Have you ever tried clean eating?
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If I can't pronounce it on the label, then I don't eat it. Mainly stay to outside perimeter of the store now. I have however been known to breakdown and have a spaghetti and homemade meatballs
>_> Pasta...weakness is strong with this one it is.
These are, however, the two most common clean eating 'rules' that get pointed as unreliable guidelines for basing a diet on.
"Can't pronounce it" : Many people are able to pronounce much of what's on a typical ingredients list very well. On the other hand there's a lot of people who couldn't pronounce quinoa to save their life.
"Shop the perimeter": most grocery stores near me have baked goods, deli meats, sausages, cheeses, and wine and beer on the perimeter. The aisles have frozen vegetables, frozen fruit, pasta, rice, and spices and seasonings. While cheese and beer and charcuterie are all wonderful things, they're pretty calorie dense and don't fit my day-to-day needs. The latter list helps me keep a varied, tasty, and easy to prepare diet that fits my goals.
If those rules are working for you, that's great. But they don't help someone understand how to maintain a consistent calorie deficit and meet their nutritional goals.
+1
Yes, some of my grocery stores are the same. Around the edges, one has the potato chip display first, then the bakery with delicious baked goods, then the deli, then the dairy ... and on the other side are all the pre-packaged meals, or boxed just-add-water meals. In the middle are the fresh fruit and veg.
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amusedmonkey wrote: »(Side note: anyone has smilies stuck in their reply box?)
Yes ... really weird.
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StealthHealth wrote: »
I would starve in China.6 -
Mandygring wrote: »unprocessed, whole foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats, and no artificial ingredients, preservatives, sugars, saturated fat, and trans fat.
No. I eat plenty of whole foods and avoid artificial trans fats, but I do enjoy ice cream, beer, pastas and breads in moderation. I also use jarred pasta sauces, peanut butter, butter, Greek yogurt, protein powder and bars, creatine, and the occasional chocolate bar.
If it works for you that's great, but your body needs saturated fat, and watching my calories, and macro and micro nutrients works incredibly well for me. I'll stand out of the crowd to some degree here because I'll say there is nothing wrong with clean eating so long as you define it in a sensible way and understand that you still need to create a calorie deficit to lose weight. If clean eating does that for you, and it's sustainable for you then use it. If you hit a wall or find yourself tied up in knots over whether you can enjoy an occasional treat then maybe step back and reasses.2 -
I did it for years. It worked very well for me to get where I am at now. Since I've done most of the leg-work with my physique I can now be a more flexible with the foods I eat.2
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trinabot19 wrote: »Id say im eating clean as I cant imagine what eating dirty is like LOL!!!
It's like this (that's me on the left):
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3dogsrunning wrote: »I used to follow the Tosco Reno version of "clean eating".
I never got results until I started calorie counting. I also found that I had a tendancy of restricting - sometimes to the point where I wouldn't eat because I couldn't find anything to fit the definition of clean - would end up in me breaking down and overboard on "unclean" foods.
I found that not restricting foods or deeming them "clean" or "dirty" went a long way in being able to stick with it. Counting calories helped me lose the weight finally.
Exactly this! Since trying clean eating and various cleanses I reached my highest weight a couple months ago. I'd be a social outcast for 3 weeks, drop 13 pounds and then binge endlessly on all the "bad" food. Personally, I couldn't sustain that way of eating. Good old fashioned moderation is what seems to work for me.4 -
If you can't pronounce it and don't bother researching it to learn how (and what the ingredient actually is), then perhaps you will end up like the folks in this clip from Penn & Teller.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw
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I bathe in peanut butter, is that clean?3
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Mandygring wrote: »unprocessed, whole foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats, and no artificial ingredients, preservatives, sugars, saturated fat, and trans fat.
Meat isn't a whole food... I never just DIG IN to a deer or cow. The pieces I eat are literally called cuts6 -
LaceyBirds wrote: »trinabot19 wrote: »Id say im eating clean as I cant imagine what eating dirty is like LOL!!!
It's like this (that's me on the left):
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I gave up all processed foods for a few months. It didn't affect my weight but I felt better and had more endurance working out. I couldn't keep it up 100% though. Sometimes I need a cheap convenient snack when im out, or just want a scoop of ice cream. Now I try to mostly eat whole unprocessed foods but allow myself all things in moderation.2
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I find that there are calorie-dense foods that usually taste amazing but one serving doesn't fill me up lol. Donuts, pizza, chips. I try not to see them as dirty or wrong, but I just know by experience that they will destroy my calorie deficit and leave me hangry an hour later lol.
