Clean Eating For Weight Loss
If you want to lose weight, Gain better health, have more energy and like what you see in the mirror, then clean eating is for you.
When you eat clean you don’t have to calorie count and you shouldn’t have to worry about your weight. Your body should be well nourished and well fuelled with everything it needs to thrive.
Many years ago, you would eat real food that was grown in the ground, picked from bush or a tree, swam in our waters, flew in our sky or grazed on our land.
And while Clean Eating is simple it’s no longer easy because of the world we live in and the foods that sold to us in supermarkets.
But ironically, it’s marketing of food in our stores that’s the easiest indicator of what you should not be eating.
No one has to market and package broccoli. They don’t have to sell us on the benefits of eating it. There is no tag line or supermodel enticing you to buy it. It is what it is — a green plant that grew in the ground pack with goodness.
No one has to tell us about the vitamins and minerals in it or how it can help us grow or provide energy and nutrients. We already get it – green is good. Fresh is good!
Cereals, low-fat readymade meals and other food products on, the other hand, are marketed to us because there’s no obvious benefits to our health and wellbeing. There’s rarely a reason we should choose food products over real food.
The producers have to package the products and fortify them with vitamins and minerals or make this-that-and-the-other claims about how that particular product is good for us (with no mention of how it is bad for us). Or they sell us on convenience, taking advantage of our busy lives at the expense of our health.
And somewhere along the line (between growing the food and the chemicals that were added) the processing has literally stripped anything of any good from these lifeless food products. Let’s be honest and say they taste bloody great but you don’t really know what you’re eating. Do you?
Take a look at the “Healthy Foods” isle at the supermarket – in Australia we have Woolworths and Coles to name a few. Those isles filled with “healthy foods” are packed up in boxes with a shelf life of up to a couple of years in some cases!
Kids lunch boxes look more like show bags and parents think they’re doing the right thing because they came from the “healthy foods” isle.
Those products don’t nourish us and they don’t fill us up. They mask our hunger hormones and affect our metabolism. They scew our bodies natural hunger cues and trigger the sugar addiction because those food products are loaded with sugar. Not to mention salt and fat.
They’re just calories for the sake of calories. And this is now the norm. Big food companies coupled with the fact that your friends and family will look at you strange for eating nothing but real food is what makes Clean Eating tough. It makes food choice hard. It surrounds us with temptation.
But you can do it!
Below are 7 tips to help you get started with clean eating so you can shed weight and gain better health.
Step 1: Make a Commitment to Clean Eating
Remember this isn’t a diet it is a way of life. You might not crack it immediately but you will crack it if you persist. And the results will happen as fast as you can implement these new habits and this “new” way of eating. If you can make all the changes and make them stick, then do it.
One thing I would say is to STOP starting over again. Choose your path – clean eating, and keep going. There’s nothing worse than starting over and waiting til “Monday.” If this is your time to shed weight, gain better health and feel good in your own skin then start and keep going.
This will save yourself any feelings of disappointment. You won’t have to look for that “next shiny object” or the miracle cure to give you the results you can get just by doing the right thing and being careful what you put into your body.
Stage 2: Keep a Food Diary
We can only improve the things we measure. Before you start Eating Clean, keep a food diary and then analyze it for major problems. Look for the problems you make 20% of the time that bring about 80% of the problems.
If you can keep your food diary indefinitely then do it. But if not just do it when you make changes to your diet or introduce a new habit to monitor how you feel. A food diary because it will make you more conscious of what you’re eating.
It’s the reference guide you need to keep on track. Plus, you can see what foods impact your health – your skin, stomach issues etc. The you can eliminate the food and eliminate the health issues at the same time. Boom.
One thing about having a food diary is it helps track the types of food your eating. You can see where you are out of balance – too much dairy, too much bread, not enough fruit etc. It also helps you track the portion size you’re consuming.
Sometimes we don’t realise how the calories are stacking up until we are accountable for our choices. Seeing it written down in black and white helps you see the reality of your choices. It’s also why people don’t want to write it down!
You can checkout The Healthy Meal Planner and The Fitness Tracker to help keep you on point.
Healthy Meals & Fitness Planners & Trackers
Step 3: Focus on Habits
Good habits are easy to live with. The reality is you stand a much greater chance of change if you make Clean Eating a habit and the best way to do that is by working on one habit at a time.
Pick one of the steps of Clean Eating and work to make each step a permanent habit.
