Clean Up Your Diet!

Achieving and maintaining healthy lifestyle has a lot to do with your environment. For most people, your environment includes home, work, and all points between. Changing the types of foods you eat on a daily basis can help your body rid toxins and absorb new nutrients  giving you that fresh new feeling...
The first step is getting rid of “dirty” foods. This list seems to be never-ending, but includes most processed foods, fast foods, sugary foods and drinks, foods containing enriched flour, alcohol and artificial sweeteners. Nonorganic foods also contain chemicals that can slowly poison the body and put added stress on the liver, kidneys and other vital organs. All of these foods seem to make the body dirty by causing inflammation, digestive problems, inadequate detox, weight gain, dehydration and lack of energy. Start with Adding some more healthful foods while cutting out some processed snacks can help your overall health. And don't forget the water!!
Some Tips:

• Toss a few heavily processed staples

Instead of overhauling your pantry all at once, start by eliminating corn oil and soda both highly processed. "That alone is a huge first step." Another easy step is replacing refined breads and pastas made from white flour with ones made from whole grains.

• Focus on favorite foods

To keep it simple, assess what part of your diet supplies the most calories, If you're an omnivore, buy meat that comes from grass-fed cattle and eggs from pasture-raised chickens, but stick to conventional produce instead of organic. If you're a vegetarian, buying organic produce makes more sense.

• Shop the perimeter

Most whole, natural foods are on the outside aisles of grocery stores that's where the produce, dairy, and meat sections usually are. As you go deeper into the center of the store, you encounter more processed and packaged food. "Find the stuff that spoils,"

• Check the labels

It's the easiest way to distinguish a "clean" food from a highly processed one. Think about it: a head of lettuce has no label (totally natural), while a bag of ranch-flavored corn chips has a dozen or more ingredients (highly processed). Instead of eliminating all processed foods, study the labels on the packaging and choose those with fewer and simpler ingredients (avoid hydrogenated oils, artificial flavors and colors, stabilizers, preservatives, excessive amounts of fat and sodium, and added refined sugar).

• Think nutrients per serving

Consider the amount of nutrients in a product rather than focusing solely on price. Ask yourself if the price of the food is worth the nutrients (or lack thereof). You can make this assessment on every item by comparing the protein, fiber, minerals, and vitamins against fat, sodium, sugars, and chemical additives. Some clean eaters also focus on the environmental impact of the food. Some stores are promising to make the assessment easier.

A new organization called the Ecological Food Manufacturers Association is pushing companies to go even further. "A consumer should be able to pick up a product and, by looking at one little score, instantly know how safe, planet-friendly, and nutritious it is,"

• Cook more meals at home

This is an easy way to shift more of your resources toward whole food and potentially save money. Plus, many restaurants rely on highly processed food to create their meals. To make home cooking easier, master a few one-pot or one-pan dishes with simple ingredients that you can whip up quickly and that will feed the family for days. Cooking helps you appreciate and enjoy your food more, especially if you share the process with others. Involve your family by giving them a job (wash, chop, stir, set the table, etc.). As a bonus, you will notes that people who cook tend to eat more healthfully and weigh less than those who don't.

 

• Adjust your tastebuds

If you're accustomed to eating food with lots of salt, sugar, fat, and other additives, you'll need to retrain your tastebuds to appreciate the more subtle flavors of whole foods. For instance, if you don't immediately like the taste of brown rice, mix it with white (in decreasing amounts) until you adapt. (You can do the same thing with whole grain pasta.) It works for salty and fatty foods, too. Instead of switching immediately to, say, low-sodium soups, mix a regular can with a low-sodium version and adjust the ratio toward less sodium as you get used to the flavor. It can take up to 12 weeks to adjust, says Richard Mattes, MPH, PhD, a professor of foods and nutrition at Purdue University.

• Follow an 80-20 strategy

Eating plans go bad (and are eventually abandoned) when they turn obsessive. Clean eating is no different. To avoid that trap, take an 80-20 approach. That is, try to eat natural food percent of the time, with a 20 percent buffer for when you're traveling or socializing or simply can't.

• Discover pleasure in real food

Clean eating is all about the pleasures of food. Celebrity chef Alton Brown of the Food Network says "You know, as long as it's made with love ..."
It really goes back to the whole French paradox thing: While the French are talking with family, drinking wine, and turning eating into a celebration, we're scarfing down handheld food in our cars. His message was to think about where your food is coming from, who's preparing it, and especially how you're eating it."
In other words, be mindful. It's a word that comes up repeatedly in discussions of clean eating. Be more mindful of how you shop, how you cook, and how you eat.
Choose to eat this way for many reasons, One of the biggest is enjoyment. There doesn't have to be a trade-off between pleasure and health. If you eat this way, you can have both.