The Clean Eating Myth
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Its CICO. Period.
Different diets with different macros can affect satiety, ease of adherence, NEAT, etc, but its all CICO. I am too lazy to find it know, but I believe all controlled ward studies (ie not self-reported but food/exercise strictly controlled) showed no significant difference.
Clean eating is for all intents and purposes myth with regards to weight loss. Body recomp is different.
Sure it's CICO. Bolded are all aspects of CICO that matter hugely for any given individual, though.0 -
Hi Guys, sorry if I missed this being mentioned in the slew of acronyms but, from my understanding, the reason why 'clean' eating tends to result in better results than 'processed' eating is to do with how the food is metabolised.
Exhibit A - Raw carrot - 120cal (clean example)
Exhibit B - Cooked and mashed carrot - 120cal (processed example)
Person eats raw carrot. Digesting raw carrot burns 25cal.
Person eats cooked and mashed carrot. Digesting burns10cal.
Actual calories entering the system for A is 95cal.
Actual calories entering the system for B is 110cal.
Therefore, on a diet of raw carrots a person would loose weight faster than if they ate cooked and mashed carrot.
I have no idea what exactly the differences are between digesting one over the other are only that a processed food is easier and quicker to digest while the raw requires more activity to burn and is more likely to pass through undigested (corn vs pop corn anyone?).
It really has nothing to do with toxins and warm and fuzzies. This is also the basis of the Atkins diet funnily enough. Meat takes alot more calories to digest than a carrot.
HOWEVER, in my opinion, if you are on a CICO diet with processed food which is resulting in weight loss and you are able to stick to it I say go for it. Its better to do something slow and steady and stick to it then go too hard and not be able to see it through.
If you want to get healthy though, that's another story
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People who eat 'some' processed food can be healthy for sure. People who eat only highly processed foods will likely be missing out on essential nutrients and probably taking in alot of things in higher quantities than they should like salts and fats.
Its a different story because weightloss and health are not synonymous. Maybe my last sentence is a double negative. I meant that if you want to get healthy you need to eat healthy not just a cal deficit.0 -
I'm confused... Cooking and mashing carrots now makes them processed? Unclean? I've never, in any definition of the ever-changing goal post of "clean, " seen a requirement that veggies be raw. Cooking is allowed on every definition I've seen.
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The person who eats clean food will lose weight quicker. Because the body digests natural food easier and gets rid of it easier. Constipation makes you gain weight too and you can't have that problem when eating carrots
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tedboosalis7 wrote: »girlviernes wrote: »I lose much more weight on a diet that includes processed foods because I will actually keep to that diet. I'm having a lot of success eating what I'm used to eating.
If I tried to eat "clean" 100% of the time I would give up completely, go back to my old way of eating, and then just keep slowly gaining weight. I think that many of the people pushing "clean" diets are perfectly happy eating that way.
If you are eating a diet that satisfies you, you are much more likely to have success with it. "Clean" eaters may actually lose more weight if they comply with their diet more consistently when they eat that way than they do otherwise.
Whatever is most comfortable for the individual is what is most likely to work long-term.
This. Find what you buy into and what enables you to eat a variety, get the macros/micros you need and the right calorie deficit, and that you most easily can follow long-term.
If that isn't true, it doesn't matter one iota if there is some small advantage to one eating plan or another. And, any advantage is frankly speculative at this point with the bulk of studies pointing to the dodo effect with diet plans. People lose the same amount, regain the same amount, and when eating ad libitum end up pretty much consuming the same macros.
Okay - eat 1500 calories of cake - and I will eat 1500 calories of pure nutritious food (as I do now but MORE) and I will flat out not only lose fat pounds but I will retain my muscle mass over the course of one year.
I did the above - it doesn't work. DOESN'T WORK.
You can't outrun a bad diet.
The tree of "Not eliminating comfort food = only eating cake all day" Is full by now, I need to start a new list.
In before he says I only say this because I don't like him again.0 -
I'm so confused!! I'm clean eating but also calorie counting - I read endless articles online, many of them suggest when clean eating you don't need to calorie count but I can't help myself. Is this the right way to go to lose weight? xx0
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What people should understand is that processed foods don't really fill you up that much. You end up craving more and more and thus go over the calorie limits. Sure you can watch your portions with them and not eat as much, but you still end up hungry whereas if you are eating healthier foods higher in nutrition especially protein and fiber you don't get hungry as quickly.0
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danicristina2015 wrote: »The person who eats clean food will lose weight quicker. Because the body digests natural food easier and gets rid of it easier. Constipation makes you gain weight too and you can't have that problem when eating carrots
Constipation isn't weight gain, just as wearing clothes isn't weight gain.
Also I haven't seen anything that said "natural foods" digest better. In fact, someone above pretty much said your body has an easier time digesting a "processed" carrot as opposed to a raw one.0 -
danicristina2015 wrote: »The person who eats clean food will lose weight quicker. Because the body digests natural food easier and gets rid of it easier. Constipation makes you gain weight too and you can't have that problem when eating carrots
I'm not sure about that. If your body digests better, it means that you absorb better the nutrients, so you can take more energy from them. In fact, underweight people with malabsorption issues can gain weight by eating "clean".
