Clean Eating
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so I've heard a lot of great thing about eating clean and prepping all your meals ahead of time. Is there anyone out there eating clean and if so can you give me a crash course and enlighten me on your journey?
I eat clean because I wash all my fruits and vegetables.
Just kidding.
I don't subscribe to the notion of clean eating, but I do prepare 99 percent of my meals at home, and usually have enough for several days. I love making my own food.
No type of eating will lead to weight loss unless you eat less calories than you burn. Just eat the foods you like in moderation, eat at a calorie deficit, and you will lose weight.0 -
Why do you want to eat clean?Lol...I have no idea what you guys are talking about...sigh. Thanks Pootler74 for attempting to answer ,y question. For the record, "clean eating" refers to choosing all the right foods to eat but also avoiding all junk and processed foods. Geesh!
Found a eating clean for dummies cheat sheet that seems helpful...
If it's because you think it will help you lose weight, it won't. You can eat anything and lose weight by eating at a calorie deficit.
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Because the only thing done to (most of) them between the field and your bowl is basically cleaning, some drying.
That is processing.
And when you make bread or pasta or flour out of them or even put them in a package (after cutting them in whatever way you choose) for oatmeal, that's processing.
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I eat dirty. Dirty dirty dirty.
If you need me, I'll be face-down in the Hershey's Kisses.
But I'll be face-down in them within my calorie goals.
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beth557755 wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »beth557755 wrote: »I feel fuller and can it more food by eating "clean". That to me is eating whole foods like whole grains, veggies, fruit etc. basically unprocessed food.
How are whole grains not processed?
I'd actually be interested in a response to my comment upthread, not that I'm optimistic I'll get one or an actual discussion.I guess I could eat pop tarts and microwave meals and still hit my calorie goals and lose weight, but I prefer the good stuff for my body because I want to lose and keep the weight off so changing the foods I eat and tastebuds to those I think will help me in the long run because it will be my new "base" foods.
Tons of "non clean" foods are reasonably considered "good stuff" (again, see my post above) and go well beyond the proverbial pop tarts. Also, although I have zero interest in eating them, not cutting pop tarts out of one's diet doesn't mean they eat a diet made up of pop tarts.
Also, I make myself microwave meals for lunch all the time (in that I make the meal from whole foods and put it in tupperware to bring to work). Similarly, I can buy a whole range of reheatable options, some of which claim to be "clean" (company marketing based on that), and many of which are store-bought but seem to have decent ingredients. I don't buy them since I prefer to cook (or just buy food I like for lunch, again with ingredients similar to what I'd use, so I'm not sure why that makes it "unclean"), but choosing a healthy microwave meal might be a nutritious option for someone. Isn't whether a meal heated in the microwave is healthy or not depend on what's actually in it, not that it's in a form to be reheated?
Wow you are taking this way too seriously.
Not really. My tone was off if it sounded like that. It's just this conversation comes up a lot and it gets frustrating never to get a response to genuine questions raised while people ignore the posts and go right on about "eating clean" and avoiding "processed" foods which are allegedly all unhealthy and so on as if there was even a consistent meaning to "clean" or even "processed." That's what I tried to explain in my post above, and then you ignored it (which is fine, you can answer what you want) and posted as if "processed" meant bad or unhealthy. So I wanted to point out again that that's by no means true. Like you I choose to eat a variety of processed foods in many cases BECAUSE I think they are healthy (as well as liking them). Thus, I don't think the claim that processed foods are unhealthy makes much sense and I'm still confused about what clean is supposed to mean.
Like I said, I am interested in a real conversation, so if you have anything to say to my post above I'd be interested.I am by no means one of those militant people on "clean" foods. I was referencing me with the pop tarts and microwavable food which I have lived off of for years and years, the unhealthy meals until they cut gallbladder out.
My point (and mamapeach's, I think) is that there are lots of "processed" foods that aren't poptarts or the worst microwaveable meals (there are even decent microwaveable meals, although I don't use them). Whether or not someone defines as a "clean" eater doesn't appear to be about whether they eat more or less nutritiously.I primarily ate junk pure junk. So me switching things up to actually cooking stuff and making quinoa, millet, buckwheat, amaranth, and oatmeal etc. as a unprocessed or rather if you want to get all technical, minimally processed food instead of the highly processed carbs like bread, pasta, etc is what I found to be better for me.
