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How to Simplify Clean Eating and Start Your New Food Journey Now

Simplify Clean Eating and Start Your New Food Journey

When it comes to dieting, we often focus so much of our attention on things like losing weight or becoming athletic that we forget about just eating well. In the modern world, a lot of the foods that we consume are highly processed and very different from what our bodies have evolved to process.
Foods often contain substances that are not nutritious and even harmful to the body. This has resulted in the “clean eating” movement – a movement that emphasizes the eating of foods that contain only wholesome substances to which the body reacts well.

How to Simplify Clean Eating and Start Your New Food Journey Now

Many people, seeing the advantages, would like to start on a clean eating diet, but they may feel discouraged due to an assumption that it would be very difficult. However, the truth is that clean eating does not need to be difficult. In fact, it is far easier than many of the popular diets out there.

Throw Out the Packaged Foods

Studies have shown that about 60% of Americans’ daily calories come from food that is highly processed. This food contains things like refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors, artificial flavors, hydrogenated oils, emulsifiers, preservatives, etc. All of these things have been shown to negatively influence human health.

The average American’s kitchen is full of these packaged and processed foods, such as snack cakes, chips, crackers, and imitation foods. These are not good for the body. Your first step toward clean eating is to throw these items out.

You may feel hesitant to take this step, as you apparently paid money for these foods, but remember that this is about changing your lifestyle, which is never easy. By actually going and throwing your packaged foods in the trash, you will be making a psychological commitment that will help you to cross the bridge and never come back. Otherwise, you run the risk of relapsing into your old habits as soon as you have a moment of weakness.

Grow Your Own Produce

It may sound difficult to grow your own produce, but it can actually be rather easy. Even if you live in an urban apartment, you can grow certain fruits and vegetables on your patio – or even just on a window sill. Some common options for home-grown produce are strawberries, tomatoes, squash, bean sprouts, watermelon, asparagus, peas, and beans.

By growing your own produce, you are helping to increase efficiency in the economy and in the environment. More importantly, though, doing this allows you to eat healthy food without having to worry about pesticides, preservatives, and other unwanted substances. Growing your own produce also helps to create a habit of eating well, as you will feel inclined to actually eat the fruits and vegetables that you have growing in and around your home.

Become a Foodie

A foodie is anyone who sees food as a delight and a matter of serious consideration rather than just something that keeps us alive or a passing indulgence. As such, a foodie enjoys cooking for the sake of creating meals that are delicious and enjoyable. Follow blogs and subscribe to newsletters that will give you good recipe ideas, and on a weekly basis, plan out your menu. Instead of looking at your diet as a burden and a chore, look at it as a challenge and an opportunity, and use it as an outlet for your creativity.

Whether it comes to food, exercise, relationships, or any other aspect of your life, you will not be able to bring about considerable change without a plan. This is why the plan mentioned above is so vital to your journey toward clean eating. If you do not plan out what you are going to do, you probably will not do it. Instead, you will just naturally sink back into the old way of doing things.

Avoid “Diet” and “Low-Fat” Products

One fallacy that people are often guilty of is the assumption that anything that says “diet” or “low fat” on it is going to be healthy. This is not the case. Instead, in many situations, these foods are just as jam-packed with undesirable chemicals as other packaged and processed foods: it is just that they do not specifically have as much fat or sugar in them.

One paradoxical fact about “diet” foods is that they tend to correlate to obesity. This is especially true for diet sodas and other foods that contain artificial sweeteners. The purpose of artificial sweeteners is to give you the sweet taste of sugar without actually adding any calories, as these sweeteners have no nutritional value. However, these non-digestible chemicals can actually affect your weight in other ways.

One thing to note is the influence that these foods have on the bacteria in your digestive tract. Studies have suggested that artificial sweeteners tend to kill some kinds of bacteria while causing others to flourish. This imbalance can cause changes in your metabolism, which influences your cravings as well as the extent to which you metabolize certain foods.

On top of this, other studies have suggested that artificial sweeteners such as aspartame can contribute to certain kinds of cancer.

So basically, avoid anything containing artificial sweeteners. To find out if your food contains these products, just look at the label.

Watch What You Drink

One of the best and simplest ways that people can improve their health is simply by drinking more water. Too often, people either neglect to drink enough or tend to drink the wrong things. As a result, studies have shown that as many as 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated. This dehydration can contribute to virtually every other health problem, such as obesity, insomnia, fatigue, ulcers, high blood pressure, kidney disease, and many other things.

By increasing your water intake, you improve your body’s ability to flush out undesirable substances and just keep everything operating as it should.

Your increased water intake should also substitute other beverages you might often drink, such as sodas and alcoholic beverages. Clean eaters also tend to stay away from pasteurized milk.

Some clean eaters drink coffee and black tea, but others consider this ill-advised because the high caffeine content seems to be contrary to the idea of clean eating. However, virtually all herbal teas are acceptable.

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