Wellness by Ryan

Clean Eating Isn’t a Fad Diet …. It’s The Real Deal. Learn the Basics of Eating Clean and Reap The Health, Weight-Loss and Fitness Rewards.- Anytime Guy Know Nutrition and Delivers!

At any given time, more than two-thirds of Americans are “on a diet.” Yet only 5 percent will experience lasting weight or fat loss. We’re a nation on a perpetual diet, yet America continues to lead the world in obesity, heart disease, Type II diabetes and metabolic syndrome — a combination of risk factors that predispose people to developing heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Here’s the irony: Even though American’s are “dieting” more, we’re getting fatter each day.
Enter “Clean Eating” — a simple, common-sense approach to diet and nutrition that ditches the complicated menu plans of dieting gurus; avoids the single-food focus of the worst fad diets; eschews the loopy pseudo-scientific underpinnings of “Detox Diets” and instead emphasizes sensible, nutritious eating. In other words, follow this approach and you’ll be less hungry, more satisfied, healthier, and slimmer … for good.

Clean Eating is the ultimate “un-fad” diet. And once you get the hang of it, you’ll never be able to imagine that you thought eating cabbage soup everyday was the key to getting lean.

The Origins of Clean Eating
The concept of “clean eating” isn’t new.

While it’s a phrase you’ll hear tossed around a lot by bodybuilders, athletes and fitness models, the Clean Eating philosophy has its original roots not in the bodybuilding and fitness communities, but rather in the co-op-shopping-Birkenstock-and-granola-crowd.
That’s right, thousands of buff beach bodies can thank tofu-eating, Deadheads for helping them shape better abs, drop body fat and improve their cholesterol profile to boot.

The Clean Eating philosophy is really based on the natural health food movement of the 1960s, which then got transformed into the “whole foods” approach to eating, which emphasizes consuming foods (preferably organic) that are unprocessed or refined as little as possible before consumption.

Canadian fitness model and author Tosca Reno is often credited with popularizing this approach to eating with her series of Clean Eating cookbooks, but the basics of this diet have been around for decades. Fitness trainer, natural bodybuilder and Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle author Tom Venuto has been talking about “eating clean” for years, and makes it a central part of his fat-loss and muscle gain plan.

At it’s root, the diet is so common-sense and back-to-basics, that no one really can take credit for developing this approach to diet and nutrition.

Eating Clean: What Exactly Is It?

The basics of Clean Eating are simple:

• Eat a wide-variety of whole, unrefined and unprocessed foods in a form that’s as close as possible to how the foods appear in nature
  


• Avoid processed sugars, especially sugary beverages like soda
  


• Avoid saturated fat and trans fats, and instead substitute healthy, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats.


• Always combine complex carbohydrates with lean protein and some healthy fats at every meal.


• Spread your food out over 5-6 smaller meals, consumed every 2-3 hours


• Eat for maximum nutrient density. In other words, avoid “empty” calories found in fast food, soda, snacks, cakes and cookies, and substitute in nutrient-dense snacks.


• Pay attention to proper portions and practice portion control
  Drink lots of Kangen water™ (at least 1/2 your own body weight in ounces daily)
  Pretty simple.

Benefits of a Clean Eating Diet

So why would a person want to try Clean Eating? There are a number of proven benefits to Clean Eating:

• Decreased body fat


• Increased lean tissue (muscle)


• Improved energy 3


• General improvements in overall health and immunity


• Decreased risk of certain types of diseases like diabetes, stroke, heart disease and cancers


• Less consumption of pesticides, artificial food additives and preservatives, sodium and sugar


• Less impact on the environment, since Eating Clean is also Eating Green; the foods you preference in a Clean Eating diet are minimally processed, and thus use less energy and produce less waste than highly-processed foods


• Less expensive. Contrary to what you might believe, Clean Eating is actually more cost-effective and less expensive than eating pre-packaged food or fast food. For instance, for the price of a Super-Sized Big Mac Meal Deal, you could prepare an entire pot of healthy soup that would make more than a half dozen meals that are healthier, more satisfying and more nutritionally-dense.


• Sustainable. Unlike fad diets, Clean Eating is a holistic approach to eating that a person can practice for their entire life. You don’t “go on” a Clean Eating diet — you’re always clean eating.