The Clean Diet

If you want to lose weight, following a healthy eating plan is a good start, but allowing someone else to dictate exactly what, when and how much you can eat is crazy. Ultimately you must learn to make better choices in your eating which then leads to you knowing how to maintain your new shape after the weight has been lost. The Clean Diet is the answer.

What is the Clean Diet?

The Clean Diet means different things to different people. My version is less strict than some because frankly I'm not a competitive body builder and I don't have a modeling contract. Unless you must maintain a specific body weight (as actors sometimes do for a role), you probably think similarily to me: I want to lead a normal life. Doing things like eating dinner in a restaurant occasionally, enjoying parties from time-to-time and generally not feeling like I have to "watch what I eat" or suffer the consequences.

The way I eat is sometimes called the non-dieting approach because I don't diet, but I do pay attention. That's what the Clean Diet means: paying attention to what you're eating.

What Can I Eat on The Clean Diet?

Vegetables: Enjoy unlimited raw, steam, baked. Go for it. I don't know anyone who got fat because they ate too many vegetables and that includes carrots, beans, corn and potatoes. Unless you are allergic, there is no reason to shun fresh vegetables. Yes they contain carbohydrates. Get over it. Wean yourself from sauces, and learn to like them without added butter or salt. Vegetables like carrots and beets for instance are very high in natural sugars (that's the point -- nature intended to give you sweet things whereby you'd WANT to eat them and would consequently get adequate Vitamin C among other things).

Fruit: Try to eat at least one or two pieces a day. More is fine. There is no reason to restrict yourself to one-quarter of a cantaloupe or 1 small apple. Who comes up with these rules anyway? An apple contains less than 100 calories. That's not exactly going to break the diet bank, is it? Eat all the fresh fruit you like, especially late at night if you're working on learning to give up your chips or cookies habit. Apples are great for snacking, as are grapes, bananas, kiwi or anything else you like. Try to eat mostly fresh fruit, and saved canned fruits for once in awhile.

Dried fruits such as raisins are a super concentrated food source and should be treated with respect. A few thrown on your morning cereal or in your trail mix is fine, but remember super concentrated food is also high calorie food. You don't need a lot to get the nutrients. Learn the difference between densely packed nutrients and loosely packed nutrients. Fresh fruit is loosely packed, high in water content, and dried fruit is dense with little or no water. Corn-on-the-cob is loose, corn syrup is dense (and processed too).

An ounce of raisins contains 85 calories and 201 mg of Potassium, while an ounce of fresh grapes is a mere 20 calories. You'd need four times the fresh grapes to equal the dried.

Clean foods are as close to their natural state as possible without being fanatical about it. There is a world of difference between a baked potato and a bowlful of potato chips. One is a good source of nutrients and one is a highly refined, richly saturated fat, greasy, salty, modified source of nothing but smears on your napkin. One is satisfying and one leaves you wanting more. Betcha can't eat just one was more than a catch phrase for Lay's Potato Chips. It's a truism.

Grains & Beans: Whole grains like whole wheat, rice, millet, barley, and others. Drop the habit to eat chips and crackers out of a box. Once in awhile is okay, but if you eat them regularly, then you need to make a modification. Cakes, crackers and the like are simply not good for everyday fare, if you want to reach a healthy bodyweight. Once in awhile, or special occasions is fine, just not every day. Not even every other day.

Once a week is plenty, and if you can't commit to weaning yourself off those foods, then you need to adjust to living with a higher body weight. It's not a character flaw, but it is a fact you must face. What you eat, dictates how healthy you will be, both mind and body.

Whole grain means whole grain. Bread will say 100% whole grain on the label. Brown bread is not always whole grain, but it may be brown because some molasses was added to color it brown. Whole grain breads are heavier, more dense, chewier. You may think you don't like darker breads, especially if you're used to the light and fluffy white bread. When I was a teenager I could easily eat 10 slices of white bread french toast and still not feel satisfied. How ridiculous is that? I could, on the other hand, only eat about two and-a-half pieces of whole grain bread french toast and I was too full to have any more.

The best breads are heavy. Think of being a peasant sitting around a fire cooking a thick soup. What kind of bread would be best to sop it up? Some lame white bread that would disintegrate if liquid touched it, or a thick, hearty brown bread that could serve as a staple if need be? I'll take the second.

Brown Rice & Stuff: My favorite thing to eat is brown rice with stuff. "Stuff" means any vegetable concoction, or sauce, or just something to sort of mix in there. Use a little oil, preferably olive or sesame for flavor. My favorite is steaming sliced carrots and onion together. It's naturally sweet (carrots and onions are very sweet), and delicious all by itself. Once you learn to simply eat foods the way nature presents them, you'll find your appetite stays more in line with better health.

This sounds like I'm giving a bunch of food rules and that wasn't my intention. I just wanted to point out that you don't have to live a spartan fare of 1/2 cup oatmeal with 1/4 cup skimmed milk and a half a slice of dry toast for breakfast. Instead you might have 1 or more cups of oatmeal with a bit of raisins, maybe even a sprinkle of brown sugar (it won't kill you) or if you've grown used to it, no sweetener at all. Use milk if you like, or soy milk.

Lean Meats, Chicken, Fish: Support your local butcher and farmer. When you buy your meat from a local butcher you can be assured you are getting the best available. Okay, it costs more than the grocery store brand. If you want the best, buy the best. Avoid farm bred fish at all costs. Simply ask your meat counter to stock fresh fish.

Desserts, treats, snacks: It's okay to eat these things, but practice moderation. If you can't do that, and think you'll eat the whole bag, then don't get them when you're alone. Share some with someone else. Buy the smaller size package. Do whatever it takes, but don't tell yourself you can never eat any certain food again, because that just makes it all the more difficult to handle it when the time comes.

The Clean Diet is More a Way of Life than a Strict Set of Eating Rules

Most people will allow themselves one "cheat day" every week. The best plan is simply to choose eating clean as your primary eating style, and when you don't you don't but every meal stands alone. If you ate breakfast out and enjoyed a huge buffet with all the trimmings, you get back into your clean eating style later in the day. Overeating at one meal isn't licence to overeat all day or all week while you wait for another Monday. While no foods are forbidden on a clean eating plan, common sense rules the day.