1. Eat whole foods.
Basically, this means to eat everything as close to the way you find it in nature. Avoid processed foods as much as you can.
· Eat fresh fruits and vegetables, frozen, and canned (watch canned items for added sodium and sugar).
· Eat whole grains (oatmeal, quinoa, brown rice, whole wheat flour, etc.)
· The shorter the ingredient, list the better! Try to keep anything you buy to 5 ingredients or less. And if one of those ingredients has a name that you can’t pronounce – leave it on the shelf. Don’t put anything into your body if you don’t know what it is.
· White food is not your friend – no white bread, white rice, white flour, etc. Instead replace all that with its brown counterpart – whole wheat bread (Ezekiel bread is the BEST, otherwise try to get the one with the fewest ingredients), brown rice, whole wheat flour, etc.
2. NO SUGAR
This isn’t as bad as it sounds. No refined sugars – but natural sugars are ok.
· Avoid – sugar, brown sugar, sucralose, corn syrup, fruit juices, soda (I’m sorry, Jenny – but that’s part of it), etc.
· USE instead:
o Sucanat – this is dried sugar cane juice that has been cooked and broken up into granules
o Coconut sugar – this is what it sounds like & does have a light coconut flavor
o Pure maple syrup – actual maple syrup, that is made from the sap of a tree, and not a sugar bowl. Just because it comes in a bottle shaped like a nice old lady doesn’t mean it’s good for you.
o Pure honey – preferably local (local honey is best – might even help with allergies), just make sure it’s the real stuff, so look for the words “pure” on the label.
o Agave nectar
3. Drink lots of water
Take your weight and divide it by two. That’s your magic number. Try to drink that amount of ounces every day. I don’t worry about this magic number too much. I just try to make sure that water is 95% of what I drink. When I start on the Diet Mountain Dew, that percentage drops pretty quickly…
4. Eat healthy fats
· Avoid animal fats – so eat lean cuts of meat, i.e. lots of chicken, turkey, fish, etc. You can still have beef, just trim the fat, eat the leaner cuts, and cook it in a healthy way. So bake, roast, broil, braise, and whatever you do, don’t fry it (my apologies to all KFC fans)
· Avoid vegetable oils – use olive oil (extra virgin is best) instead.
· Eat low fat dairy – just pretend you’ve never heard of butter. Sorry.
· Eat fish, nuts, avocado, olive oils, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, etc.
That’s it in a nutshell. Clean eating according to Mary Elizabeth. Happy Eating.
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