Clean eating and hitting nutrient/calorie goals

For fat/calorie boost: Cook with olive oil. Eat nuts. Add avocado to your salad/sandwich/dish. Use full fat dairy instead of low fat/skim.

For protein: increase your portions of lean meat/dairy.

Hitting fat goal is very easy with so low calorie goal. Couple spoonfuls of peanut butter does that and is usually "clean" and quite healthy. Protein can be a bit harder, my favorite thing is to keep low fat cottage cheese in the fridge, you can add some berries or something similar for flavor.

Do you consider olive oil to be clean? I suggest you use more. And include avocados on your grocery list.

You can make a nice vinaigrette with olive oil, vinegar and fresh herbs. Don't skimp on the oil.

Sprinkle olive oil and spices on your root vegetables when you roast them.

If you are still not eating enough, double up on your portions.

crw9384 wrote: »

I usually top off around 1200 a day. There are few days where I am under 1000. And those are the busy days. Ive lost steady over the past 20 days. 11lbs.

11 lbs in 20 days is quite rapid. If that was the beginning of your weight loss, it's likely that a chunk of that was water weight, but still, assuming by your stats that you are aiming to lose less than 50 lbs total, you should be aiming for no more than 1 lb/week of loss.

As others have said, the phrase "clean eating" means something different to a lot of people and other than just making sure you focus on eating nutrient dense foods for an overall healthy diet, there isn't anything special about it for weight loss. If the parameters you've set for yourself lead to you undereating and losing weight too rapidly, you may want to consider if a strict approach is the best fit for you. You can still eat those things you mentioned but add in more fat, fattier cuts of meat, or even be more flexible with fitting in "less clean" foods.

Yes, this is the beginning. I actually went back and started looking at what I was eating and I was probably consuming up towards 3500-4000 a day! So, I backed off tremendously. I've started making all my meals at home. And I cut out diet soda as well. So, yes I'm sure a lot of the weight loss was bloating and water.

I thought "clean eating" meant focusing on non processed or minimally processed foods (although like others I note that it seems to be 2 clean eaters, 3 definitions of "clean eating"). In any case, there are lots of higher protein and higher fat foods that are minimally or non processed -- nuts and seeds for fat, eat more lean meats for protein (or eggs for protein and fat, low fat dairy for protein). Olives, olive oil, avocados are also good choices. I really enjoy plain greek yogurt mixed with a little almond butter, that's going to help with fat and protein, stuff like that. Cook vegetables in olive oil, make a vinaigrette for a salad.

I agree with the poster who said you've likely eliminated too many foods.
If you're struggling because you feel full, make some swaps such as smaller portions of high volume/lower calorie foods in exchange for higher calorie/lower volume ones.
Instead of chicken, eat beef. Instead of a huge serving of vegetables, include rice. Adding oils is an easy way to get more fat/calories without adding volume to a meal.

crw9384 wrote: »

I usually top off around 1200 a day. There are few days where I am under 1000. And those are the busy days. Ive lost steady over the past 20 days. 11lbs.

That's not necessarily a good thing.

tiasommer wrote: »

Thanks for the tips! I'll up the avocado, nuts, olive oil and meats. By clean eating, I mean just no processed, packaged foods. I'm just getting started and have been focusing on fruits and veggies, low fat proteins and I'm used to eating meat in limited quantities. A little tweaking should help!

why low fat? if you dont have a health issue that limits you eating fat then eat it. fat wont make you fat.