This is a healthy and sustainable eating plan and it’s the only one you will ever need so the time and effort it takes is more than worth it. You will reap the rewards and see changes in the mirror, your clothes and in your health.
A good place to start is to limit your food choices in the beginning. The less choices you need to make the easier it is to follow a plan.
Choose a few things you could have for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Stick with those choices for a week before you swap them for something else. This is a good way to work out your take-away options or dining out options.
Choose places that are healthier options because you will want to go out sometimes and you should. Sushi trains are a good choice.
If you want a good resource on creating good habits I recommend Atomic Habits by James Clear. You can get it online at Amazon.com and also in audio format from Audible.com.
Looking for Help To Lose Weight?
The Hypnotic Gastric Lapband Weight Loss Program is designed to help you change your eating habits and food choices. You will reduce the amount of food you eat and you will feel full.
This program includes 4 hypnosis sessions:
- The Hypnotic Gastric Lapband Session
- Weight Loss Motivation Session
- Your New Relationship With Food Session
- Relaxation and De-stress Session
Most people have reported losing between 1-2kgs a week and have felt more confident and motivated to be more active.
You can listen to the session and get results straight away. You can listen to the session as many times as you like to keep your motivation towards weight loss going.
Step 4: Planning & Preparation
Planning and preparation are critical. Plan your food for the week ahead and then buy the foods you need for the week ahead.
Know what you are going to eat on every day and then cook your food the night before, get up and do it in the morning or bulk cook your meals at the weekends. As I mentioned limit your choices and you will be able to bulk buy the ingredients.
It’s better for your budget and easier to make batch meals ahead of time. Planning is the key to limiting your spur of the moment choices and making better choices.
This is one of the most important aspects to successful Clean Eating.
Step 5: Give Yourself a Night Off
Bad habits are hard to live with and these bad habits (whatever they may be) can catch you out. It might be forgetting to shop, not having time to prepare ahead or binge eating late one night while watching Netflix.
We all make mistakes and you don’t have to be perfect but you do have to try and get this 80 – 90% right.
When it life gets in the way don’t act as if you failed. Instead, make a note of it in your food diary and take steps to avoid making the same choices again.
Make sure you don’t beat yourself. The best way to treat it is to do your best every day and if you do get out of control with your eating one night just don’t do it twice in a row. This allow allows you to have a break but also stay on track. It will limit you beating yourself up too.
In other words, you can have a night off but don’t let it grow into to 2 nights and then “start again Monday.” Just keep going.
Step 6: Find Your Reason Why
Remember there are two reasons for everything. The reason we tell other people and the real reason we keep to ourselves.
Whatever your reason for success, keep it at the forefront of your mind and remind yourself of how important it is.
Your “why” should be so big and awesome that it gets your butt out of bed everyday doing what you need to do to achieve your outcome. And when you feel like you might be starting to slip — think about that reason.
Remember this is worth it! Your future self will thank you for it!
No one ever regrets eating healthy and shedding extra kilos you don’t need. But know if this is important to you then it’s up to you to make it happen. And you know it’s possible right?
Step 7: Invest In Yourself
Keep investing in your education about diet, nutrition and cooking. Remember Clean Eating doesn’t mean boring eating.
The internet is filled with free and paid recipe ideas with different food types, herbs and spices that can all be used to make your food taste better and have their own health properties (garlic for example).
Learn to cook and you’ll discover how it tastes better than most of the junk people buy (and call food).
Conclusion
Clean Eating isn’t a sexy new fad, it doesn’t require expensive shakes and it isn’t a short term fix. It’s how you should be eating for optimal health, optimal performance and to make sure you tick all the boxes when it comes to getting the nutrients your body needs.
The best feature of Clean Eating isn’t the astounding results (even though that’s what drives so many people to start Clean Eating) it’s the simplicity.
You can eat real food, gain more energy, reduce health issues and lose weight. Clean eating has the ability to deliver all of those results. (If you want to lose weight check out the Hypnotic Gastric Lapband Weight Loss Program)
The rules about what you can and cannot eat are crystal clear and easy to understand. Your first question is “Is this a food or is it a product?” If it’s a food then chances are, it is good to eat..
If you’re not sure then ask yourself “Does it need an ingredients label?” If the answer is no because there is only one ingredient – you have food in front of you.
If this sounds easier said than done you might need to start with your mindset. Maybe you could start with eliminating food cravings to make it easier for you to choose better food options.
Take a look at the Eliminating Food Cravings here.
Or click here to make an appointment and I can help you in person or over Skype/Zoom.
