Five Habits for Eating Clean

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It’s time to start eating better! These five habits for eating clean will definitely help with New Year’s resolutions.

I need to start eating better! These five habits for eating clean will definitely help with New Year's resolutions. Healthy food tips from Real Food Real Deals.

The new year is a great time to evaluate your eating habits. If you’re like me, December is not your best month for eating clean. We still have a few sugary goodies floating around from Christmas stockings and cookie swaps. It’s fun to enjoy these special treats now and then, but my body is ready to focus on real food again.

If you’re new to eating an unprocessed diet or you’re just trying to reset your system, these habits will help get you on track. They’re all simple, common sense practices that you probably already know you should be doing. Whether you eat a vegan diet, a Paleo diet, or anywhere in between, making a commitment to these five habits will help keep you healthy and energized.

Five Habits for Eating Clean

habits-eating-clean-lemon-water

Drink Lots of Water.
Drink a big glass of water every time you eat a meal or snack. This will keep you hydrated, flush your system of toxins and germs, and steer you clear of sugary beverages. Squeeze a little lemon juice into your water once or twice a day too. This can improve your immune system, your skin, and your body’s alkalinity. Read this post about the benefits of lemon water for more details.

ingredient label

Read Ingredient Labels.
Being aware of what’s in your food is the most important step toward eating clean. I’ll never forget how surprised I was when I first started reading ingredient labels. I couldn’t believe that a container of Planter’s peanuts had 13 ingredients and a can of Bumblebee tuna had 5 ingredients. I try to focus my diet on single-ingredient foods that don’t need an ingredient label. For packaged food, I look for very short ingredient lists with ingredients that I would cook with at home. I typically avoid items with added sweeteners or chemical-sounding things in the ingredient list.

homemade food

Eat Homemade Food.
The best way to know what you’re eating is to make it yourself. This is the only way to control the ingredients you’re feeding your family. It takes time to cook food from scratch, but it’s healthier and more affordable than take-out or processed food. Most of us don’t have time to make everything from scratch, but you can gradually add different recipes into your weekly routine. Things like homemade yogurt, bread, and energy bars take only a few minutes of hands-on time to make. Once you incorporate them into your routine, it won’t feel like you’re taking on something extra.

meal plan

Plan Your Meals.
Eating clean is impossible without a meal plan. We get hungry several times a day, and if we don’t have a plan we’ll frequently end up eating unhealthy food. Once you get into the habit of meal planning, you’ll feel lost when you don’t have a plan. Read my post about how to meal plan to learn my tips for making this process go smoothly. You can download my custom weekly meal plan template to get yourself started.

apples

Rotate Your Diet.
If you eat the same foods over and over, even healthy ones, your body will eventually revolt. Food sensitivities can develop when we eat too much of certain foods. Also, when we eat the same small sampling of foods, we’re missing out on essential nutrients in the many foods we’re not eating. Try adding a new type of grain or vegetable each week, and experiment with different recipes that you haven’t tried before. Read my post about the benefits of a rotation diet for more details.

If this list seems overwhelming, pick one of these habits and do it for a month. Come back and let us know what your experience was like. Also, please share your tips for eating clean. We can learn a lot from each other.

4 Comments

  1. I swear sometimes eating healthy has nothing to do with what your eating and more to do with organizing yourself ot be able to do it! great tips!

  2. Great tips for eating clean 🙂 Meal planning is such a huge part of eating clean, glad to read you tips here!

  3. Annemarie,
    Great habits to keep in mind! I find eating locally/seasonally helps me to rotate my family’s diet and keep things interesting. You’re right–the more you make something from scratch the more it gets incorporated into your routine. The other night I realized that our planned meal wouldn’t be done in time for dinner, that I’d need to keep the slow cooker braising for several more hours. My spouse suggested calling for pizza–but I knew I’d be able to make pizza in less than an hour topped with what we had on hand. And I did!
    Thanks!

    1. Thanks, Kirsten. Great point about eating seasonally. That works for me too. And nice job resisting the pizza order. You are the pizza pro!

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