I think improving your diet is great. I just don't think it means eating "processed" vs. "unprocessed" or that "clean" has any meaningful definition.
Also, why are quinoa, etc., inherently better than whole grain bread or pasta, say?In my experience making that stuff with veggies, fruit, healthy fats, and lean meats fills me up more than a tiny microwavable meal or something I can grab ready made at the store with unhealthy ingredients.
I agree with this. It's not what I'm disagreeing about at all (except that I know where you can get microwaveable meals that appear to me basically identical to something I would make with veggies and high-quality, well-sourced protein).0 -
I don't eat clean on purpose. I know people who do and it invariably involves a lot of meat and butter.
But, to get the calories I need with the right proportion of fat/carbohydrates/protein and the right amount of nutrients, I have to be pretty deliberate in my choices.
A pack of pop-tarts has, I believe 440 calories, around 25% fat and the rest is mostly carbohydrates. Throw in a pint of 2% milk and you are looking at about 660 calories. From a macro perspective, that isn't too horrible, but that is also not a very satisfying meal. And since I eat breakfast as soon as I get home from the gym in the morning, that wouldn't be a great recovery meal.
My normal breakfast is 3/4 cup (uncooked volume) of oatmeal with tbsp of turbinado sugar, 12 oz of 2% milk, 2 Morningstar Farms breakfast patties, 6 oz of canteloupe (because potassium) and a cup of coffee. That is also approximately 660 calories. Macros are about the same. That is a very satisfying breakfast and does a good job of giving my body something to work with for recovering from my morning workout.0 -
What's the weird obsession with poptarts?
I don't "eat clean" and yet my normal breakfast is a vegetable omelet (usually a couple types of veggies plus greens) with feta, and then on the side smoked salmon or either cottage cheese or plain greek yogurt (2%) plus (often) fruit. (Usually about 400 calories.)
When I work out fasted and then eat after (like this morning), I typically have steel cut oats with protein powder and berries (sometimes a banana) and then some veggies and some other kind of protein (today it was green beans and cottage cheese). (Usually about 450 calories.)
I don't think this is wildly interesting, but I don't see why not eating "clean" means you are eating unsatisfying meals.
For breakfast I have, at various times, had a smoothie with fruit, some kale or spinach, and milk or almond milk, and had my steel cut oats (larger serving of oats) plus berries (I don't add sugar). Neither was a satisfying breakfast at all, FOR ME, even though both are probably considered by "clean" eaters as "clean" (although it was store-bought almond milk, so beats me how that would pass). Some of the "cleanest" smoothies I've seen described by people here (and probably delicious and extremely satisfying to them) would take up more calories than either of my breakfasts that I eat now, and yet satisfy me for maybe an hour. So satisfaction isn't the issue. My sister (who has never had a weight problem and eats pretty healthy for the most part) eats some kind of packaged egg sandwich thing for breakfast, because she wants easy in the morning. She claims it satisfies her 'til lunch and I have no reason to think otherwise.0 -
Nony_Mouse wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Nony_Mouse wrote: »
Heh--brief change of avatar, so you can see there's no clean eating at my house. (Not actually normal, FTR, cupboard has been fixed.)
Edit: Argh, for some reason it won't let me change now. All I can say is that it's in my photos.
Brilliant
This one shows not only one of my cats on the bench (how else is she meant to watch her fish??), but on the bench immediately after getting home from having hyperthyroid treatment, meaning she was radioactive.
Heh, love it! (Adorable cat, radioactive or not.)0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »What's the weird obsession with poptarts?
They are full of yum. However, I've had to accept that, at 47 years old and on my second time losing a lot of weight in my adult life, not my best breakfast option regardless of what the package says.
