Clean Eating?? Whose doing it?
chastitymorgan89
Posts: 5 Member
Anyone clean eating? I want to start for the health benefits from it. But don’t know where to start. Need recipes, tips, anything!
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Replies
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How do you define clean? Everyone will have a slightly different description of what is clean. Focus on increasing the foods you feel you want more of in your diet.15
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My goal is to choose fresh over refined, and natural sugars not artificial.3
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nope10
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I cook primarily with whole fresh/frozen ingredients but I don't put a name on it.6
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I would say 90% of my food is clean an every once in a while i eat something processed though not normal. The majority of my sugar comes from fresh organic fruit.0
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Clean eating is whatever you decide to make it. I don't eat food with dirt on it, so I'm eating clean.
Nothing wrong with incorporating more whole, fresh foods into your diet. Just make sure they're foods you enjoy and will continue eating. Losing weight and improving health shouldn't be punishing.12 -
chastitymorgan89 wrote: »My goal is to choose fresh over refined, and natural sugars not artificial.
While I disagree with the term "clean" eating just because it is nebulous and has so many different meanings to people. I can understand wanting to move towards more whole foods. Personally, I don't worry about sugars at all (changed that to monitor fibre a long time ago). I also think that fitting in a treat now and again is a good thing (for me). I do enjoy cooking because I control what goes into it and I can tweak recipes to fit my nutritional needs. Plus, I'm not a horrendous cook, so it tastes good. That being said...
I would start in a couple places. There are plenty of recipe sites and some will allow you to enter in what you have on hand (I love myfridgefood.com - enter what I have in the house, and it gives me recipes for that). I love single pan recipes (salmon with roasted veggies topped with feta). I also have a slow cooker (batch cooking, great for stews, meats, roasts, etc) and a three tier steamer (rice on the bottom, meat in the middle, veggies on top) both save a lot of time in that I don't have to stand there and watch it once the ingredients are together.4 -
chastitymorgan89 wrote: »Anyone clean eating? I want to start for the health benefits from it. But don’t know where to start. Need recipes, tips, anything!
Another who does not put a name to what I am eating. I eat mostly foods I prepare myself from fresh ingredients (although frozen and canned vegetables are staples in my house, some canned by me from my garden). I live alone so I do a lot of stews and casseroles (my crockpot is the most used appliance in my house after my coffeemaker). I make 4-6 portions. Freeze some, eat one the day I make it, and eat leftovers for a day or two. Stews especially make great leftovers.
As far as recipes, there are so many good sites. My personal favorites for lower calorie recipes are https://skinnytaste.com/ and diabeticconnect.com/diabetic-recipes I also get a lot from AllRecipes. Many of them have a search-by-ingredient function so I can look up recipes according to what meat I want as the main ingredient.
Another site I use just for my crockpot is https://365daysofcrockpot.com/4 -
Buckle up - this isn't going to be pretty... I know you asked what seemed like an innocent question but as others have mentioned, "Clean Eating" is a vague, subjective term that means something different to just about everyone that practices it. It gets to be quite a hot topic.
You mentioned your goals are to choose fresh over refined, and natural sugars over artificial, and you said in your original post that this was for health benefits?
First - what do you mean natural sugars over artificial? Are you grouping things like white sugar, brown sugar, honey and agave together under your definition of "natural" and then things like Aspartame and Sucralose under "artificial"?
Fresh foods sounds like a great concept - but we are heading into fall and then winter here where I live, where fresh, local produce is going to be harder to come by. Why would relying on frozen vegetables have a negative impact on my health?
So again - nothing wrong with your aspirations to be healthier, use more whole foods, etc - but there are a lot of ways to achieve those goals that are not totally aligned with common definitions of "clean eating".
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chastitymorgan89 wrote: »Anyone clean eating? I want to start for the health benefits from it. But don’t know where to start. Need recipes, tips, anything!
Check out the clean eating group, lots of other people in there with similar goals and suggestions on how to approach it, and you won't have to defend your choices of what you want to put into your own body and why.
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/133-clean-eating-group4 -
chastitymorgan89 wrote: »Anyone clean eating? I want to start for the health benefits from it. But don’t know where to start. Need recipes, tips, anything!
Check out the clean eating group, lots of other people in there with similar goals and suggestions on how to approach it, and you won't have to defend your choices of what you want to put into your own body and why.
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/133-clean-eating-group
I'm seeing some disagreement on the term, but I'm not seeing anyone asking her to defend her choices.14 -
I prepare most of my meals from scratch, whole ingredients or minimally processed ingredients. I don't do a whole lot of recipes...if I do, I get most of them from Pinterest. Most of my meals are simply a protein (usually grilled), veg, and starch or grain. I do drink a Cherry Coke Zero with lunch most days which I guess by your definition of "clean" wouldn't be clean...but that's kind of the problem with the term really. I also eat pizza on most Friday nights for pizza night with the wife and kids and I do have some pre packaged convenience foods that I eat from time to time when I'm in a time crunch.
