An eat-clean diet is one of the most popular diets today. It is a healthy diet that helps you lose weight and contributes to maintaining good health.
However, not everyone understands A to Z about that. As a result, we will provide you with everything you needed to know about eating clean and how best to adapt this diet for weight loss.
1. Definition of eat-clean diet
As simple as its name suggests, eat clean (EC) is a clean diet. Clean here means clean cooking and food choices.
In this regime, we will prioritize fresh, healthy foods and stay away from processed foods, sugary foods, and saturated fat, which are harmful to your health.
Eating clean does not exclude any food groups. It focuses on whole grains, fruits, vegetables, healthy fats (often found in nuts, fish), and protein with reasonable serving sizes.
The diet also encourages people to use less processed foods to preserve the original taste and ensure the highest nutritional value in food.
Features of clean food in general include:
- Use ingredients in their raw form if possible
- Cooked at home
- Strictly eliminated preservatives, food coloring, and additives
- Minimize any processing methods
Nowadays, the definition of EC also changes a lot to suit the needs of each person. Some clean diets focus primarily on plant ingredients and say no to meat and dairy. Others, meanwhile, will choose seasonal, local, organic, non-GMO foods or eggs and meat and milk that are not produced directly from animals. Additionally, strict EC diets cut out on alcohol and caffeine.
2. Some benefits that an eat-clean diet gives us.
An eat-clean diet can bring you many benefits include:
- Helping to lose weight safely: The amount of food in an eat-clean diet is always sufficient. Although it has a slow effect, it helps you to lose weight healthily and sustainably.
- Enhance heart health: this diet only allows you to use good fats (primarily from nuts and seeds) for processing. Therefore, it can limit the increase of cholesterol in the blood, improve heart health, and other diseases such as kidney failure, high blood pressure, etc.
- Reducing the risk of cancer: this dieteliminating and avoiding processed foods, which contain a high risk of cancer. By eliminating those foods, you can prevent cancer and have a healthier body.
- Enhance the resistance, beautify skin: thanks to the frugality and clean ingredients used in this diet, especially with the high fiber content, the diet will not only make you feel full for a long time but also provides your body with an abundant amount of vitamins, helping to strengthen your resistance, promoting the elimination of toxins from the body and make your skin becomes more beautiful.
3. What kinds of food should I eat in eat clean diet?
As mentioned above, eat-clean has no special requirements. Just make sure that foods are fresh from nature, unprocessed, and without preservatives or chemicals. They could be:
- Fresh fruits and vegetables
- Whole grains such as brown rice, oats, and quinoa. These digest slowly and keep you full for longer.
- Milk and dairy products (without sugar)
- Protein-rich foods: red meats, poultries, nuts, and seafood, etc.
- Avoid using foods with added sugar: honey, juice, syrup, nectar, etc.
- Do not eat refined grains: white rice, pasta, white bread, etc.
- Load yourself with good fats from olive oil, sesame oil, etc.
In addition, you should especially stay away from fast foods, snacks such as fried chickens, chips, carbonated drinks, milk tea, and candies. If you feel cravings for these, you can eat them, but just on rare occasions.
4. How to start and prepare for an eat-clean diet?
To start, you can refer to a few tips below:
- Eating in smaller portions (instead of 3 meals/day, make it 5-6 meals/day), each meal contains 200-300 calories.
- Drinking lots of water to help your body perform better.
- Try not to skip meals, especially breakfast, and eat as bland as possible- 1 teaspoon of salts and spices per serving should be enough. Our body will not store water by consuming fewer spices and less salt, allowing us to either maintain or lose weight easier.
- Eliminate processed, fried, canned, and sugary foods.
- Although your weight relies heavily on the daily diet, an exercising regimen is just as important. It would be best to incorporate exercises into your daily diet so that the body burns excess fat better.
Hopefully, through this article, you have learned more about this exciting eat-clean diet! Remember to combine exercises and eat-clean to lose weight and get in shape more effectively. We wish you a successful weight loss!