So for the past month and a half, I've been trying to eat EXTRA clean. I've cut out ALL white flour and artificial sweeteners and have limited my intake on processed foods. The hardest part for me was removing Splenda from my diet since I had it EVERYDAY in my coffee, cereal/oatmeal and it was the major ingredient in all of my sugar free grocery items! I decided to cut remove Splenda from my diet after reading article upon article of the harmfulness of it. My decision was reassured after I reread Tosca Reno's The Eat-Clean Diet book and read her useful information on artificial sweeteners. Basically what I realized after re-reading her book is if we eat white flour, sugar and artificial sweeteners, our body will never truly reach the potential it can be. When we feed our body good, nutrient rich foods, it has the energy it needs and eats all the "fat". The more muscle you have and the cleaner you eat, the more fat you burn just standing still. Cool right? It's definitely a struggle cutting out foods that have ingredients you can't pronounce, but the pay off it totally worth it! I feel better now in my body than ever!
My new rule of thumb while grocery shopping is to look at the INGREDIENT LIST first, not the nutrition list. If the item has ingredients that I can't pronounce, or contains white flour or potato starch, I stay away from it. I found that a lot of items I was purchasing at the grocery store contained many chemicals and artificial sweeteners that our bodies can't metabolize. So again, if we eat clean natural food that our body can digest and metabolize, we will look and feel better than ever! I will add my new clean eating grocery list (under mylifestylechange), but will keep my old one as well if you don't feel ready to cut out artificial sweeteners and white flour.
My new rule of thumb for eating: Whole grain carbs such as whole grain breads, whole grain waffles, whole grain pasta, whole grain wraps, oatmeal and sweet potatoes, Lean protein such as turkey (NOT COLD CUTS CONTAINS A TON OF NITRATES), chicken breast, filet Mignon, shrimp and fish. Other: Plain Greek yogurt, almond milk, egg whites, kind bars, kashi bars, kashi cereal.
