What do you consider "Clean Eating" ?

To me it means foods that have been washed and haven't been on the floor for more than five seconds.

Heeeyyyy some of my best meals have been floor food.

I recently had a scare with potential breast cancer, so I was looking into clean eating and have been trying my best to follow it. Organic, fresh fruits and veggies and organic meats. As for processed foods, one rule of thumb I learned in all my reading is that is should have no more than 5 ingredients in it and they should all be pronounceable. I stick to that probably 80% of the time. If I do choose a product that has more than 5 ingredients, they are usually a multitude of fruits and veggies, no added crap.

Loving this topic, love seeing so many people working towards clean eating. Yay for everyone :bigsmile:

"Clean" means "minimal processing" to me.

"Dirty" items generally include items whose calorie load is way out of balance and/or contain little to no nutrition to justify their use in any quantity:
- Most canned items unless I've canned them myself - too much sodium and preservative, items have usually been cooked too much to retain much benefit, etc.
- Deep-Fried anything (stir-fry is OK).
- Froot (my nickname for heavily-processed fruits like sugar-added applesauce, "fruit juice" that contains very small amounts of actual fruit, and pretty much anything that uses the "contains fruit" label in a desperate attempt to appear healthy when it's really empty calories).
- Junk foods like chips, buttered popcorn, candy, or pretty much anything whose preparation involves deep frying, lots of sugar or salt, bleaching, etc.
- Artificial sweeteners.
- Breakfast cereals with a sweetener of any kind as one of the first 5 ingredients.
- White flour or sugar

There are plenty of examples of this. Things that are so calorically inefficient in terms of nutrition that they are best avoided unless you have plenty of extra calories to waste, and let's face it - most of us don't.

That does not mean I never use "dirty" items. I just enjoy them in very strict moderation and make sure I work my nutrients into the calories remaining to me.

If I fall off the wagon one day and gorge myself on a dirty food, I will NOT skip required nutritious items to stay in my calorie deficit - I'll exceed the deficit and take the hit on my weight loss goal. The machine must be fed good food, no matter what.

Totally agree!

Clean eating to me is when I'm done I don't have to change my shirt. :laugh: If they didn't have it 100 years ago....it's clean!

I agree!!

For me it's eating 250 calories or under in each meal and having up to 3 snacks under 100 calories each.

that has nothing to do with clean eating. I call that starving.

That's about 900 calories, I call it healthy eating, especially considering my daily calorie goal is 1,200

Being that you're only 19 years old you should be eating about twice that. Healthy eating is ensuring your body has enough nutrition and energy to carry out it's vital functions, not restricting yourself heavily.

I'll up my calories once I lose enough weight.

And you will gain back most of the weight because you put your body into starvation mode, causing it to eat your muscle instead of fat and lower your metabolism.

What you need to understand is that you should not eat below your BMR. Those calories are needed to keep your body running. Think of them as the baseline or the minimum needed to survive. Anything above that is icing and you don't need it, but it is nice to have.

If your metabolism is depressed, which is what you are doing by starving yourself, it may not come back. Then you will not be able to eat more than what you are eating now without gaining weight. You are basically setting yourself up for yo-yo dieting. If you want more info, message me.

I know, but mfp says I should eat up to 1,200 calories a day to lose weight so 1,200 calories a day I shall eat.

Ok, I have a question. I roasted some shrimp with a little EVOO, salt and pepper. Is that concidered "clean"? What about packaged sun dried tomatoes? Don't know if I could make those myself!

to me yes...adding good fats and seasonings is great...things like sun dried tomatoes, check the package and see if it has any type of preservative

there are different variations - but I would consider what you describe as clean...

Ok, I have a question. I roasted some shrimp with a little EVOO, salt and pepper. Is that concidered "clean"? What about packaged sun dried tomatoes? Don't know if I could make those myself!

to me yes...adding good fats and seasonings is great...things like sun dried tomatoes, check the package and see if it has any type of preservative

there are different variations - but I would consider what you describe as clean...

The sun dried tomatoes have sulfates in it - its says its put in there to retain the color. Don't know much about sulfates..... I'm guessing that the tomatoes would turn brown otherwise.

When I say I'm "eating clean" I have to follow these rules. No oil, no dairy, fat free soy milk is ok, wheetbix are ok, light tuna in water is ok, vegetables are ok as long as they're steamed, no sugar, no carbohydrates except wheetbix, no bananas, no sauces that are oil basssed, no potatoes, no meat except light tuna, no nuts, no sweet potato and definately no processed food. Although I'll admit I do not think this is by any means the definition of clean eating.

why do you hate food so much?