The Beginners Guide to Clean Eating

The Beginners Guide to Clean Eating

 

 Clean eating is gaining popularity at the moment and fits in with some popular diets  

For those new to the concept, here’s our beginners guide to clean eating.

What is Clean Eating?

Clean eating is eating whole foods in their most natural form.

Clean eating encourages the consumption of fruit, vegetables, natural sources of protein and healthy fats. What’s discouraged is eating processed foods, particularly those with high levels of added sugar and sodium (salt), and additives.

Proponents of clean eating say that it’s not a diet, but a life styles  centred on simplifying your diet.

How to Eat Clean

One of the great things about clean eating is that it is very simple, and the principles of clean eating are the ones that dietitians  have been promoting for as long as you can remember.

Here are the keys to eating clean:

• Eating seasonal and locally sourced plant based foods (fruit and vegetables) should form the bulk of your diet
• Eat lean sources of protein, ideally from humanely and locally farmed sources, like free range eggs
• Eat complex carbohydrates from whole grain sources
• Avoid processed foods wherever possible, particularly white foods (made using white flour, white sugar and added salt), with high levels of added sugar and salt
• Read food labels and choose foods with as few ingredients in the ingredients list as possible
• Drink water instead of fruit juices and soft drink
• Use healthy cooking methods to prepare your meals, like grilling, stir frying or steaming instead of deep frying
• Keep alcohol consumption down as much as possible
• Eat as many home cooked meals  as possible each week at the expense of take away
• Shop the perimeter of the supermarket only (all the processed foods tend to be in the middle of the store)
• Choose organically grown food if and when possible

Some supporters of clean eating also suggest grazing throughout the day by consuming five to six times per day, with three main meals and two healthy snakes per day.

Clean Eating Recipes

One of the most important principles of clean eating is to make foods yourself from scratch whenever possible. This ensures that you control what goes into your meals, that additives can be kept to a minimum and that you can choose the healthiest cooking methods.

The recipes we’ve listed here follow some of the more significant principles of clean eating, like eating seasonal vegetables, lean sources of protein, whole grains and healthy cooking methods:

Clean eating for beginners

• Clean Eating does NOT have to be complicated. Simple whole food recipes with everyday ingredients available at any grocery store, and no more than 1 hour of standing in the kitchen for the whole day.
  

The old saying “we are what we eat” couldn’t be more true. We don’t want to be fast, cheap or fake, right? When you focus on preparing meals almost entirely from scratch, your body and mind will thank you. 

My goal is to help you choose consistency over perfection when it comes to cooking. My Clean Eating Meal Plan is an amazing place to start. Meet all your nutritional needs in a delicious way and enjoy cooking! 

How to start a Clean Eating Diet

1. Include a lot of healthy whole foods in your diet.

If you are currently on a diet full of highly processed foods containing large amounts of refined sugar and sodium, don’t start by excluding anything in your diet, but rather by INCLUDING a lot of healthy whole foods.

Go to the grocery store and first fill your cart with all the things you want to include in your diet that will nourish your body. 

Buy tons of vegetables, a lot of fruit, a reasonable amount of protein, and healthy carbohydrates. You will most likely reduce the amount of processed food in your cart by 80% simply because your cart is already full.

2. Meal Plan.

Meal planning is key for successful grocery shopping. You will not only buy the ingredients you need, avoid food waste AND save money! But you’ll also spend way less time wandering around the aisles with the chance of grabbing some junk food. 

Before going to the store, go with a plan. Write down the recipes for the days you want to plan ahead for and make a list of the ingredients. 

Plan ahead your meals from breakfast to bedtime. Some people like to plan day by day and include their cravings for certain foods or deals of the day in the store. Others like to plan out the whole week. Do whatever works best for you, but write it down on a list and bring it to the store with you. 

Buy all the things your clean eating meal plan calls for. Only then, when you have all of it in your cart, if you can’t help it, then go down the junk food aisle.

