Simple Diet Strategies for Clean Eating & Weight Loss

7/17/2016

Simple Diet Strategies for Clean Eating & Weight Loss

It is entirely possible to live within a budget and still eat clean. You can learn to make easy meals that taste great and are good for you. You also don’t have to go hungry. You shouldn’t have to spend tons of money on processed junk to make you “healthy” or “thin”.

Below are 3 Simple Diet Strategies anyone can employ today.

Keep your Fridge Stocked

The biggest mistake you can make is not preparing for the future, whether that be retirement, savings, or in this case- the inevitable truth that you’ll be hungry in the future. So let’s stop the silliness and go shopping!

If you are eating clean, that means most of your food will come from natural sources, meaning the majority of your food will be a vegetable, fruit, beans/legumes, nuts/seeds. This is what should be covering 70% of your plate; and 70% of your fridge should be stocked with those things. If it isn’t, then you can’t very well eat clean and lose weight can you?
Most fruits and veggies will start to go bad within 3 days or so.
Keeping that in mind, let’s change your mindset about shopping. Stop trying to shop for the paycheck, or shop for the week or two weeks even. Simplify your life. Ask yourself, “What am I going to eat for the next 3 days?” Then, once you’ve found a few good ideas, go to the grocery store and purchase those things. Members can visit our Recipes Page for more ideas HERE. You are simplifying your life and you are actually planning your meals, plus you aren’t buying 3 random eggplants then throwing them out 9 days later. (you know you do it!)

Eat More!

“Food” created in a manufacturing plant isn’t made to be digested by our bellies and takes longer to digest, creating a host of problems. Ever heard the classic weight loss phrase “Feel fuller longer!”? When you eat clean, you are eating food that has a high nutrient load per calorie. You are most likely also eating less calories and fat. So, it’s basic math. We need to eat more of the good stuff in order to lose weight. Unless you want to be hungry?

Berries/Bananas/Nuts and Seeds
If you are at the store- always pick up these 3 items. This is your fast food basics. Strawberries, blueberries, cherries, blackberries, are always great as a quick snack, or with a meal. Aim for 1 banana a day. Need a sugar fix? Banana’s are high in natural sugar and will fix that craving. (try it!)
Eat Your Veggies
Cheap and easy produce ideas include broccoli (a great carb too!), lettuce, spinach, peppers, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, avocados, onions, kale, garlic, cauliflower and so many more. Most of the items listed:
1. Have a long shelf life (for something that’s alive anyway!)
  1. Can be combined to make many unique dishes
  2. Take very little cooking experience, are cheap (a bag of carrots .99cents and a bag of organic is $1.99)
  If you’re a Member and the Recipes page isn’t enough, you can always book a Meal Planning Session with your MyCoach.
Carbs like Rolled Oats/Healthy Bread/Potatoes/Beans
Yes you need carbs!! Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. How and when you introduce carbs is more of what matters in the long run. If you are on a budget, aren’t a chef, or just lazy, having these 3 staples in your kitchen will help to fill the void! There are a variety of potatoes that can be made in a variety of ways with main dishes and many are very good for you.

Rolled oats make a great foundation for breakfast or in creating your own easy snacks.

Everyone deserves a sandwich or toast with their coffee/tea. Find a gluten free healthy bread brand that works for your pallet. Many have the added value of including seeds/nuts in their bread. Members can go to our Resource Page to see what Eat2Live2Love recommends.

Beans are a magical fruit, the more you eat the more you lose! Beans are great for everything so just start buying beans and read more about them HERE.
Meat/Eggs
While Eat2Live2Love supports all clean eating, we understand everyone’s feelings on meat will differ based on their principles.

With that fine print out of the way, if you are eating meat, we highly recommend you buy grass fed beef and organic free range chicken. While we had complaints that it’s expensive (about $8.00 a lb in FL for grass fed ground beef) we hear far more complaints of gas, bloating, constipation and other IBS related issues than we ever do about the price of clean meat. The “regular” meat you buy literally will give you gut rot and create all the above mentioned health issues plus some. Don’t believe us? Dump the gunk and go clean for 30 days and experience the difference.