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Why not ease in to healthier eating by changing one habit a week, like switching out fries for salad. Trying to change everything at once is too hard.0
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Because Radioactive Cat wouldn't do that would she?0
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lemurcat12 wrote: »Nony_Mouse wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Nony_Mouse wrote: »
Heh--brief change of avatar, so you can see there's no clean eating at my house. (Not actually normal, FTR, cupboard has been fixed.)
Edit: Argh, for some reason it won't let me change now. All I can say is that it's in my photos.
Brilliant
This one shows not only one of my cats on the bench (how else is she meant to watch her fish??), but on the bench immediately after getting home from having hyperthyroid treatment, meaning she was radioactive.
Heh, love it! (Adorable cat, radioactive or not.)
Thanks. She is a sweetheart. In defense of their bench habits, they never get on the food prep bench. The breakfast bar is just a convenient place to watch fish and to get pats while I'm in the kitchen (and I only recently started eating at the breakfast bar, so can't really tell them off for it now just because I changed my habits).Because Radioactive Cat wouldn't do that would she?
No one should take any sort of weight loss advice from Radioactive Cat, believe me!!
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Nony_Mouse wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Nony_Mouse wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Nony_Mouse wrote: »
Heh--brief change of avatar, so you can see there's no clean eating at my house. (Not actually normal, FTR, cupboard has been fixed.)
Edit: Argh, for some reason it won't let me change now. All I can say is that it's in my photos.
Brilliant
This one shows not only one of my cats on the bench (how else is she meant to watch her fish??), but on the bench immediately after getting home from having hyperthyroid treatment, meaning she was radioactive.
Heh, love it! (Adorable cat, radioactive or not.)
Thanks. She is a sweetheart. In defense of their bench habits, they never get on the food prep bench. The breakfast bar is just a convenient place to watch fish and to get pats while I'm in the kitchen (and I only recently started eating at the breakfast bar, so can't really tell them off for it now just because I changed my habits).Because Radioactive Cat wouldn't do that would she?
No one should take any sort of weight loss advice from Radioactive Cat, believe me!!
Have you ever seen that TV show My Cat From Hell? (Not at all suggesting that your cat is such a cat!) The cat whisperer guy on the show (Jackson Galaxy, guessing not his birth name) is always going on about how cats need perches, and my one cat (in the cupboard photo) basically uses my breakfast bar that way. He sits on the edge and looks at everyone. He doesn't get in the food prep area either. However, I live in fear that he will do this when I have guests over, who would not understand. ;-)0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »Nony_Mouse wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Nony_Mouse wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Nony_Mouse wrote: »
Heh--brief change of avatar, so you can see there's no clean eating at my house. (Not actually normal, FTR, cupboard has been fixed.)
Edit: Argh, for some reason it won't let me change now. All I can say is that it's in my photos.
Brilliant
This one shows not only one of my cats on the bench (how else is she meant to watch her fish??), but on the bench immediately after getting home from having hyperthyroid treatment, meaning she was radioactive.
Heh, love it! (Adorable cat, radioactive or not.)
Thanks. She is a sweetheart. In defense of their bench habits, they never get on the food prep bench. The breakfast bar is just a convenient place to watch fish and to get pats while I'm in the kitchen (and I only recently started eating at the breakfast bar, so can't really tell them off for it now just because I changed my habits).Because Radioactive Cat wouldn't do that would she?
No one should take any sort of weight loss advice from Radioactive Cat, believe me!!
Have you ever seen that TV show My Cat From Hell? (Not at all suggesting that your cat is such a cat!) The cat whisperer guy on the show (Jackson Galaxy, guessing not his birth name) is always going on about how cats need perches, and my one cat (in the cupboard photo) basically uses my breakfast bar that way. He sits on the edge and looks at everyone. He doesn't get in the food prep area either. However, I live in fear that he will do this when I have guests over, who would not understand. ;-)
I've seen that show! My kittie loves to perch like a vulture too.
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lemurcat12 wrote: »What's the weird obsession with poptarts?
They are full of yum. However, I've had to accept that, at 47 years old and on my second time losing a lot of weight in my adult life, not my best breakfast option regardless of what the package says.
