A few years ago, I began my health journey. I had just started a new office job. I realized my sedentary life coupled with a wine and cheese nightly habit (it felt fancy and adult-ish) gave me less than desirable results. I hadn’t really thought too much about what I was eating up until this point in my life. As I broached my mid-20’s my metabolism wasn’t what it once was and I knew it was time to look at what I was eating.

If you’re interested in how eating clean can help you lose weight or the benefits of a clean eating diet, this post is for you. After years of eating clean, these are my results.

*Disclosure: The post may contain affiliate links. This means, at no additional cost to you I may make a small commission if you click and make a purchase.*

Oh and while you’re here, I help women free themselves of the agonizing cycle of dieting and food restriction and help them start fueling themselves properly to look and feel their best. If you’re new here, I invite you to start my free 5 day clean eating challenge. In the challenge you get a meal plan with recipes, a grocery list, cooking tips, and daily health tips to keep you motivated.

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Table Of Contents

This is a story of how eating clean transformed my life.
What is clean eating?
Why I started eating clean
My clean eating results
Obstacles with eating clean
Conclusion
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This is a story of how eating clean transformed my life.

What is clean eating?

I have experienced a number of benefits from cleaning up my diet, but let’s first get into what clean eating really is.

The way I define eating clean is choosing a variety of natural, minimally processed foods. This includes unprocessed or minimally processed protein, carbohydrates, and fats. For a detailed list of clean eating foods by macronutrient click here.

For more in-depth on how to start eating clean for beginners losing weight check out this post.

I also understand there’s a balance. There will always be some processing in foods we eat, but knowing what to look for to get the highest quality ingredients is the best thing you can do. If you’re just starting out, I recommend you read this first.

Why I started eating clean

I started eating clean years ago for a few reasons…

1st reason I started eating clean – digestion

I was struggling with some digestive issues. I won’t get graphic but I had IBS. It’s something I’ve struggled with my whole life especially in college where my diet was complete crap.

So I decided to take an interest in looking closer at what I was putting into my body to see if cleaning that up a bit would help my digestion.

Simply shifting my awareness of what foods make me feel good and what don’t have made the biggest difference. Things like, learning to read a food label the right way, that canned tomatoes have a lot more sodium than fresh tomatoes, or that when I eat the funnel cake at the county fair or the hotdog at the baseball game, I can probably expect some digestive issues to follow.

2nd reason I started eating clean – weight loss

With my less active lifestyle I wanted to do this to lose some weight I had gained. Prior to the desk job, I was walking a lot in a retail setting so I didn’t really worry about my weight so much because I was always on my feet.

3rd reason I started eating clean – acne

Ever since I can remember I’ve been dealing with acne. I had read that dairy can cause acne so by not eating dairy, which is a processed food, I wanted to see if I could clear up my skin.

My clean eating results

Here are some benefits of eating clean I’ve personally experienced.

I lost weight and am able to keep it off without much effort when eating clean.
I have more energy
My digestion improved (like, night and day)
My skin has cleared up especially when I avoid dairy
Real food tastes better than processed food
I rarely have sugar cravings
I no longer crave fast food, in fact, I have no interest in ever eating fast food again as it typically makes me sick (IBS)
I feel satiated after meals and don’t snack nearly as often
I don’t stress over “cheat food” that some might label “bad.” I enjoy the treat and go right back to real, minimally processed foods
Best of all, no more restrictive, deprivation, or starvation dieting. Restricting calories only led me to overeat later.

I used to eat and eat and eat things like ramen or chips until I was bursting basically. And no wonder! Eating food like that, void of any real nutritional value, didn’t fill me up. And even when it did, I’d be hungry not long after because of the processing that food had undergone, stripping it of fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Not to mention almost no protein.

Eating whole foods while keeping macronutrients in balance provide our bodies the fuel we need to tackle the day. I feel completely satisfied after a meal. This also means I don’t typically feel the need to snack outside of my planned meals.

Shifting to clean eating has literally transformed my life. The focus on eating a variety of natural, minimally processed foods, is simple and easy to sustain.

Obstacles with eating clean

1 – Cheat or treat food

Before cleaning up my diet, I would fret over eating the slightest “bad food.” I felt like it would derail all my progress and I’d get fat. But that mindset is silly. A donut won’t derail you. When your diet is at least 80% clean, natural, and healthy, you are going to have good results.

There is a time and place to enjoy yummy treats and no diet is completely void of them. I’ve been asked if I eat sugar. Of course I do! I just don’t eat it all the time or if I do it’s a smaller amount. My 5 day clean eating challenge includes a few clean eating dessert ideas you can try.

2 – Mass confusion on what healthy is

Unregulated advertising of “natural” “healthy” or “diet” foods, misleading labels the consumer packaged goods industry touts, and mass confusion on what we should be eating, has led us to higher than ever obesity rates in our country.

This mass confusion of what healthy is, is a big reason I’m writing this blog today. I honestly don’t know how I ate what I ate for so many years. I was always sick to my stomach, breaking out, struggling with my weight.

I think it’s important for people to understand there are clever marketing schemes out there designed to make you think what you’re eating is healthy. From the things you add to your coffee to the sweeteners that are labeled “natural” (I’m looking at you agave), our society is being misled.

As a rule, if it looks the way it would look when you pick it out of the ground, pull it from a tree, or butcher it, you’re probably on the right path.

3 – Diet culture

It appears there’s a new diet on the scene about every year or two. Someone has come up with a hack to lose weight the easy way. Atkins, paleo, keto, vegan, etc.

I don’t follow a diet. I just eat real food. Avoid the boxed food isles and stick to the produce and meat section.

4 – Shortcuts in cooking

Shortcuts in cooking may seem like a great solution to a time problem, but it could be the reason you can’t lose weight. There are chemical reactions that take place while we cook. Foregoing those reactions can actually be detrimental to our health.

I typically make all my food myself, from scratch, the old fashioned way. That includes things like bread, steel cut oats, and ice cream. All made from scratch. Yes, the hard way.

For example with bread, we don’t use a bread machine. Because with that short cut, you’d be missing out on the very valuable fermentation process yeast goes through that benefits digestion. The long time it takes to make bread isn’t just good for you, it also produces a complexly flavored delicious product. Bread making is a long arduous process and unless you enjoy baking it’s not realistic to sustain. However, you can choose to buy bread made this way in an artisanal bread shop.

Just to point out the obvious, back in the day we didn’t have the obesity epidemic we do today. I believe many of the reasons I just mentioned are part of the cause.

Conclusion

Through eating clean, balancing macronutrient intake, and developing healthy habits that feel so natural to me now, I’ve transformed my body and my life. I’m here to help you do the same. Here’s where you start. I’ve created a 5 day clean eating challenge along with a 5 day meal plan and grocery list.