Anyone transitioning to "clean eating"?

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First off, you've got the right idea about making incremental changes. I have gone about 14 months mostly-clean eating and trust me, you won't want to go back! The best piece of advice I can think to give is to track how you're feeling. I kept a journal and I was amazed to see stuff like "Day 3 - Skin is more radiant", "Day 8 - I have so much energy!", "Day 12 - Is my hair getting thicker?" etc.

There are many ideas on "clean eating" for alot of different people. I try to stay away from most processed foods, I buy my meat from local farmers I know, Iand I try to eat mostly veggies everyday. I put a great big stress on TRY also.....lol

I've been doing it for over a year and It has worked well for me. Keep getting opinions and don't stop doing your own research.

http://www.thegraciouspantry.com/what-is-clean-eating/

That link is just awful. The whole site is just based on silliness. She has no clue what she's talking about. I commend her for capitalizing on the ignorance of the general public to make a profit by creating "clean" dishes but, really, it's just nonsense.

I have just started eating clean and working out, the results? I have lost 5 pounds so far, and I feel a lot happier and healthier. To me, it is well worth it and your body will thank you in the future.

How can you attribute it to clean eating when you started exercising? How do you know it isn't the exercising and the calorie deficit that probably resulted from eating less calorically dense foods?

Clean eating means something different to everyone, and at various levels.

Personally (and obviously with some exceptions), I try to eat foods that are minimally processed. Foods that I can make myself. Some items still come out of boxes or cans, but I really try to start from fresh. If it does come out of a box/container, then I try to go with simple ingredients, not labels with things that I haven't heard of before.

I just feel that eating this way is a good approach to an anti-inflammatory diet. I follow Zone Diet principles, as well.

I'm pretty much clean EXCEPT for bread and pizza when I'm out. haha. I do well at home with Ezekiel bread. It is a Godsend. It is satisfying yet so filling. It takes a little getting used to but once you taste white bread again, it tastes like cake. (In frozen organic section if you havent heard of it)

I dont see how cutting out preservatives, additives, and ect, could possibly ever be a bad thing?

It's not a question of whether it'll bad or not but rather whether it will make a difference. Ultimately, it makes no difference assuming someone is intelligent enough to be reasonable.

All people are different. Genetics plays a big part in if they can live off junk food and still be healthy.

Read my last line of my last post. I mentioned biological deficiency. In a completely healthy individual, they can eat junk food (within moderation) and be fine. Please do not suggest that I am saying she should live off of it. You're completely misinterpreting what I have stated.

I think you are crazy if you think eating nothing but processed foods all day can be better than eating non-processed foods.

Can you please point me in the direction where I said someone should eat nothing but processed foods? I said flexible dieter.

There are many more factors involved than just comparing sugars in processed foods and natural whole foods. Adding to this, I have eaten nothing butt vegetables for weeks at a time in the past from my garden and have never felt better in my life:)

Maybe it was the sugar, maybe it wasn't. It's hard to tell because life is full of so many variables that one thing can make a world of a difference and it might not be the thing that you think it is.

The fact of the matter is, eat what you want. Eat what makes you feel good. If you indulge in something that may not be good for you, you will most likely not die. If you want to eat clean(consuming no redefined or processed foods) more power to a person in my book. It isnt my place to advise a person against it or not. My point is,at a nutritional level, the less processing that is done to a food, the better for you. That is fact:)

The fact of the matter is, eat what you want. Eat what makes you feel good. If you indulge in something that may not be good for you, you will most likely not die. If you want to eat clean(consuming no redefined or processed foods) more power to a person in my book. It isnt my place to advise a person against it or not. My point is,at a nutritional level, the less processing that is done to a food, the better for you. That is fact:)

Eating clean is ambiguous. There are 101 foods that are omitted by your definition of what constitutes clean. Whey and tofu are examples that come to mind instantly.

Also, no, it's not a fact. You're excluding it from the context of a person's diet. The USDA has something called discretionary calories, which allows extra calories to be consumed from refined sources. This ends up working out to 10-20% of someone's calories. It has been shown that someone who eats 10-20% of their calories from refined sources is just as healthy as someone who does not eat those calories from non-refined sources.

According to what you're saying, these foods that are good for you should ALWAYS be good (this is implied by how you have defined things). This is simply not true. Flexible dieters (people who use their discretionary calories) are just as healthy. If there was such thing as healthy and unhealthy foods then there would always be positive and negative consequences to eating those specific foods regardless of dosage. It's simply illogical to assume that, though.

Now, I do feel it's my place to advise against it because binge eating generally occurs during or after restrictive dieting ("The cause of binge eating is unknown. However, binge eating often begins during or after strict dieting." - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0003749/). People should eat how they want and eat it without thinking that it's unhealthy for them. Candy, in of itself, isn't unhealthy. To say that means it's unhealthy to eat even a single piece. Candy only becomes unhealthy once it prevents in the intake of nutrients for an extended period of time.

I'd recommend against it.

First, the word "clean," at best, is ambiguous. You'll see 101 definitions, most of which don't agree and all of which are focused on food restriction.

Second, it advocates restriction. It has been shown many times that flexible dieters are the most successful and restriction can cause many problems.

Third, restrictive dieting is not better than flexible dieting. Google the USDA's discretionary calorie allotment. Essentially, it has been shown that 10-20% of one's calories coming from "non-healthy" sources (this is pretty vague but it's referring to external sugar sources) is the same as getting 100% from non-processed food sources.

