Just kidding!!! A little Saturday morning humor for you :)
Lately I've been asked what exactly is clean eating and what does it entail? I'm glad you guys are giving me feed back by asking questions. Questions means I need to clarify a little more! Also, asking me questions is great for me too because I might not know the answer, but research is becoming my best friend so I'm up for the challenge of finding out! Knowledge truly is power in this thing. This whole eating clean and working out healthy lifestyle can seem overwhelming, but taking it one day at a time and gathering information as you go definitely makes it easier to comprehend.
So you might be thinking clean eating looks like this...
or maybe you're thinking more like this and only this...
Well that is part of it.....wait no...just eating lettuce is ridiculous and people that joke about that's how they are eating aren't funny. You can't sustain life on just lettuce! Eating clean does not mean starving.
According to Clean Eating Magazine, clean eating is consuming food in it's most natural state or as close to it as possible. It means eating 5-6 meals a day (remember portion control while doing this), drinking lots of water, reading and understanding ingredient labels (the shorter the list the better....if there are several things in the list that you can't even pronounce, that's not clean), avoiding processed and refined foods, but this does not mean avoiding carbs all together. Complex carbs like whole grains are clean and acceptable. It means eating organic as often as you can (it's expensive to eat all organic, but do what you can). Meat, eggs, and dairy should be eaten organically if your budget allows. My budget doesn't always allow this, but I do try to eat organic as often as possible. It means consuming healthy fats (all fats are not bad...olive oil, avocado, nuts, etc are examples of good fats that our bodies need).
Like I said in the last post, I got my start on understanding all of this after I read Tosca Reno's book The Eat Clean Diet. Here is a link to it on Amazon if your local library doesn't carry it. The Eat Clean Diet. Now Tosca has several books out, but I would just start with this one to get the basics. If you want to look into reading more of her books, by all means, check her out!
Another very helpful resource that I've used and highly recommend is the Gracious Pantry. Their website has a segment called Clean Eating 101 that I think you all should check out! It's pretty awesome! I totally think you can find anything you're looking for with this resource! Clean Eating 101
After you start understanding what clean eating is all about, you will soon understand that it looks more like this....
And it's rather delicious and you won't feel like you're missing out or sacrificing taste!! All of these pictures were taken from Instagram pages of people I follow who eat clean and have provided a recipe for the following dishes. The first 3 pics came from fitmencook and the last one came from bgg2wl. Check them out on IG!!
Very helpful! :)
ReplyDeleteThis is great Ash! It is helpful to educate and establish a foundation for clean eating. I don't think it is something you can just jump into. Eating clean is great and requires a lot of discipline but I guess the results are worth it.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jac! I'm really glad that you said that because it's really important to get feedback. You're right about clean eating not being something you can just jump into and it most certainly takes a lot of planning and discipline! I read an article in one of my health magazines about helping people transition to eating cleaner. I will post a blog about that to help people get into it if they so desire!! Stay tuned!! :)
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