Tips for Clean Eating
By Sara Butler
Clean eating is a trend you’ve likely read about in a variety of blogs and magazines over the past couple of years. However, it can be a tough concept to truly understand and begin putting into practice in your own life. Here’s a breakdown of what it means to eat clean and a few tips that you can easily use to put it into practice in your own life.
What is Clean Eating?
Clean eating is a simple concept. You eat foods that as natural as possible, meaning you avoid highly processed foods. This helps to shift your eating habits in a healthier direction since the emphasis is on filling your plate with fresh foods instead of processed ones.
Tips to Start
If you’re interested in eating clean, then you need to know just a few simple things to help you get started. You should:
- Make whole grains a focus – Choose whole grains when you can, which is a grain that has all its parts intact. They aren’t as processed and therefore have more fiber, minerals, and vitamins than the more processed versions. Plus, eating whole grains can help you reduce your risk of heart disease, certain cancers, diabetes, and obesity.
- Drink more water – Your body is made up of mostly water and it needs it to function daily. In fact, water is essential to your metabolism, digestion, body temperature, and it helps your body filter out toxins through your kidneys. If plain water isn’t your thing, then you can sip on sparkling water or fruit-infused. You can also get more water through food choices such as cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, watermelon, and strawberries.
- Give plants a starring role – A diet rich in plants is associated with a reduction in the rates of obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. So make plant-based foods your focus for meals and you’ll eat less processed foods along the way.
- Limit added sugars – You should avoid artificial sweeteners and limit the amount of sugar you consume. Natural sugars, such as those found in fruit, are great. But added sugars that are found in processed foods are not good for you and avoiding them is one of the most important parts of eating clean.
- Go fresh – When you eat fresh vegetables and fruits, you’re getting food that is at its peak of freshness. So eat local and eat fresh if you want to eat clean.
You can eat clean easily as long as you know where to focus your healthy eating energy.