Clean Eating

The clean eating revolution is kind of the next big trend in the health and diet world, and I personally hope it's the last.

 It's hard to keep track of "how" to eat these days. It sounds so silly, but it's true! North American culture is saturated with new approaches to eating that we've completely lost track of the basics: eat balanced food groups, be mindful of portion size, and choose healthy foods. Big duh, right? (Note: do people say "duh" anymore? I really like using it...) Here's a quick low-down on the diet trends of the past century:

1940s - Pop + ciggies = key to being skinny
1050s - Fat vibration belt - so lazy! I kinda love it...
1960s - Formation of diet support groups, and the infamous cabbage soup diet
1970s - Introduction of diet pills as a solution for weight loss (we're talking Dexatrim here...)
1980s - Popularity of Weight Watchers on the rise, introduction of low calorie and low fat diets
1990s - Atkins (Potential correlation with the beginning of North American mass consumption of animal products? Just throwing that out there...)
2000s - Celebrity-endorsed diets (Harvey Pasternak's "5 Factor" diet), diet delivery (Nutrisystem), portion control (100-calorie EVERYTHING), sweet n' savory (Cookie diet - "I stole the cookie from the cookie jar!" This commercial absolutely kills me - that guy! hahaha)
2010s - Clean eating, and the "food revolution" (Jamie Oliver, anyone?)

The overall philosophy of clean eating is simple: eat natural foods that come from the Earth. That's it. I know you're probably thinking "easy-peasy", but in order to subscribe to this way of eating, you really need to de-program alot of bad habits. When you're grocery shopping, you basically have to shop the perimeter of the store, as everything in the middle aisles is pretty much processed.

My obsession with clean eating started about a month ago when I stumbled upon some YouTube videos by Dani Spies. She's a Health & Food Coach and Fitness Trainer who makes these amazing short cooking videos. I highly suggest checking them out - especially the video on kale chips. They're sooo good. I've been eating clean as much as I can (I'm trying! I got sour dinos yesterday, I admit it. They were calling my name..."Brittannnyyy, it's me - Stega, you're favourite sour dino shape. Come eat me, I'm tasty and sour). I can genuinely say that I feel...better. My skin is brighter, I feel more in control of my body, I am developing more of a mind-body connection (okay that sounded really Dharma & Greg, but it's true, okay...), and I have more energy! Take that however you want. I am the world's biggest skeptic, and it could very well be a placebo effect and/or researcher bias (don't get me going). So like a good health science grad student, I am self-monitoring a couple of variables to report on at a later date. :)

Try it out yourself for a bit and see how you feel! Bottom line: if it comes from the Earth - good. If it doesn't - bad. If you don't know what the ingredients are, it's probably bad. For example, xantham gum (?!). In my mind, pretty much any food that starts with an X is Bad News Bears. Everyone knows that the letter x is reserved for "xylophone", and "x-ray".

Britt

PS - Here's a good book if you're interested. This guy was on Oprah, okay. He's not all "James Frey", he's legit.