Long Shot, but does anyone here Eat Clean?

mariewilcox

mariewilcox

New member
I've been following an Eat Clean lifestyle for 3 years now and figured I'd take a stab in the dark here and ask if anyone else does. I'm just looking for another person, or two, or more to exchange recipes/meal ideas with, etc. I follow the EC community on Facebook and on their Proboards, but it would be nice to have other resources :thumbup:
 
We've been doing this off and on for the past 4 years... I <3 Clean Eating...you subscribe to the mag right? They have the best recipes!
 
Clean eating is eating only natural foods, no preservatives, nothing processed.

I wish I had the will to do this...but I have junk food issues. LOL
 
We mostly do this in the summer, not strictly, just eating healthier because we eat the fruits & veggies from our garden :) But I'd love to look into this a little more. Are there certain sites/resources you can link us up to?
 
I have very few junk food issues {upside of not having an appetite} BUT I have no idea how to eat "clean." I'm checking out this website; I'd love to try it out! We're trying to eat more healthy, but I don't even know where to start. I've already got a jump start on it because eating junk makes my stomach hurt, so I've already given up fast food (or maybe this is because for the last 8 years we've had only 3 fast food options, and they make me wanna puke now.).
 
I'm very interested it and had planned to transition to it while my DH was deployed, not sure how pregnancy will affect that decision. I do want to work towards it as much as I can though.
 
Traci - yes, I LOVE the magazine. Sometimes I like to get quick and easy ideas from "real" people too.

For everyone who asked, yes, clean eating means no junk food - LOL. It's basically eating foods that haven't been processed - no refined sugar, no processed flours, etc. Eating whole grains and vegetables and fruits (complex carbs) and protein with each meal. You don't need go give up coffee, just what you put in it - LOL. I thought it would be hard to stick to but was pleasantly surprised that it "fit" me. Once I got past the first few months I didn't crave sugar anymore at all. I eat clean 99.5% of the time and let myself splurge on a rare occasion, but even now my splurges aren't as "bad" as they used to be - I'm satisfied with a piece of 80% cocao instead of a snickers bar - LOL.

The link that joelsgirl posted is the Eating Clean website and it lists the cookbooks, which are great also. Here is another site and they also have a facebook page .

Not trying to force it on anyone - to each their own :) - I just thought I would just see if there was anyone else around who wanted to swap ideas, meal plans, recipes, etc. :)

ETA: Along with the eating aspect, activity/exercise/weights is a large part of eating clean also. It really does make you feel amazing.
 
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Seriously, it's a hard lifestyle to maintain, but if you can pull it off, it makes you feel SO amazing.

The gist is:

No white stuff (white flour, sugar, etc)
5-6 small meals a day with a protein and good-for-you carb at every meal.
1/2 gallon-gallon water a day.
Eat the rainbow in fruits/veggies as much as you can every day.

There's more to it, which I seriously recommend the books, but here's my post on it:

http://tracireed.com/blog/?p=185
 
well of course :P I always wash my food...

kidding.. i'm bad with jokes. haha!

I think its a smart way to eat though for sure!
 
I just read your blog post, Traci. How did you do with your week long cleanse?

It's probably a no cheese kind of lifestyle, isn't it? {sigh} I can live without coke or sugar, but never without cheese, lol.

Thanks for posting this! I'm totally interested in looking into it more.
 
I've never heard of this as a defined "diet" or whatever, but it's something we work on regularly (the cutting out of processed foods and refined grains and sugars). I've tried SO HARD to Eat Clean-ER, but this is something that is REALLY HARD for me. I am the world's PICKIEST eater who ever lived. Seriously. I just don't like things that are good for me. LOL. The whole "Eat a Rainbow" thing - ugh. (Don't skittles count??). Purple and orange food? No way. Can't think of a single one I like. I'd probably only get red, yellow and green. I have major texture issues, so a lot of fruits and veggies gross me out (the texture feels gross to me, not the taste). I also am easily grossed out by meat - I can't prepare / cook meat because raw meat will make me gag and I can't eat meat on a bone. That doesn't leave a ton of choices. Oh, and no fish (except for Ono if it's deep fat fried with some french fries, but somehow I doubt that's "clean". ha!). I also do love me some Taco Bell, which is a frequent problem. ;)

But seriously, we try really really hard to make good "clean" choices, but it's definitely difficult for me because of my picky-ness. I'm much better at making my son eat clean!!

But a big one for us that we definitely do stick to is GMO-free and Hormone-free. - Does the Eat Clean thing talk about GMO?
 
LOL on the skittles Jenn! I am a vegetarian so the meat thing isn't an issue for me, which I think it's why this lifestyle clicked for me - I always ate tons of fruits, veggies, and grains anyway. Thankfully food is like an adventure for me, I love to try new things and are very few I dislike.

