A healthy outside starts from the inside. – Robert Urich
You’ve probably heard the term “clean eating” as a means for losing weight, eating healthier, or both. Clean eating certainly has a lot of media attention these days. You may have even seen the popular hashtag #cleaneating!
What Is Clean Eating?
Clean eating focuses on consuming whole foods that are minimally processed with little to no additives and are as close to their natural form as possible. It is not about restricting or leaving out food groups. It is a process and journey of becoming healthier.
Clean eating goes hand in hand with cultivating and personalizing your best lifestyle!
Foundational to clean eating is educating yourself on what it means to eat clean. Food additives including food dyes, artificial flavors, preservatives, hydrogenated fats, and trans-fats along with extra added refined sugars and sodium are things to avoid completely or limit when purchasing food or eating out. These extra additives and man-made preservatives alter food, making what could’ve been healthy unhealthy and “not” clean.”
Here Is A List of Clean or Whole Foods:
- Nuts.
- Legumes.
- Eggs
- Regular Organic Dairy and Nondairy Milk. (almond, soy, and rice.)
- Unprocessed Meats, (if you’re a meat eater. Look for nitrate/nitrite free.)
- Eat Local, Organic, and Grass-Fed Meats. (as much as possible.)
- Whole grains (whole wheat bread, brown rice, oatmeal, quinoa, faro, bulgur).
- Good-for-You Fats. (olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, and other expeller pressed oils.)
Not all packaged and prepared foods are out of bounds. Frozen bagged veggies and fruits, as well as, canned are fine as are some prepared entrees.
Clean eating rule of thumb. Clean designated foods are without added artificial dyes, flavors, and preservatives. Canned, boxed, and frozen foods preserved with artificial additives (flavors, dyes, hydrogenated oils) should be avoided as much as possible as many studies show these are linked to cancer.
If you are just getting started, give yourself time to adjust and transition to this clean eating lifestyle.
Go slow, gradually adding in more of the healthier foods while decreasing and limiting preserved processed foods. Remember, this is a lifestyle approach, not a quick fix, or worse, “a punishment.” Use lots of compassion and patience especially if you’ve been on the fast food or the quick and easy prepared foods way of eating.
Here Is A Quick Guide on How to Start A Clean Eating Food Plan and Lifestyle:
- Eat a rainbow of veggies and fruits daily.
- Berries to greens to peppers to potatoes to apples to oranges and beyond!
- Limit foods with added refined sugars and sodium, hydrogenated fats, artificial preservatives, dyes, and flavors.
- Focus on looking for healthy, whole, unprocessed ingredients in the foods you eat versus the calorie count. Whole foods such as nuts and avocados have more calories but are very healthy to include as a way of life.
- Eat healthy clean snacks throughout the day. These can include but are not limited to, dry roasted or raw nuts, hummus and carrot sticks, nut butter and celery, fresh fruits, plant-based protein bars with few ingredients and those you can easily recognize.
- Reframe your mindset from another controlling “diet” to personal lifestyle empowerment.
Enjoy this clean eating journey while on the road to having more energy and creating abundant enjoyable health… on your terms!
If this article interested you, meet people who can do even more for you right now. From personal to professional well-being, connect with someone who can guide you to a happier, healthier, and whole life. Become a WU Friend today!
If you provide support or products that make the world a better place and help humanity live in health, happiness, and wholeness, join us as a WU World-Changer!
– The Wellness Universe
How did this article make you feel? Leave your comments for The Wellness Universe below. Please share this if you liked it. Thank you!
* Please See Our Disclaimer Below *
Find great products and services for your well-being from members of The Wellness Universe!
The Wellness Universe is your resource for health, wellness, well-being, and transformation. We serve and support professionals who make the world a better place and individuals and groups who seek their best life.
A woman owned company; having the vision in 2013, Anna Pereira launched the first directory in 2015 bringing together a community of members making the world a better place to be found by those seeking their best life. The Wellness Universe has grown since then to be a one-stop shop for total wellness support! We are a vetted community, online directory, book publisher, resource center, event producer, content platform, and so much more, supporting whole-health and well-being on a global scale.
The Wellness Universe is a home that connects industry professionals in the health, wellness, and well-being fields to seekers of total well-being. WU provides our WU World-Changer members with peer support, Wellness Universe produced events (live and online), projects, visibility, business mentoring, and community. Through The Wellness Universe our WU World-Changer members serve WU Friends, seekers of health, wellness and transformation, with coaching, workshops, content and more.
The Wellness Universe provides individuals and groups seeking their best lives with access to our members, wellness content, educational resources, and guidance in all areas of wellness to transform visions of how they want to live life into the life they experience.
Through the directory, WU Featured Blog, SoulTreat wellness retreat, Self-Care Books, group well-being programs, and online learning center, The Lounge, The Wellness Universe provides many avenues to support whole health, mind, body, spirit and planet.
Join us today! Wellness Professional or Seeker of Your Best Life
