When you decide you want to lose weight once and for all, you may turn all your attention to your new gym membership. However, your diet has as much or more of an impact on losing weight as exercising.
Clean eating is an excellent way to approach losing weight, and it’s not a fad or a heavily restricted eating plan that leaves you frustrated and fat. Clean eating is a long-term approach to your lifestyle and promoting health and wellness in your diet. Here are the 5 basic things you need to do to transition your current view on food to clean eating:
1. Forget Diets, Just Eat Clean
Diets come and diets go, and whatever the latest fad is may not be the best for you or provide proven results. Stay away from diets altogether and incorporate clean eating as your new health and wellness lifestyle. Clean eating lets you enjoy all kinds of food in quantities that will leave you feeling full and satisfied. Stick to the basic guides of clean eating, and take control of your eating habits once and for all.
2. Learn What Clean Eating Really Is
Clean eating is really just what it sounds like, consuming food that is wholesome, minimally processed and good for you. The focus is on food that is made from minimally processed ingredients, and that are as close to their natural state as possible.
Obviously, eating plant-based foods top the list of clean eating strategies, but there are plenty of options when it comes to eating simple foods that haven’t been chemically enhanced or transformed into something unrecognizable in nature. No calorie counting, hunger-inducing shakes, or radical restrictions–just eat clean.
3. Hug Your Fruits and Vegetables
When you eat clean, your diet will need a lot more fresh produce in it. Loaded with vitamins, nutrients, fiber and other good things, fruits and vegetables are the foundation of any successful weight loss plan. With a variety of options depending on the season, fruits and vegetable recipes will quickly become a staple in your daily meal routine.
4. Identify Clean Foods
Choosing food that is simple and natural isn’t that hard, but we’ve been tricked for so long by slick marketing campaigns selling us “healthy” versions of processed foods that it pays to get reacquainted with what real clean food really is. Besides fruits and vegetables, include foods like nuts, meat, whole grain baked goods, natural oils, and dairy. Stay away from high fat, added sugar and products with ingredients you can’t even pronounce.
5. Learn to Cook
Basic ingredients won’t do you any good if you don’t know how to prepare them into delicious meals. Cooking fresh ingredients for every occasion helps you avoid fast food and gets you familiar with the taste, texture and smell of real food. Besides adding the joy of cooking to your life, you’ll be able to prepare things you will actually eat instead of forcing yourself to choke down the latest diet fad.
All in all, clean eating is not just a good way to kick start a weight loss effort, but it has lots of positive results for your overall health and wellness.
Author Bio:
Kevin Jones is a freelance writer, researcher and fitness instructor/consultant. He had helped hundreds of people find ways to become more fit and healthy through a balanced life focusing on an individualized approach to their nutrition and fitness.