If you are are concerned about your health, your weight or how you look and feel stop dieting eat clean. What do I mean? Well let me tell you a story. It started after years of eating the same foods I always ate. I didn’t eat more food or less food. It was pretty much the same amount of food.

What happened is the weigh piled on. So one day out of the blue I asked my intuition what would be the best way to deal with this and I was lead to a study from the University of California about Sugar.

And a video called The Vegetarian Myth

Regardless of whether the videos are true or not between the research of the two I wound up changing my eating habits. And then I found out from a friend what I was doing is referred to as Clean Eating or Eating Clean.

I found this over at Calorie Count

 Stop Dieting Eat Clean

“Eating clean” is one of the newest buzz phrases in the nutrition industry. You may have heard about it from a celebrity interview, or a friend trying to lose weight, but you may still be a bit confused about what exactly it means to eat clean. It’s not a fad diet, but more a way of eating healthier in the face of the typical American diet with its excessive amount of processed foods, added sugars, sodium and saturated fats. Like locavores, those who eat clean are focused on the food itself as opposed to how much they eat. While locavores focus on how far away their food comes from, those who eat clean generally stick to minimizing their intake of processed foods and lower or eliminate foods with added sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats.

Clean Food

Fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, nuts, eggs, dairy, and whole grains are all a go on a clean diet, but keep in mind that keeping these clean is hard these days. With sweetened fruit, processed meat, margarine, and tortillas made with refined grains it’s not as easy to eat clean as you may think. Some stick to organic fruits and vegetables and grass-fed beef, but it’s not required. If you go beyond the produce section, staying within an eating clean plan means avoiding chemical based-preservatives, food coloring, trans fats, and artificial sweeteners. It also means skipping the sweetened nuts container for the bag of raw nuts. Because solid fats and added sugar make up 35% of the average American’s daily caloric intake, making this switch could help you lose pounds.

Dirty Food

Eating clean does not restrict specific foods per se, but making the switch means exchanging some pantry staples for their healthier cousins. Refined grains such as white bread, white rice, and white pasta are considered “dirty” foods. Their eat-clean equivalents are 100% whole grain bread, brown rice, and 100% whole grain pasta. The increase in fiber that will result from skipping refined grains could help you reach the 25-38 grams of fiber you should be getting in your diet every day. Processed foods are obviously on the dirty list for a number of reasons including unnatural preservatives, added sugar, excessive sodium, and saturated or trans fat content. To go clean with processed foods like cookies, pancakes, and other desserts, the use of natural sweeteners, such as brown rice syrup is exchanged for regular sugar, and whole grain flour such as white whole wheat flour is exchanged for regular flour. 

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Now I don’t know if you are a dirty eater or a clean eater, I just thought this was interesting and I thought you might like it enough to share it around with your friends.