IDK...I think my diet is pretty "clean"...but it would depend on who you ask. A vegan would think my diet was absolutely filthy...1 -
You can friend me if you like. I'm not perfect by any stretch but I try to avoid processed foods.1
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chastitymorgan89 wrote: »My goal is to choose fresh over refined, and natural sugars not artificial.
Cool, you've got some simple rules and a basic definition to work with. That cuts out a lot of the issues around clean eating (namely that there are tons of different variations and everyone seems to define it differently).
Avoiding artificial sweeteners is fairly easy. Cooking from scratch is a surefire way to do it, but reading labels will get you the rest of the way. There are some brands and products you'll have to avoid, but they're easy to spot if you're checking the ingredients before you buy, imo.
As for recipes, they're everywhere! Pinterest, Food Network, Budget Bytes, Hungry Girl, Betty Crocker. It can take a bit to build your collection, but just start looking for recipes you want to make until you have them.
Personally, I say start with things you know you like and then work to add something like a new recipe or a new ingredient once a week to help expand your horizons. I don't consider myself a clean eater (lots of frozen veggies and canned beans in my diet), but that's how I got started. Just looking for substitutes and things that looked good when I had a chance and clipping recipes. My Betty Crocker cookbook handled the easiest recipes and Pinterest and various food magazines filled in the rest.3 -
chastitymorgan89 wrote: »Anyone clean eating? I want to start for the health benefits from it. But don’t know where to start. Need recipes, tips, anything!
Defining how I ate as "clean eating" ended up making me the unhealthiest I've ever been in my life. There is more to being healthy than what you put in your mouth.
Sure, focus on eating more wholefoods and preparing foods from scratch, but don't think that is in any way unusual or requiring a label. It's just eating.5 -
I don't think clean eating has any health benefits for me, so I don't do it. I enjoy a variety of nutritious and no so nutritious foods, and that kind of balance and variety has health benefits, both physical and mental. I don't believe turning food into a moral playground and a source of stress is all that healthy.8
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i eat clean! within my caloric means! switch it up experiment with new foods!🙂🕺🏻🕺🏻1
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The easiest way to start to eat clean is to do two things : first, go through your kitchen and toss all the crap in the trash (and don't care what you paid for it, be ruthless), and 2) make sure when you shop that you are buying ingredients, not ready-to-eat.18
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The easiest way to start to eat clean is to do two things : first, go through your kitchen and toss all the crap in the trash (and don't care what you paid for it, be ruthless), and 2) make sure when you shop that you are buying ingredients, not ready-to-eat.
This is what I think is frustrating about the “clean eating” discussions. OP asked for help, when asked for clarification on her definition, she provided some examples. But how is “throw all the crap in the trash” helpful? What’s your definition of “crap”? I’m sure I have lots of things in my pantry that you would consider “crap” and I don’t appreciate the suggestion that the food I’ve purchased and am feeding my family is “crap”. Why does there always have to be moral judgement assigned to food?18 -
That’s not my personal definition of clean but you may find success googling five ingredient recipes.
Beans and legumes of all kinds cook up nicely.
Steak is course would be clean according to your definition.
For your starchy side you may try rice or quinoa. This is my favourite way to make rice now.
https://pin.it/3btsgz2bie7xll
I picked up a big tub of honey at my local farmers market and it gets introduced in to many of my recipes. You may also want to try blackstrap molasses.1 -
WinoGelato wrote: »The easiest way to start to eat clean is to do two things : first, go through your kitchen and toss all the crap in the trash (and don't care what you paid for it, be ruthless), and 2) make sure when you shop that you are buying ingredients, not ready-to-eat.
This is what I think is frustrating about the “clean eating” discussions. OP asked for help, when asked for clarification on her definition, she provided some examples. But how is “throw all the crap in the trash” helpful? What’s your definition of “crap”? I’m sure I have lots of things in my pantry that you would consider “crap” and I don’t appreciate the suggestion that the food I’ve purchased and am feeding my family is “crap”. Why does there always have to be moral judgement assigned to food?
So much this. ^^^ It's that holier-than-thou attitude that inevitably creeps into threads about 'clean' eating that tends to be moralistic, unrealistic and - most importantly - irrelevant to actual weight management.12 -
snickerscharlie wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »The easiest way to start to eat clean is to do two things : first, go through your kitchen and toss all the crap in the trash (and don't care what you paid for it, be ruthless), and 2) make sure when you shop that you are buying ingredients, not ready-to-eat.
