Clean Eating
Definition of eating clean
“The fundamentals of eating clean encourage you to consume more whole foods — such as fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, whole grains and healthy fats — and limit highly processed snack foods, sweets and other packaged foods.”
-By Emily Brown, R.D.N., L.D.
Henry Mayo Clinic
When you're first starting out to cleaner/healthier eating, It can be slightly confusing to know what’s clean and what’s not. The basics of clean eating are don’t eat junk. When learning this new diet, you also have to take in the fact that not all natural fats and proteins in products are the healthiest. Below is a list of things you can start to follow for your clean diet.
Cutout the junk and prepackaged food.
Slowly reduce your fast food and microwavable dinner intake. This goes for pretty much every fast food place or microwave dinner. Some are friendlier than others, but we suggest cutting just it all out. Start making your own food instead, or you can even just have your meals sent to you.
Start reading labels
When you go to the store, start slowly reading all the labels of things you eat or used to eat. You’ll start knowing a whole new language of the preservatives and additives that they put in everything. Our bodies are not supposed to be eating these modified nutrients all the time. The more you make at home, the better for your body.
Make sure to consume your daily servings of fruits and veggies, as well as your healthy fats/proteins
To keep your clean diet up, eat a lot of fruits and veggies. Don’t just eat a few types. Expand your horizons. Make your plate as colorful as possible. The more variety, the healthier for your body. Healthy fats can be meat and nuts, as well as certain vegetables. Make sure you are aware of your healthy fat consumption as well. For example, you can have corn oil or peanut oil, which aren’t the greatest for you versus olive oil that is amazing to your body. So just be mindful on what goes in.
Make a schedule
Start making a grocery and meal plan. It will make things easier. It will limit you forgetting ingredients when cooking. If you are a little messy like the rest of us, you will not always have everything needed and may miss a key ingredient in a dish. It hard in the beginning. Don’t give up! Just give it a few months of trial and error. You’ll be a meal plan pro soon!
Start prepping your own food
When prepping food, you will need to buy extra containers. We recycle our glass jars from things like olives, pickles, or we buy mason jars. Glass will keep your food fresher longer, and it is better for the environment. Plus, you will save more money in the long run by skipping food waste. Need Ideas? Currently, we are in the process of writing a list of the best things to prep and how to store them. For now, we suggest Pinterest!
Make sure to drink your liquids
Drinking water and teas are great for a clean body. Avoid drinking too many sugars. Even natural sugars are bad in big amounts. A simple way to figure out how much you need to drink is divide your body weight in half and drink that many ounces a day. Example, if you weigh 160lb (ca. 73 kg) divide that by 2, and you need to drink 80oz (ca. 3 kg). That is how much of water you would need to consume on average a day.
Have any questions?
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—Ambition Defined Family