Do you have goals to eat better this year?? Well I do and I’m looking to eat cleaner. What is clean eating? It is NOT a diet. It’s a lifestyle. In short, clean eating is eating healthy, fresh unprocessed food. For me this is simple until it’s 5:00 and I didn’t plan my meals! Meal planning is also on my list of things I want to work on this year.
Here are some tips to help you and I to start the clean eating process:
1. Limit the amount of processed food you eat. This may take some time to wean processed foods out of your life. Yes it’s easy to grab a frozen burrito but you can also make your own homemade burrito and freeze and reach for that instead. You have to think ahead and have things planned to accomplish this step.
2. Increase the amount of vegges you eat. I find the best way to increase veggies is to cut up some carrots, celery, broccoli, etc and set them out on my counter. If I do this I can easily eat the 2 1/2 to 3 cups of veggies that are recommended. On Sunday cut up all your veggies for the week. This will make it easy to eat them. If you have to peel the carrots it might not happen.
3. Don’t drink your calories. Clean eating means we need to cut out those sugary drinks, sugary coffees, pop, etc Water needs to become our best friend. 🙂 We also need to watch the alcohol intake. The recommended limit—one drink per day for women and two for men (one drink equals 5 ounces wine, 1½ ounces liquor or 12 ounces beer).
4. Limit the amount of sugar you eat. This is a huge key for me. Sugar and I don’t have a love hate relationship. I love it but it makes me feel horrible. There is a tremendous amount of sugar in processed food.
5. Choose whole grains. Whole grain pasta, oats, quinoa & brown rice are great choices. Set a challenge to use these more in your diet.
6. Eat fresh fruit vs. canned fruit. Fresh fruit is hands down better for you. Canned fruit might be convenient but fresh is so much better for you.
These are just a few tips. My goal this year is to share meals & menu plans with you each Tuesday. I also want to share tips and tricks to help us be more efficient in our meal prep.
One thing I found to really help me with meal planning is eMeals Clean Eating Meal Plans (this is an affiliate link). I’m not great at planning meals and they do all the hard work for me. The plan the menu and give me the grocery list. Go check out their site. They have lots and lots of different meal plans.
eMeals Clean Eating Meal Plans
Do you need a menu planning printable? Here’s one for free! It’s available in 2 colors.
Do you have any goals to eat better this year? Do you struggle with meal planning? Please leave me a comment.
See you next Tuesday for some Tasty Tuesday Tips!
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