5 CLEAN EATING TIPS FOR BEGINNERS
5 Clean Eating Tips For Beginners
Clean Eating is actually defined as:
Choosing whole-foods or minimally processed foods 90% of the time leaving indulgences for special events.
This means that clean eating is NOT a diet but instead a lifestyle! Good nutritious foods can truly heal our bodies of many chronic disease and other illnesses. Clean eating is truly a journey to become our healthiest version of ourselves.
When someone is considering changing to a clean eating lifestyle there are 3 topics they are usually most concerned about.
Expense- Cost of the foods
Taste- Will they enjoy the foods
Longevity- Will they be able to continue this lifestyle longterm
PLAN - PLAN - PLAN
Each Sunday I look over the events I have coming up for the following week and choose my meals accordingly. My kids are super involved in school and sports so, on nights we will be gone to practice or another evening activity I know to choose a crockpot meal or something simpler for those nights. I try to be intentional about knowing which meals I will be feeding my family before the week even starts. Having this plan helps me to avoid feeling “meal time anxiety” or having to eat out at the last minute time crunch.
This also cuts cost and allows me to eat clean within our family budget.
Tip: I try to stock up on meat every other week because meat can be one of the most expensive parts of feeding a family of 5. The meat I have more of in the freezer helps me to choose the recipes for that week. Buying in bulk is still a GREAT option for clean eating families.
Tip: Once you have your weekly meal plan complete use a grocery pick up service to avoid buying foods not included in the meal plan. Utilizing this type of service saves you time and money.
ONLY COOK 3 - MAYBE 4 DAYS A WEEK
Confession: I don’t really enjoy to cook! Crazy for someone who is a “Nutrition Nut” to actually admit to the world. The truth is I would rather spend my evenings time with my kids and my husband instead of in the kitchen cooking and cleaning up the cooking mess.
To avoid being stuck in the kitchen cooking every night of the week I pick 3, possibly 4 nights, each week to actually cook. When I am planning my meals on Sunday for the following week I am intentional about choosing meals I can make double of to last 2 nights of dinner or dinner and a couple of lunchbox days for the kids.
Ex: Cook Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, Maybe Saturday but Saturday is usually our family night to eat out.
My family does enjoy leftovers for most recipes. Something I have learned with clean eating and using natural seasonings more often, is that some recipes after the seasonings have had time to truly “marry” with the other ingredients, tastes more flavorful the second day then on the first day we ate it! #MomWin
HEALTHIER VERSIONS OF YOUR CURRENT FAVORITE RECIPES
When you are first starting your clean eating journey it’s simplest to choose healthier versions of your current favorite recipes or foods. This allows you and your family to not feel as much of a “shock” when presented with the cleaner foods.
My kids each had a favorite type of cereal, lunchbox snacks, and other things they enjoyed daily before we started our clean eating journey. I researched for the healthier versions of those same items. This helped transitioning to clean eating go more smoothly.
These are examples of great food brands to choose for a healthier version of your child’s current favorites foods.
Cascadian Farm’s Brand
Annie’s Homegrown Foods Brand
Back To Nature
Any Great Value Organic Foods (Walmart Organic Brand)
Any Member’s Mark Foods (Sam’s Organic Brand..great for buying in bulk)
Natural Grocer Organics (NG brand products are usually less expensive)
Healthy Kid Approved Recipes - Recipe Blog
AVOID EATING THESE INGREDIENTS
Artificial sweeteners such as:
Artificial colors
Modified flour or starch
High Fructose Corn Syrup - other modified fructose
Other chemical additives
Choose foods that you can actually read or understand each of the ingredient on the label to help avoid consuming these harmful chemicals. If you are choosing the organic versions of foods you can normally assume you are avoiding the ingredients listed above but, always check the labels just to be 100% sure.
To really understand the importance of choosing organic foods please click the link below.
DRINK ENOUGH WATER
I know this might sounds like a really common tip that you have heard many times in your life but I want to stress it’s importance again. Our bodies, at a total, are made up of 90% water. Keeping our bodies well hydrated allows our bodies to work and function at it’s best!
Water has several great benefits for the body, but the benefits really important to starting your clean eating journey are these 3 benefits:
Helps our body absorb nutrients.
Eating clean and healthy foods is like giving our bodies natural medicine daily. So, it’s important to get every benefit we can from those foods. Water helps our body completely absorb the vitamins and nutrients in food allowing our body to benefit fully from the clean eating lifestyle.
Help to detoxify our body.
After years of eating a nutrition poor or junk food diet and then change to clean eating, it’s important to detoxify our bodies of those chemical ingredients we were consuming in the past. This will allow our taste buds to enjoy more of the natural foods and help us be more successful long term with a clean eating lifestyle.
Helps boost weight loss.
Starting a clean eating journey shouldn’t be just to loose weight. It should be more about our “all over health” but, shedding a few pants sizes along the way will help boost motivation and encourage us to keep going on this better way of life journey.
Coach Help
I am a Certified Nutritional Health Coach and would love to help you get started on your clean eating journey with an awesome accountability group or even “one on one” specific health coaching to meet your current needs.
If either options interests you please click the link below.
