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What is “Clean Eating”?

Lisa Eirene

About Lisa Eirene Lisa lost 110 pounds through calorie counting and exercise. She swims, bikes, runs, hikes and is enjoying life in Portland, Oregon. Her weight loss story has been featured in First Magazine, Yahoo Health, Woman's Day and Glamour.com.

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12 Comments

  1. K @ Finding a skinnier me

    I just recently started reading labels and half way understanding them.. With my health condition sugar is a bad thing and so I’ve been working really hard on lowering the amount I take in.. Including fake sweeteners. This means I spend a lot of time in the produce section and meat section and basically no time in the boxed food aisles of the store. I shop around the outer edges I guess lol! I think clean eatin to me is eating per what makes my health condition happy not vegetarian or vegan 🙂

    1. Lisa Eirene

      The artificial sweeteners are the worst. I’m glad you are trying to eliminate those. It’s a hard one for me, too.

      I used to use a lot of coupons when grocery shopping but now that I’m limiting my processed foods, I usually buy the most groceries in the produce, meat and dairy sections. No coupons!

  2. Emma

    I strive for a mostly clean diet as well and am miffed that we can’t take advantage of store coupons as often because they don’t cover the produce aisle! I find it very interesting to hear other people’s views on what constitutes “clean eating”, and how varied the answers are. I had to chuckle in line at the grocery store last week when I saw the woman in front of my buying organic bananas and two bags of Tater-Tots!

    1. Lisa Eirene

      I know, it’s disappointing they don’t have coupons for produce.

      I like to hear what other people define as clean eating because it’s always different. Where do you draw the line, you know?

  3. Andrea@WellnessNotes

    I like your definition of clean eating. I, too, try to buy local, seasonal veggies, fruits, eggs, meat, and bread as much as possible. But I’m also not 100% perfect. One thing I’m working on is cooking beans vs. buying cans. It’s really easy and not very much work at all, and I just need to plan better and make it part of my weekly meal prep time.

    1. Lisa Eirene

      I totally understand about the canned beans. I was just thinking that too. I’ve done the bags of dry beans (I get them at Bob’s Red Mill) and they worked great but it DID take a lot of prep and forethought. It’s harder to make spur of the moment recipes with things like that.

  4. Lori

    I actually have totally steered away from the term clean eating, because it still puts food into good and bad categories, which I don’t do anymore. It cracks me up when people list a ‘clean’ muffin recipe that has no OMG refined sugar, but is sweetened with honey instead. Sugar is sugar.

    It can easily lead to disordered thinking about food as well, which worries me.

    I think it bothers me as well because the image I have of my weekly cupcake rolling around in the gutter getting dirty before I pick it up and eat it LOL!

    1. Lisa Eirene

      I think that’s a great perspective, I should have included that in the post. I do think, too, that it CAN lead to labeling food as bad or good. Which can lead to disordered thinking. But for me, I don’t think that’s an issue. I don’t look at the food as “Bad or good” but more as “is this processed? How badly do I want it if it is?” Like if I can make it myself and use more natural ingredients, I try to do that.

  5. Joanne

    I don’t eat 100% clean because I do love my baked goods (but only homemade!) but I like to think I do about an 80-90% good job of it It always frustrates me when people have definitions of clean eating that involve processed food…which is by definition not clean!

    1. Lisa Eirene

      I think baked goods are ok if you make them yourself. I’ve tried to get to baking things from scratch instead of from a box (or chocolate chip cookies from a log!).

  6. Suzanne @WorkoutNirvana

    Love it. Definitely sharing. I agree protein shakes aren’t filling and you have to evaluate everything you choose to put in your body! I have become insanely picky about what I feed it and have never felt better.

    1. Lisa Eirene

      That’s great. What was the most beneficial change? Like what food was the best?

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