So I eat less of those than I did when I was gaining/maintaining my weight at 210lbs, and I eat more nutrient-dense foods and try to balance vegetables, fruits, proteins, dairy and whole grains (which by the way are nowhere near the produce/meat section, they're slap bang amongst the dirty middle aisles of the store, or by the deliciously filthy bakery).
But if I've got a few thousand calories to spare and I see a Pizza Hut buffet, get outta my way. I'm not proud.5 -
Mandygring wrote: »unprocessed, whole foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats, and no artificial ingredients, preservatives, sugars, saturated fat, and trans fat.
You have to say "added sugars" to avoid having people point out that fruit, veggies, and dairy all come with sugar
I don't consider myself a clean eater per se, but for the most part I do eat like that, with the exception of not avoiding saturated fat. I do feel fuller and more energetic when I eat like that.1 -
I can pronounce "quinoa", I just refuse to, as there is no way to pronounce it that does not make me sound like a pretentious hipster. However, I will happily eat it, provided I can order it without having to say it out loud, for fear I will spontaneously sprout a moustache and a penny farthing.
I see we're discussing "shopping the perimeter" again. I have thought about this again, as it was recommended in one of the mfp blogs, and have decided that I had better start following this valuable advice. Henceforward, my diet will consist of (in order of occurrence)-
Breakfast cereal
Teabags
Doughnuts
Bread and Cake
Peanut butter
Ketchup
Salad and soft fruit (bonus point!)
Bacon, sausages and haggis
More than five distinct varieties of hot dog
Quiche
Ravioli
Those little peppers stuffed with cream cheese
Small pots of e.g. tiramisu or cheesecake, but NOT the full sized ones in the adjacent aisle. God forbid! I know better than that now!
Dairy
Eggs
Toilet rolls
Soap
And a wide and diverse range of alcohol.
At certain times of year I will be able to supplement this with compost, bedding plants and fireworks.
I expect rapid weight loss and all my ills to be swiftly cured.
OP, eating freshly made food, fruit and veg, quality ingredients, all sounds good, but I don't like the moral implication of "clean eating". It seems more like a religious idea than a health measure to me. I like to save moral judgements for things that are actually good or evil.
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Clean eating?
Well.....I certainly wash my fruits and veg.
If I don't drop my icecream or oreos on the ground, then it's clean eating, right?
I also eat before and after my showers.
So, I do a bit of both.
I find this 'shopping the perimeter' at a supermarket quite funny since icecream. booze and processed meats are situated in the perimeter of most supermarkets here.3 -
If it fits your macros approach. Calories and energy balance has been most effective for me. If clean eating means eating broccoli and chicken every time then count me out. I like my curry chicken and fried rice.3
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Totally clean. No processed stuff. Like they say, when you read the ingredients. "If you can't read it, don't eat it".
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LindaGraziano1 wrote: »Totally clean. No processed stuff. Like they say, when you read the ingredients. "If you can't read it, don't eat it".
I think they should change the saying to "If you can't read it then maybe they should have held you back until you learned."
Seriously, not being able to read ingredients has nothing to do with how "healthy" or "clean" a food is.19 -
I would stay far far away from this then. It looks to be particularly dangerous.
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LindaGraziano1 wrote: »Totally clean. No processed stuff. Like they say, when you read the ingredients. "If you can't read it, don't eat it".
I think they should change the saying to "If you can't read it then maybe they should have held you back until you learned."
Seriously, not being able to read ingredients has nothing to do with how "healthy" or "clean" a food is.
Absolutely. Many of us have enough education to be able to read the labels ... like, for example, all those "dangerous" ingredients on the red container above!!!
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LindaGraziano1 wrote: »Totally clean. No processed stuff. Like they say, when you read the ingredients. "If you can't read it, don't eat it".
I think they should change the saying to "If you can't read it then maybe they should have held you back until you learned."
Seriously, not being able to read ingredients has nothing to do with how "healthy" or "clean" a food is.
Absolutely. Many of us have enough education to be able to read the labels ... like, for example, all those "dangerous" ingredients on the red container above!!!
I just wish they used "Amylum" instead of cornstarch. It would have been a 10 on richter scale dangerous.10 -
amusedmonkey wrote: »I would stay far far away from this then. It looks to be particularly dangerous.
I've often wondered about that poster and their ban on all things sodium bicarbonate. I wonder if they ever relaxed their stance and let the family eat fried chicken and baked goods or not.6 -
Looks like I'm going to have to cut out tzatziki and pho again5
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amusedmonkey wrote: »I would stay far far away from this then. It looks to be particularly dangerous.
Baking soda in a can?0 -
Yes. But I define it as not eating anything I couldn't replicate at home. So I could make my own butter, but never margarine etc. People argue a lot about definitions on here but it's just semantics. The same as one person's 'healthy' eating could be completely different from someone else's.4
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