This is what I think is frustrating about the “clean eating” discussions. OP asked for help, when asked for clarification on her definition, she provided some examples. But how is “throw all the crap in the trash” helpful? What’s your definition of “crap”? I’m sure I have lots of things in my pantry that you would consider “crap” and I don’t appreciate the suggestion that the food I’ve purchased and am feeding my family is “crap”. Why does there always have to be moral judgement assigned to food?
So much this. ^^^ It's that holier-than-thou attitude that inevitably creeps into threads about 'clean' eating that tends to be moralistic, unrealistic and - most importantly - irrelevant to actual weight management.
Or for that matter, largely irrelevant to overall health. Does the fact that I have tortilla chips in my pantry mean that I don’t care about nutrition or that I’m going to be less healthy than someone who doesn’t purchase and eat, a single serving of tortilla chips, with a single serving of queso, while watching football once a week?
Because that’s what usually follows in these clean eating discussions, either explicitly or implicitly... “well sure calories are all that matter for weight loss but some of us care about nutrition or health as well”.
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The easiest way to start to eat clean is to do two things : first, go through your kitchen and toss all the crap in the trash (and don't care what you paid for it, be ruthless), and 2) make sure when you shop that you are buying ingredients, not ready-to-eat.
I don't keep crap in my kitchen!!
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WinoGelato wrote: »The easiest way to start to eat clean is to do two things : first, go through your kitchen and toss all the crap in the trash (and don't care what you paid for it, be ruthless), and 2) make sure when you shop that you are buying ingredients, not ready-to-eat.
This is what I think is frustrating about the “clean eating” discussions. OP asked for help, when asked for clarification on her definition, she provided some examples. But how is “throw all the crap in the trash” helpful? What’s your definition of “crap”? I’m sure I have lots of things in my pantry that you would consider “crap” and I don’t appreciate the suggestion that the food I’ve purchased and am feeding my family is “crap”. Why does there always have to be moral judgement assigned to food?
^^ This. “Crap” is too vague, definitely! To some, canned foods would fall under “crap” or “dirty”. Or pasta. It’s very confusing to say the least.
And, I’d rather give away or donate unopened items.
I do like how the OP stated exactly what they were after, though.5 -
I eat clean enough to hit my macros and "dirty" enough to retain my sanity and enjoy life. (Shamelessly stolen from @joemac1988)12
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The easiest way to start to eat clean is to do two things : first, go through your kitchen and toss all the crap in the trash (and don't care what you paid for it, be ruthless), and 2) make sure when you shop that you are buying ingredients, not ready-to-eat.
Wouldn't it be wise to find out if the person you are suggesting this to can afford to replace the food being thrown out? While it is possible to eat fresh ingredients on a tight budget if the money has already been spent on "the crap" does ruthlessness involve going hungry?
I don't care if a person tries to eat "clean" if they can do it while eating a healthy amount of calories and they find it sustainable. Eating "clean" however is not sustainable for everyone so you should view it as a privilege of where you live and your income situation.
I do, however, think it is a societal sin to throw out food that could be donated to a shelter/food bank. You are not doing people who are hungry any favors by denying them food you think is beneath your standards.
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"Clean" is a marketing tool. Here's a particularly egregious example:
What Panera means is that they've removed preservatives, artificial flavors and colors, and other additives. Good for them, I guess. This matches the least restrictive definitions of "clean", but doesn't most of the more restrictive definitions. For example, bread and cheese and pasta are surely "processed" food. Bread and pasta are certainly "white" foods. Most of Panera's food has more than 3, or 4, or 5 ingredients. It is definitely take-out food. Certainly this food can come in a wrapper, and Panera most assuredly has advertisements.
So if one is a "clean" eater, how does one know if any particular item is "clean"? How does one stay out of Humpty-Dumpty territory, where words mean only what you choose them to mean?
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I love Panera but *kitten* their marketing campaign sucks!4
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Lillymoo01 wrote: »I will rinse food that can be rinsed under water but I refuse to use soap.
Oh .... is that not what you mean by clean?
The OP gave her definition as like the second response in the thread. Have you had a chance to read through? It was a pretty simple definition. I would think anyone can understand it4 -
The easiest way to start to eat clean is to do two things : first, go through your kitchen and toss all the crap in the trash (and don't care what you paid for it, be ruthless), and 2) make sure when you shop that you are buying ingredients, not ready-to-eat.
I suppose that is the easiest way. I'm a gal on a budget, though, so throwing out food is a big no for me. I'd rather use it up quickly than throw it out, personally.2
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