Chances are that you’ve probably heard of clean eating before. Eating clean isn’t a get skinny quick plan. It’s more of a lifestyle than a “diet”. Making the choice to eat clean is to remove unnecessary fats, sugars, and carbs from your diet. It’s about making better, more nutritious choices for your body, and about refusing to continue to put “dirty” food in your body. When eating clean, you’ll avoid processed foods, artificial flavors and sugars, foods high in salt and in saturated fat, refined foods, and other foods that don’t provide you with nutritional value. Here are some guidelines to get you on your way to eating the way nature intended.
Cook Your Own Food
The easiest way to control what goes into your food is to prepare your own food with a quality knife set and cookware set. That way, you can control the salt, sugar, flavors, and fats that go in and you can work to keep those levels as low as possible.
Be a Label Reader
Reading the list of ingredients on the side of pre-made, packaged, and processed foods can be a real wake-up call. When eating clean, you need to look for labels with relatively few ingredients. Also think about each ingredient. If you wouldn’t cook with it in your kitchen, put it back on the shelf. Also, avoid foods with labels that include words like, “hydrolyzed,” or “modified,” which indicate added processing. Also words that end in “-ose” like fructose because those indicate added sugars. Look for labels with “whole grains” and “whole wheat” in the ingredients.
Eat Whole Foods
Whole foods are plant foods that are unprocessed and unrefined. They include fresh fruits and vegetables, lean proteins, unsalted nuts/seeds, whole grains, full-fat dairy products, and dried beans/legumes. Eating these eliminates the worry of putting added sugars, preservatives, dyes, hydrogenated fats, or salt that has only been added to enhance shelf life in your body.
Avoid Processed Foods
Processed foods are easy to identify since they often come in a box or jar. The problem with processed foods is that they are high in added sugars and salt, low in fiber and whole grains, and high in fat. Make your own snack foods, candy, cookies, salad dressing, soups, granola bars, and even fresh peanut butter from scratch using whole ingredients with the KitchenAid 9-Cup Food Processor from Buydig.com. Your body will thank you.
Don’t Drink Your Calories
While you’re making mindful decisions about what foods to eat, you also need to be thinking about how much water you’re drinking. Water should be the number one thing you’re drinking all day. Try carrying this Copco Clip and Go Bottle from Buydig.com with you at all times.
Where to Start
To start, take small steps. Don’t go from drinking 5 sodas a day to immediately only drinking water. Replace one of those sodas with a glass of water to start. Then, tomorrow, replace two, and so on. Eat an apple and a handful of unsalted almonds instead of a candy bar. Add Greek yogurt instead of sour cream to your baked potato. Choose whole grain breads instead of white bread. Your body needs a gradual transition to this new lifestyle.
This is a new lifestyle, not an overnight fad. So treat it that way and ease into it. Every change you make towards eating clean is a positive change. Gradually, your body will get more and more used to the clean lifestyle.
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