Got it. Makes sense. (My dumb breakfast option was typically a plain bagel, purchased on the way to work. This was especially dumb because it was mainly just convenient, I'm not a huge bagel fan and it wasn't an especially good bagel.) I was just going from that post plus the other thread you started that you were making lots of assumptions about what other people here were eating and all that. Perhaps that was not accurate.0 -
I can tell you how I've been managing home-cooked meals (not touching "clean eating". I use canned food etc. so I'm not that clean.)
I shop for 3-4 days at a time, because a) I hate the taste of cooked food that's been frozen, b) I hate thinking about defrosting and not being able to change my mind last minute. So I want to keep my meat in the fridge. So for this way of doing it, you need quality storage stuff (like glasslock).
I plan around meat, because that's the annoying thing to cook. Then I think about sides - some kind of veg, maybe some kind of legume, and/or some kind of starch. I make a little extra of whatever I'm making, usually just enough for 1 or 2 other meals. I will then rotate cooked things into various meals.
Breakfast is the same most days (some kind of eggs and toast; tomatoes; maybe yogurt or cottage cheese; coffee), so I don't have to think about that.
So shopping for 3-4 days means:
- 2 chicken breasts cut into 4 pieces (these are big). (I cook them all at once. Each will be for a meal - it can go into pasta, or a sandwich, or a salad, or just like that. The first meal will be the tastiest, obviously.)
- 1-2 steaks. Or, ground beef (I would just fry up a pound of it with onions/garlic, and then put it into different things - goes nicely with rice and beans, or in pasta. OR I might make a bunch of burgers and have those through the week, I even eat those cold.)
- 1 kind of salady veg (1 box spinach; a small head of cabbage); 1-2 kinds of veggies for roasting (2 peppers, 3-4 zucchinis or 1 eggplant); 1-2 kinds of other green veggies for steaming/boiling (green beans, broccoli, asparagus); 2 potatoes, white or sweet.
- 1-2 cans of legumes - either black beans or lentils. These can go into salads, soups, chili, whatever. Good source of fibre and protein.
- I always get fresh tomatoes because I love them. I might get 1-2 pieces of fruit (one apple, one banana).
- One fancy onion (red or green)
In addition to that, my staples are:
- milk, greek yogurt, feta or goat cheese, cream for coffee, butter
- proscuitto (can use in 1 million things), sausages (these are really fatty though.)
- rice, pasta - these, again, you can cook once and save a bit for 1-2 extra meals
- sugar, coffee
- canned tomatoes
- canned minestrone soup
- peanut butter
- oatmeal
- almonds
- cooking onions & garlic
- oil
- spices and whatnot
- cooking wine
- I have things like canned tuna on hand just in case. Also, a few boxed frozen things (like pizza or chicken tenders or something like that) for nights I don't feel like cooking.
Every now and then I might pick up hummus or cream cheese or something like that.
SO this might look like this:
Monday - shop.
Monday dinner: Cook all the chicken (broiled in the oven, in a skillet). Roast all my peppers & zucchini at the same. I won't eat those now, but they're going to go into things later and I don't want to roast twenty times this week. Boil a couple of potatoes. Boil some asparagus. I will eat 1/4th of the chicken, 1/4 of the potatoes, and the asparagus.
Tuesday
Breakfast: eggs/toast/tomatoes/coffee/maybe cottage cheese/yogurt.
Lunch: a salad using the roasted veg, sweet potato, lentils, cheese and a bit of the chicken
Dinner: pasta with a bit of chicken, and some of the roasted veg
Snack: tomato and cream cheese sandwich
Wednesday
Breakfast: same
Lunch: chicken sandwich and a spinach salad
Dinner: steak and a potato and a salad (spinach and lentils)
Snack: oatmeal & some dried plums; maybe some nuts
Thursday
Breakfast: same
Lunch: out - a sandwich from Starbucks, probably, because their cal counts are reliable (but NOT their coffee)
Dinner: sweet potato salad with prosciutto, green onions, and greek yogurt. OR sauteed lentils, onions, garlic, with a bit of red wine and sausage
Snack: minestrone soup with some of the asparagus I bought and lentils added in
Time to shop again.0
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