"Clean" Eating

What exactly IS "CLEAN" eating?? The fact of the matter is it means different things for different people. The basic idea is to eat whole foods that "come from the earth" rather than processed foods and fast food, etc. There is definitely debate out there about what foods are "clean" and what aren't. But frankly, the basic idea is to pick healthy, nutrient dense foods instead of some 100 calorie snack pack. Makes enough sense to me. I don't know what it needs a label though.

Having said that, I signed up on Facebook to do a 5 day clean eating challenge. I figured why not? I ate "clean" (and actually even more strict than clean eating) when I did the Whole 30 and that was 30 days! What is 5 days really?? Today is Day 1 and it's going well so far. I didn't take pictures of what I've eaten. For breakfast I had 2 hard boiled eggs, 6 baby carrots, 1/4 cup strawberries and 1/4 cup of grapes. For lunch I had 2 slices of Dietz and Watson lite turkey breast (I think that stuff is so good), with 1/4 of an avocado and 2 slices of turkey bacon (meh - I think I'd rather have the calories for the real stuff). I rolled those up (exactly like I did during the Whole30). On the side I had more strawberries, a sliced apple and another 6 baby carrots. I am entering my food into myfitnesspal and I haven't even had 500 calories yet today. Yikes! That's not very many calories, but it felt like pretty good size meals.

So, I remembered that when I was doing the Whole30 I tracked my food for at least one day just to see where I was calorie wise. On that particular day I ended around 1200 calories - give or take because I didn't measure things so I was estimating my serving size, but I'm pretty good at that. It really made me believe one of the things that the creators of the Whole30 explained in their book. Basically they said that if you eat a ton of crap (i.e. fast food) that is not nutrient dense your body is going to continue to tell your mind that it is hungry because even though you just gave it 1000 calories, you didn't give it the nutrients it was looking for. If you choose nutrient dense foods you might be able to get your body to stop sending the hunger message with only 500 (or even less) calories because it got the nutrients it was looking for. This clearly makes sense to me because when I am trying to just track whatever I eat and fit it into less calories in a day, I can eat fast food for lunch and a healthy dinner or what not and end my day close to 2000 calories and still be hungry most of the day. However, when I was doing the whole 30 I was probably eating closer to 1200-1500 calories a day and feeling completely satisfied (especially towards the end).

I am not going to necessarily say that I have changed to only eating clean and am going to eliminate ALL the junk ALL the time. I don't think that's realistic at all for me. But, what I need to do is figure out a nice balance between eating healthy and giving myself some treats now and again. I know what is healthy and I know what isn't healthy. I also know there are SO many opinions on what is healthy and what is not.

On another note. I've not been quite as disciplined as I've wanted to be since my last blog post but I have logged in to myfitnesspal for 21 days in a row and have lost 3.2 pounds since Jan 1st. 3.2lbs in 3 weigh in's is certainly not bad and it's better than going in the other direction; but I need to really get more serious about it if I want to drop more of this weight before the summer comes around (for reasons more than just wearing a bathing suit)!

Step 1- figure out the balance of healthy eating with unhealthy treats that allow me to still lose weight.
Step 2 - get back to being active so I am burning more calories and therefore can more easily find the above balance! :)