3. Choose easy recipes.

Go for recipes that don’t take longer than 30 minutes to prepare. Over time, you will feel more confident and might want to try more complicated recipes. But first, keep it simple. It will help you realize that cooking healthy meals from scratch is not a daunting task, and it will make it easier to continue eating healthy in the long run.

Cook ahead! Have your meals ready to eat or half prepped, ready to cook. How likely do you think you will grab a microwave dinner or go to a fast-food restaurant if you could have your delicious planned dinner instead?

Aim for only having healthy things ready to grab instead of unhealthy stuff, and you’ll automatically improve your diet. 

Exactly like my 6-Week Clean Eating Mastery Program. More about that at the bottom. 

Recipes for One Day of Clean Eating For Beginners

• Breakfast: Overnight oats with berries and coffee with a splash of milk.
• Lunch: Quinoa meal prep bowl with lemon dressing
• Snack: clementines
• Dinner: Chicken thighs with sweet potatoes and asparagus

How to Make: 

Clean Eating Breakfast: 

The simplest way to make a healthy wholesome breakfast is to take a minute the night before to prepare it. 

1 . Add  ¾ cups of old-fashioned rolled oats and ¾ cups of your favorite milk into an airtight container, mix with a spoon and place it in the fridge overnight. That’s it! 

2. The next morning, take it out of the fridge and top it with some berries and a drizzle of maple syrup. Enjoy! 

Clean Eating Lunch: 

If you work outside the home, you might want to prepare your lunch the night before. But even if you work from home, having lunch prepared and waiting in the fridge is always nice isn’t it?

1. Add 1 cup of quinoa and 1 cup of water to the Instant Pot. That is the minimum necessary to get it to pressure. Then place a trivet into the pot as well and add 2 large fridge-cold eggs to it. Set the timer for just 1 minute on high pressure + full natural pressure release. I love that I can cook quinoa and hard-boiled eggs at the same time. 

We will only need one egg for the lunch bowl, but since you’re cooking double the amount of quinoa, you might as well add another egg and have everything ready for a second lunch bowl for another day.

2. While the quinoa is cooking, prepare an ice bath for the eggs and set it aside.

3. Prep your veggies. Get a Lebanese cucumber, a carrot, a handful of grape or cherry tomatoes, and a small handful of parsley. Peel the carrot and then julienne or grate it. Cut the ends of your cucumber and cut it into slices. Lastly, finely chop your parsley and set it aside.

4. Prep your dressing. In a sealable jar add the juice of half a lemon, 1 Tbsp of olive oil, sea salt, and pepper to taste. Shake until well combined and place it in the fridge.

5. By now your quinoa and eggs are probably ready. Remove the eggs immediately after the safety pin dropped. Add them to the ice bath to stop them from cooking further.

6. Assemble your quinoa lunch bowl. Add half of the cooked quinoa into a sealable container, then top it with the julienned carrot, sliced cucumber, grape tomatoes and the hard-boiled egg. Sprinkle some chopped parsley on top and seal it. Place it in the fridge overnight. 

7. Pour the dressing over your lunch bowl only seconds before you’re ready to eat it, and dive in! 

Clean Eating Dinner:

Let’s keep it simple but still super delicious!

1. Get two skinless boneless chicken thighs and season the heck out of them. Use ½ tsp paprika, ½ oregano, ¼ chili powder ½ tsp sea salt, and black pepper to taste.

2. Rub the spices well on both sides of the chicken and set them aside. 

3. Get a small sweet potato, peel it, and cut it into ½ inches slices. Make sure they are not much thicker than that or they won’t cook through. 

4. Preheat a large pan over medium heat. Once it’s really hot, add a splash of avocado oil then place the chicken thighs and the sweet potato slices into the sizzling oil. Sear brown for 5 minutes on one side, flip and sear for another 5 minutes on the other side. 

5. Add a handful of green asparagus to the pan and a splash of water to deglaze the bottom. Cover the pan with a lid and reduce the heat to low. Steam for approximately 20 minutes or until sweet potato is tender.

6. Serve the chicken thighs, sweet potatoes and asparagus on a plate, and pour the delicious pan juices all over it. It’s the best part!