Making the decision to change your life is never simple. It may be difficult and even disheartening to break old habits and form new, healthier ones. It's not impossible, however.
Clean eating is the anti-fad diet. Enough of the good stuff, less of the bad stuff. That includes vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. It also means limiting refined grains, table salt, added sugars, and unhealthy saturated fats (artificial colorings, sugar substitutes, and artificial flavorings).
Clean eating isn't new. Modern living and technological advancements have introduced us to words like hydrogenated fats, E numbers, and chemical sweeteners.
Clean eating had already re-emerged to overcome the increasing number of deaths caused by poor diet in Ireland. Many older adults in America suffer from either heart disease, cancer, stroke, or diabetes. They cover most lifestyle issues. It affects us all. It's a common misconception that healthy eating is more costly to maintain than fast food or processed foods.
This is no longer the case with the advent of discount supermarkets. Granted, making your own food requires some prep work and time, but I believe this can be considered an opportunity, the opportunity being a healthy body. People seem to spend more time choosing their car, clothes, and vacations than their food.
Our Ultimate Guide to a Healthy Lifestyle covers many ways you may live a better and happier life, whether you're searching for a positive perspective on life, want to alter your diet and consume healthy foods, or need a new exercise routine.
Whole foods are unprocessed foods. An alternative to factory-made goods is farm-made products.
Apple juice is an excellent example of as natural as possible. Of course, you'd be partly correct in assuming that apple juice - even freshly squeezed - is extremely healthful.
Processed foods are anything with a label. However, many "clean" processed foods come in boxes or tins, such as chickpeas or other beans, porridge oatmeal, Tamari sauce, brown rice, to name a few.
Sugar is ubiquitous, and we need it to fuel our workouts, everyday activities, and brains. Aside from being calorie-rich, simple carbohydrates like refined table sugar have little nutritional or mineral value. Instead, use natural sweeteners like fruits, raw organic honey, agave syrup, brown rice syrup, coconut sugar, barley malt, and organic high-grade maple syrup to sweeten your meals. The more we consume simple sugars, the more we want the taste of sweetness.
The 'low fat' fad that dominated the 1980s has tarnished fats in general. Avocados, flaxseed, almond and peanut butter or other nut oils, and olive oil are polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats.
To make hormones and repair tissue, your body needs a specific quantity of all three fats. Eating healthy fats with complex carbs slows digestion as well as keeps sugar levels and energy levels constant. Organic free-range eggs contain healthy saturated fats.
Clean eating strives to provide optimum nutrition and balance in all meals. This results in improved energy, fullness, decreased appetite, and fat reduction. Combining these macronutrients increases the effect of antioxidants in the body.