Fourth, cutting out foods is not a solution. You can still eat all the things you listed and be healthier than or equally as healthy as almost anyone who does not include those things.

So, the question becomes this: Why do you want to cut out those things?

If it's because you think you'll be healthier then you're doing it for no good reason. If it's because you think your body will look better then, again, you're doing it for no good reason. If you're doing it because you are biologically deficient in a manner that these foods cannot be properly digested then I think you should cut them out.

This.

I dont see how cutting out preservatives, additives, and ect, could possibly ever be a bad thing?

Well, to be fair, 99% of preservatives and additives on ingredient lists are just chemical or trade names for things that normally occur in food anyway. There are very few truly artificial preservatives. So, it really makes no difference from a health point of view, in moderation.

"reasonable" is subjective, though. A lot of people don't know what "reasonable" amounts/types/whatnot of food are, hence why they have weight to lose in the first place, excluding medical reasons.

The OP did not state whether they are wanting to adopt a clean diet for overall general health reasons, or strictly weight loss reasons. I think the intelligent assumption is that if someone is cutting out foods high in refined sugar, saturated fats, deep fried foods, preservatives, additives, etc, it will be of benefit to them in at least one way.

Of course it's subjective because it will change from person to person. The point is that they should LEARN to be reasonable. As I have stated many, many, many times on these forums, flexible dieters always succeed more than strict dieters (people who remove foods instead of living with them within moderation). Someone who is trying to lose weight needs to learn to be flexible. This means you don't need to eat processed foods all the time but it also means that you can have it sometimes. There's no downside to consuming some processed foods. What that "some" constitutes will vary from individual to individual. The ultimate goal, though, should be someone being able to eat what they enjoy within moderation while also eating many nutrients from various foods. This type of diet will lead to less psychological stress and more success.

Going from being super lax (why they got fat) to super strict (why they most likely will fail) is the wrong way to go about it (from a statistical standpoint of success). There should be a happy medium. Part of my goal since being on this forum is to make people aware of this. And part of doing this is to remove negative connotations from specific words and to abandon other words entirely (such as clean).

A lot of people hate that I do this because they hold on to these preconceived, erroneous ways of thinking. Doctors and PhDs have told them differently. The media constantly plugs these nonsensical ideas into people's heads while famous trainers tell people things that make no sense. It's hard to combat such alarmism but someone should do it and there are many people on here (Sidesteal, Acg are examples) that try as well.

If you want to be restrictive, fine. I'm simply providing information that is contrary to the erroneous information constantly perpetuated. If you want to argue about it then I'm more than happy to indulge you and provide you my reasoning.

My idea of clean eating, of which I plan to give a bash at this week, is avoiding all things sweet and tempting.

As soon as I eat a chocolate or biscuit I want more.....I cannot stop sometimes!

If you minus the sweet goods from my diet then I would pretty much say I eat very well and healthy, plenty of proteins and fats with fewer carbs (40/30/30)

I can happily bake and eat my version of clean cakes/cookies etc (using alternative ingredients in place of the sugars etc) as a substitute but I also plan to reduce this as I still find I want to eat the entire batch!

I plan to use more dried fruits (with no added sugar), nuts, fat free yoghurt to help me at dessert times.

I think clean maybe is the wrong word, I deffo won't be cutting anything from my diet that would have an adverse effect, I'm not that stupid.

I will rename my 'clean' week- Stop eating s**t week

I'm not expert on clean eating nor do I truly do it, but I can say when I was really trying to eat clean (i.e. make all my own meals, going low on carbs/bread, hardly any sugar (just naturally sweet things-- fruit)) I felt amazing. Weight slid right off me and I had a lot of energy. One day, I slipped and ate a brownie, a salty snack-- hadn't had enough water or veggies and I felt like a slug! I was falling asleep at work and got a headache.

This is only anecdotal evidence, but I don't see how eating food in its most natural state is harmful. There is nothing wrong with turning a box around to see how many ingredients are in there, etc etc. I don't obsessively try to cut things out, but trying your best to consume "one ingredient" items automatically cuts out a lot of junk.

Good luck! And feel free to add me if you send along a little note

I'm not expert on clean eating nor do I truly do it, but I can say when I was really trying to eat clean (i.e. make all my own meals, going low on carbs/bread, hardly any sugar (just naturally sweet things-- fruit)) I felt amazing. Weight slid right off me and I had a lot of energy. One day, I slipped and ate a brownie, a salty snack-- hadn't had enough water or veggies and I felt like a slug! I was falling asleep at work and got a headache.

Some people actually fall prey to believing something is bad (psychological) and therefore a negative physical response is produced when that food is eaten. I'm not saying that is your situation but there are many people like that. From a scientific perspective, sugar is sugar regardless of where it comes from. Your body doesn't recognize brownies and apples as different things but instead the molecules that make them up.

but I don't see how eating food in its most natural state is harmful.

There isn't anything wrong with it. If anything, there's benefits. But I was simply stating that you don't need to eat foods in their natural states all the time. Eating some processed foods are fine and there are some heavily processed foods (whey, casein, tofu, for example) that are just as good as completely natural foods.

Look at phase one of the south beach diet. It gives a whole list of foods you can consume that advocates clean eating. I am doing it now, but still have about 10-15% of processed food in my diet. Week three now and I’ve lost weight and inches. This was easy for me because it was very close to what I was already eating & overall it wasn’t so bad. Believe me, it will not be as hard as you think!

Good luck!