huge part of my life. All my life I've just eaten what I wanted when I wanted it... I don't remember my parents ever telling me I couldn't have something. I just helped myself. I don't think I'll ever be able to just see food as sustenance... it's a pleasure. I've got much better at moderation and trying to make the most of my calories (taste-wise... I don't exactly meet my macros every day, lol), but I don't think the desire to eat more tasty food will ever go away. I'm aware it's going to be a life-long struggle.

Just really curious about this (and probably a bit jealous, lol. I wish I was one of those people for whom losing weight was easy).

Edited for bad, bad grammar.

For me it had to do with internal emotional issues. My father was in the military so I didn't get to see him much. When I did see him he would always take me out to eat as a "reward." It was something we could bond over since we didn't relate to much else except for video games, another vice of mine. I internalized this relationship with food and treated food like a reward. It was when I understood my relationship with food that I was able to overcome this habit.

I agree, we have vegetarians on this board that are overweight and trying to lose weight. The reason people get fat is because they eat too much.

It's calories in versus calories out.

And many seem to forget that a calorie is a calorie whether it comes from carrots or cookies, protein, fat or carbs.

Yep one of my good friends is vegan and is severely overweight. I can't tell you the number of times I have argued with him over how healthy(unhealthy from my perspective) grapeseed/canola/olive oil is. He literally drizzles that stuff all over his food. He use s the whole "it's natural" logical fallacy argument.

I don't usually eat clean lol my daily calorie intake is about 1200 calories
...and for me 1200 calories is too little.. if only I could eat anything without gaining..

Before I started here in mfp..I was 156 lbs ..for almost 3 month's
Dieting I lost 33 lbs

Created by MyFitnessPal.com - Free Weight Loss Tools

I think I gained extra weight because after I stopped nursing my baby, I kept eating that "2nd dinner" I always needed when nursing!

I gained weight back after a series of health and other issues. I was exercising and trying to eat healthy, but I was also struggling with knowing that I had food sensitivities (allergist said NOT allergies) and not able to figure out what was going on. When I learned about elimination diets, I decided to commit to going through one in order to get my food issues sorted out. For the past 6 weeks, I have followed guidelines carefully, and discovered that I have allergic symptoms to all dairy, and sensitivity to other foods.

One of the things about the diet is that you are eliminating basically all processed foods. Essentially eating "clean" without that title. That means fruits, vegetables, and protein sources like chicken, been, pork, and fish (the protein differs based on the diet you choose. Most days, I've had to really try to load up on food like meat and fruit to try to hit my minimum calories - except on days that I test the foods, like today when I was testing yellow dye by eating yellow rice throughout the day.

Next week, I'll be able to start adding back in things like eggs, but eliminating dairy from my diet will still mean eliminating most processed foods. I don't feel deprived, because I have gotten a better feel of food. I'm eating much healthier. I already know my cholesterol is in better shape from the last time I donated platelets.

Another thing that helps me stay on track is the importance of learning that dairy causes allergic symptoms. Prior to the past 6 weeks, I was having to use flonaise most every day, if not twice a day. I had pneumonia twice in the past year. Since the beginning of this diet, cutting out dairy, the only time I had to use flonaise was the day that I tested dairy itself. Since dairy causes massive amounts of phlegm, which can lead to a sinus infection, which can lead to pneumonia, I'm really hoping that I have found the cause of so much of my serious illnesses. Those illnesses led to me taking a long time to get back to being able to exercise normally, which led to serious frustration with my weight.

People have suggested eating various junk food to up the calories, but even if I discount the processed foods, I know my body enough to know that eating sugary foods tends to make me crave more sugary foods. The cravings just haven't been there the past 6 weeks, so I have no desire to make them come back.