Be aware of your food choices When we start thinking about what we put in our bodies, things will start changing. With awareness comes the ability to change.
Step 3 – Food choices
“Eating Clean” means revamping your diet, and stripping it of nutritionally devoid foods, meaning no processed, artificially flavored, artificially sweetened, artificially colored, fatty, fried, sugary refined unnatural items, and buying WHOLE FOODS.
Avoid Processed Foods
Processed foods, although these items are convenient, you pay for that convenience with your health and waste line, as they are usually high in chemical additives, trans-fats, too much salt and tons of refined sugars. These foods are pretty much already “broken down” before you eat them, so it takes much less time to digest a french fry, then it takes to digest a baked sweet potato. This will cause you to be hungry sooner, and leads to unhealthy cravings. Processed foods usually have loads of sugar, but you should also stay away from item using artificial sweeteners, sodium, and preservatives that makes them quite addicting. Try to ween yourself off of the regular chips, candy, and all other “junk food”. As you do this, your tastes will change, causing you not to want those items anymore, and this effect takes about 2 weeks. However, you can still consume chips, sweets and other snack foods that are made from whole, nutrient dense ingredients. Many are easy to find at your local grocery store, Whole Foods Market, or other health food store. I also provide numerous recipes here on the website, to help provide you with more choices. Tasting WHOLE, real food is so much more satisfying in comparison to eating food hiding behind a blanket of nutritionally invaluable crap. Keep in mind not all processed foods are equal. They span a spectrum ranging from minimally processed items like the bag of spinach you get at the grocery store, to heavily processed foods like the frozen fish sticks or chicken nuggets in the back of the freezer. The closer your foods are to the minimally-processed side, the closer you are to eating clean.
Food Additives To Avoid
Avoid Most Refined Foods
This means refined white flour, sugars, high-fructose corn syrup, trans-fats etc. If you’re interested in cutting down body fat, of special importance is to cut out refined sugars, which due to their affect on insulin levels and hormone sensitive lipase, aids in fat loss. Also be careful not to drink your calories. Soda is loaded with sugar, diet soda is loaded with artificial sweeteners and watch the fruit juices you pick as they are often loaded with refined sugar, as well as natural sugars. There is far more than what meets the eye as far as additives to food and water go. These added food ingredients are not necessarily listed on the product nutrition chart, especially when it comes to things like GMO.
Avoid GMO Foods As Much As Possible
GMOs, or “genetically modified organisms,” are plants or animals that have been genetically engineered with DNA from bacteria, viruses or other plants & animals. These experimental combinations created in laboratories involving mixing genes from different species cannot occur in nature or in traditional crossbreeding. Most other nations do not consider GMOs to be safe, and more than 60 countries around the world, including Australia, Japan, and in all of the countries in the European Union, there are restrictions or bans on production & sale of GMOs. In the U.S., the government has approved GMOs based on studies conducted by the same corporations that created them, and profit from their sale. Unfortunately, even though polls consistently show that a significant majority of Americans want to know if the foods they purchase contain GMOs, the powerful biotech lobby has succeeded in keeping this information from the public. In the absence of mandatory labeling, the Non-GMO Project was created to give consumers the informed choice. So when purchasing prepackaged foods, look for the Non-GMO seal.
You can also avoid GMOs by consuming organically certified produce which is required to be GMO-free, or by following and buying from the list of companies below who choose to remain GMO-free! By choosing to support companies who do not use GMOs, you are letting Monsanto know that you will NOT buy their products.
Another interesting side effect of processed, refined, artificial, and GMO food is a huge risk of Cancer among other most other chronic diseases. The American Institute for Cancer Research says people should avoid processed meats like ham, hot dogs, nitrate filled bacon, salami, and sausages due to dangerous preservatives. Avoid Processed Meatsor red meats containing heme iron, as the compound gives red meat it’s color, and is the substance has been linked to an increased risk for colon cancer.Microwave Popcorn not only contains diacetyl, the chemical which gives it the buttery flavor, but the bigger cancer-causing issue is it’s packaging. Non-organic Fruits & Vegetables contain pesticides,Farm-Raised Salmon can have high concentrations of several cancer-causing substances, so if you are going to purchase it, you should look for Wild Salmon. Also, Hydrogenated Oils start out as healthy oils, but are exposed to extreme heat & chemical additives to give them a consistency more similar to silicone than to oil. This processing changes the oil at a molecular level, making it thicker, and a cancer-causing foods to avoid.
Choose High Quality Meats
Meat eaters, aim to get your meat from grass-fed animals as much as possible. It is more expensive, but it’s also healthier because it is typically organic or free-range. One budget-friendly idea is to have fewer, but higher quality meat-eating days, then lower quality meat eating days, where you want to purchase leaner cuts, as chemicals can accumulate in the fatty tissues.
Include Healthy Fats
Healthy Fats don’t make you fat, they’re actually good for you, and this includes some healthy high-quality saturated fats. You can get these healthy fats from fish (white tuna, salmon, anchovies and sardines), nuts and seeds (walnuts, almonds, pecans as well as chia, flax & hemp seeds), avocados, eggs, oils (extra virgin, real butter, olive oil, virgin coconut oil), dairy products and grass-fed beef.
Veggies, Veggies Veggies
Get as many vegetables as you can into your meals. Choose cruciferous, dark leafy greens, even certain potatoes. The idea is to make sure you have a variety of veggies on your plate, and include as many colors of the rainbow as you can get, remembering to vary the veggies you eat as often as possible, yet consistently having certain items several times weekly.
Fruits In Moderation
Fruits are a sweet treat and nutritious alternative to candies and other refined sugars, but it is possible to eat too many. Eating too much fruit is that it can lead to problems with the hormones which regulate blood sugar which can mess up fat loss. Also, modern day fruits are generally much larger and higher in sugar due to hybridization.
Drinking and Fluid Intake
Drinking pure filtered Water is the best way to stay hydrated, so ditch the soda, and stick to water or Green Tea most of the time, and moderate use of Coffee (caffeine has a 6 hour half-life in the body, so it’s best to drink it earlier in the morning). But it also is very good to include Coconut Water & Aloe Vera Juice and I offer many recipes here on the website to teach you how to make what I consider the BEST POWERADES you can find.
Worried About Counting Macronutrients (Calories, Fat, Carbs & Protein)
Macronutrient ratios vary according to your genetic makeup, your body type, and your activities etc. The bottom line is that there is no magical macronutrient ratio for fat loss or muscle gain, but you want to make sure you’re including all your macronutrients in your meals.