And yes, hormone-free and GMO-free foods are stressed but basically come down to a personal choice. DD and I try to eat GMO-free foods and do for the most part and I buy from local farms and grow quite a bit of my own during the summer season. Unfortunately, our growing season is short and during the winter sometimes if you really want a certain fruit or veggie it has to be GMO, although our market is getting much better about having both options. Papayas are the one thing that I can think of right now that our market only has GMO :thumbdown:

As far as cheese goes, it isn't a total no-no. If you're actually trying to lose weight it is high in calories of course, so you want to limit the intake. If you are maintaining weight or just eating clean to be fit and feel amazing, then cheese in moderation is okay. Basically it's a high-calorie food and you just want to be careful about how much you eat. You just want to check your labels for fat content - saturated/unsaturated. Of course you don't want to buy pre-shredded cheeses because of the preservatives found in them. If we needed shredded cheese for pizza or tacos then I buy a block and shred my own. There is even a clean recipe for mac and cheese :)
 
We're stumbling along with it. The only boxed food we have is cereal because no one is ready to give that up. Apart from white sugar for certain baked goods that experimenting has shown us we hate with other sweetners, we've given up the white stuff. Lunch & dinner are almost always clean meals. We've had mixed success with the 6 meal idea, 4 is more our usual. DH goes out to lunch every day & eats all sorts of crap but that's his choice & we do go out to dinner once a week. I'd say we're about 75% clean.

It's easier in the summer when I have more control over everyone's food & more fruits & veggies available at the farmer's market to work with. We have texture issues here so things have to be good raw or good pureed only & that can be limiting. In the winter I am more likely to say "have some Goldfish crackers"
 
I want to be, lol! I have 3 of Tosca's books (the Kids & Family, Recharged & her first cookbook). I LOVE the idea of it... and that I can still eat the foods I want, but I just have to clean them up (and not gorge on them), you know?

I keep starting again and again. With a newborn, I'm finding it really hard to eat properly because I don't have things prepared ahead of time. Then I just grab stuff that's easy (and that my toddler will like). I'm going to start meal planning again, with only clean eats, then crack down & get serious! I feel SO much better when I eat clean - it's just pure laziness at this point.

Someone give me a swift kick!!
 
mariewilcox said:
And yes, hormone-free and GMO-free foods are stressed but basically come down to a personal choice. DD and I try to eat GMO-free foods and do for the most part and I buy from local farms and grow quite a bit of my own during the summer season. Unfortunately, our growing season is short and during the winter sometimes if you really want a certain fruit or veggie it has to be GMO, although our market is getting much better about having both options. Papayas are the one thing that I can think of right now that our market only has GMO :thumbdown:
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Yes, I should really be better about eating (and appreciating this option) more fruits and veggies because of where I live - where the growing season is pretty much yearound. A lot of things still have a "season", but we can always get SOME kind of locally grown fruits / veggies that are in-season. Especially the tropical stuff (papaya, pineapple, mango). We grow our own Papayas, bananas and avocados in our backyard and have WAY too many of them to eat - we have bananas and papayas all year and avocados about half of the year. And we can get lots of local veggies yearound at the many farmer's markets. Other fruits tend to longer growing seasons here than on the mainland too. And a lot of our locally grown stuff is GMO-free as that is a big deal around here. I wish I enjoyed more fruits and veggies since they're so plentiful and easy to get here. The thing that doesn't make sense to me is why they're not cheaper!! (like why are locally-grown bananas $1.39/lb!? And why is lettuce $3.60/head!?). ugh.
 
JenTapler said:
The thing that doesn't make sense to me is why they're not cheaper!! (like why are locally-grown bananas $1.39/lb!? And why is lettuce $3.60/head!?). ugh.
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Dude, are you JOKING!?!? I was just complaining last week about bananas being $0.54/lb! LOL I guess I'll hush up then.
 
Libby Pritchett said:
Dude, are you JOKING!?!? I was just complaining last week about bananas being $0.54/lb! LOL I guess I'll hush up then.
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Nope, not joking! Usually they're $1.19/lb, but people go nuts when they're on sale for $0.99/lb. We're fortunate because we have crazy-producing banana trees so we rarely have to buy bananas. But all produce is like that. It doesn't make sense to me though because it all grows plentifully here. The lettuce is what kills me though - we eat A LOT of lettuce and I usually have to buy about 4-5 heads of lettuce a week, but at $3.69/head that KILLS me. We need to start growing lettuce, but we'd still have to buy it at the rate we eat it. The thing that kills me is that our Maui Gold pineapples that are grown here on Maui are more expensive here on Maui than they are on the mainland!! When my MIL comes to visit she always jokes and asks if we want her to bring us a Maui Gold pineapple because she can get them cheaper in Kansas than we can get them here on Maui! How stupid is that!? (Admittedly they do taste WAY better here because they are much fresher, but still. dumb.). I totally get the need for our other stuff to cost more because everything has to be shipped to us on a boat - cost of fuel, manpower for loading / unloading docks and containers, etc. But locally grown produce?? I consider that price gouging or something!! (And it makes it even harder to Eat Clean!).
 
WOW Jen... that's crazy! I can totally see why that would make it hard to eat clean.


I'm so excited... I'm the proud new owner of a Vitamix and I can't wait to use it!!! My next goal is to get the dry blade container so that I can make my own flour. :D
 
Oooh jealous, Heather! I want a vitamix!!!!

Jen, that's just crazy. We bought a couple of pineapples for $2.50 each tonight. Can't wait to cut into those!!
 
Jen, it's crazy! I remember when we lived at MCBH that I was suprised how much produce cost. I was like, "Hey, this stuff GROWS here, what the heck?" I always wondered why too and never really found an answer - lol. Things are costly up here because they have to be shipped so far, but not quite as costly as there. Although I did notice that a head of iceburg lettuce was $2.99 the other day :blink: I'm glad we eat the leafy lettuces because those were under $2.00 a bunch. My lettuce should be ready to pick baby greens from soon thankfully!
 
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