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What people should understand is that processed foods don't really fill you up that much. You end up craving more and more and thus go over the calorie limits. Sure you can watch your portions with them and not eat as much, but you still end up hungry whereas if you are eating healthier foods higher in nutrition especially protein and fiber you don't get hungry as quickly.
You got your pronouns mixed up. It's "*I* end up craving more and more and thus go over the calorie limits" and "*I* end up hungry".
Plenty of us can eat "dirty" and feel perfectly sated within our calories.
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Gianfranco_R wrote: »danicristina2015 wrote: »The person who eats clean food will lose weight quicker. Because the body digests natural food easier and gets rid of it easier. Constipation makes you gain weight too and you can't have that problem when eating carrots
I'm not sure about that. If your body digests better, it means that you absorb better the nutrients, so you can take more energy from them. In fact, underweight people with malabsorption issues can gain weight by eating "clean".
Processing it makes it easier to digest.
And yes, cooking your food is processing it. I am not saying its not 'clean' just that the more processed something is (including peeling) the easier it is for your body to break down and get nutrients from.
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That's why they say celery is a calorie negative food because it takes more energy to digest then is actually in it.
So by that -- eating celery can kill you, and celery is a vegetable, so eating your vegetables can KILL YOU!!!
That's it!! Telling the wife now.....NO VEGGIES!! DONE!!!
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The thing is not even the 'Clean eating' people can decide what eating clean actually is. I see many so called clean eaters eating cheese, protein powders and many other things that are the definition of processed in my mind.
This argument like many on MFP is just a fallacy because as normal it's one or the other. I eat a lot of foods the clean eaters would see as clean but hey I also sometimes eat 'non clean' foods. Why does it need to be one or the other? It's this obsession about putting labels on everything. Why do you have to be 'paleo', 'clean' or anything else why not just say I eat foods I like that fit in with my goals/lifestyle?0 -
What people should understand is that processed foods don't really fill you up that much. You end up craving more and more and thus go over the calorie limits. Sure you can watch your portions with them and not eat as much, but you still end up hungry whereas if you are eating healthier foods higher in nutrition especially protein and fiber you don't get hungry as quickly.
You got your pronouns mixed up. It's "*I* end up craving more and more and thus go over the calorie limits" and "*I* end up hungry".
Plenty of us can eat "dirty" and feel perfectly sated within our calories.
Brilliant-I like you! And totally agree.0 -
Hi Guys, sorry if I missed this being mentioned in the slew of acronyms but, from my understanding, the reason why 'clean' eating tends to result in better results than 'processed' eating is to do with how the food is metabolised.
Exhibit A - Raw carrot - 120cal (clean example)
Exhibit B - Cooked and mashed carrot - 120cal (processed example)
Person eats raw carrot. Digesting raw carrot burns 25cal.
Person eats cooked and mashed carrot. Digesting burns10cal.
Actual calories entering the system for A is 95cal.
Actual calories entering the system for B is 110cal.
Therefore, on a diet of raw carrots a person would loose weight faster than if they ate cooked and mashed carrot.
I have no idea what exactly the differences are between digesting one over the other are only that a processed food is easier and quicker to digest while the raw requires more activity to burn and is more likely to pass through undigested (corn vs pop corn anyone?).
It really has nothing to do with toxins and warm and fuzzies. This is also the basis of the Atkins diet funnily enough. Meat takes alot more calories to digest than a carrot.
HOWEVER, in my opinion, if you are on a CICO diet with processed food which is resulting in weight loss and you are able to stick to it I say go for it. Its better to do something slow and steady and stick to it then go too hard and not be able to see it through.
If you want to get healthy though, that's another story
The differences in TEF are pretty much negligible.0 -
That's why they say celery is a calorie negative food because it takes more energy to digest then is actually in it.
So by that -- eating celery can kill you, and celery is a vegetable, so eating your vegetables can KILL YOU!!!
That's it!! Telling the wife now.....NO VEGGIES!! DONE!!!
It's a myth. Your body doesn't take that much energy to digest food.0 -
isulo_kura wrote: »The thing is not even the 'Clean eating' people can decide what eating clean actually is. I see many so called clean eaters eating cheese, protein powders and many other things that are the definition of processed in my mind.
This argument like many on MFP is just a fallacy because as normal it's one or the other. I eat a lot of foods the clean eaters would see as clean but hey I also sometimes eat 'non clean' foods. Why does it need to be one or the other? It's this obsession about putting labels on everything. Why do you have to be 'paleo', 'clean' or anything else why not just say I eat foods I like that fit in with my goals/lifestyle?
To my understanding, eating "clean" means eating (mainly) unprocessed or minimally processed food.
But you can eat a "clean" paleo diet, a "clean" vegetarian diet, a "clean" macrobiotic diet a "clean" vegan diet, a "clean" Mediterranean diet and so on.
That's why, in my opinion, the label "clean", alone, is meaningless.
A different issue is how much "strict" you allow yourself to eat. You can aim to eat a 100% "clean" diet, or you can adopt a more loose approach (for instance, an 80/20 approach).
But why to search for "fallacies" on others' way of eating?
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