How much meat you eat depends on your goals and current health condition. For deeper analysis, contact your MyCoach or book a Meal Planning Session.

Eggs, like meat, need to be organic and free range. Companies like Eggland’s Best or other major corporations are scamming buyers and ripping them off with false advertisements. Look for smaller companies, using the terms“free range”, “organic”. Don’t just buy the “cage free” version for $6.00. It’s a Rip-off. Your money is power. Give it to the smaller mom and pop farms who are doing the right thing.

Whether with a meal or grab n’ go, eggs make a great companion and help boost protein and EFA levels. If you’d like more info on what’s best for you regarding Meat and Eggs- just contact your MyCoach or become a Member to learn more.

Stay Away From Sugar

It’s not the fat that makes you fat, it’s the sugar!

Companies have found a million and one ways to foul you into buying their products.

A 1lb bag of sugar could be labeled “100% Fat Free”
A loaf of whole grain bread could be labeled “Sugar Free”
A can of sliced oranges could be labeled “No added sugar!”

And ALL of those things are true. But they aren’t right.

When you consume too much sugar, your body creates fat cells to store the extra sugar. Your body assumes it will work it off, but you never do. More sugar = More Fat. Period.

Whole grain bread turns into glucose. What is glucose? Sugar. What does sugar need to live in your body? Fat. Sugar= Fat.

The can of oranges that says “no added sugar” makes you assume there’s no added sugar, right? Well, that’s only half true. You see, they did use less sugar, but they also added in toxic artificial sweeteners to make up for it.

Oh, the advertisement doesn’t tell you that does it?

Corporations that sell prepackaged foods just want to sell you more food. If you lost weight, would you need to buy Slim Fast anymore? If you actually had time to cook, would you buy Stoffer’s? Their goal is to create a customer, not create a healthy body. That’s your job.

Remember, the maximum amount of sugar an adult should have in a day is 25mg. Now compare that with what you are eating.

Sugar is addictive. Like any extracted, bleached and chemically altered white substance we have, it’s extremely addictive.

Cocaine
Sugar
Flour
Heroine

Lose the sugar and lose the fat.

Recap the Fruity Facts

Go to the store about every 3 days.
Eat more food more often.
Stay away from the sugar.

Sure, you say this sounds basic, and it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. This is a getting started topic with Members having access to their MyCoach 24/7 get more detailed help. If you aren’t a Member yet, why not? Did you know you can get started for less than the cost of Netflix? Seriously. Click HERE to start.

Eat2Live n’ Chill. (but go shopping and stock that fridge first!)

How Eating Beans Can Help You Lose Weight & Keep it Off

7/2/2016

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I can hear you singing to yourself right now...

Beans, Beans, the musical fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot!"

But I'd like to amend that previous little diddy to this:

Beans, beans, the magical fruit, the more you eat, the more you lose!

Beans are a part of what's collectively known as "pulses". Pulses are a family or group of legumes that are harvested just for the dry seeds. Some of these are: kidney beans, lima beans, butter beans, all varieties of lentils, chick peas, black-eyed peas, and many more.

So how can these these beans, or "pulses" help you lose weight? Let's dig into it shall we?

Beans have a Low Glycemic Index Rating

There's nothing worse than eating a meal and just a short while later being hungry again. Eating more foods with a lower GI rating will help you stay fuller longer and keep your blood sugar more steady throughout the day.
Beans are loaded with resistant starches, making them more difficult to be broken down in digestion and don't turn into glucose right away like other more simple foods. The steadier your sugar, the less you're likely to have food cravings.
But more importantly, when you eat foods high on the GI scale, your blood sugar rises, you produce insulin and then, like all things in nature, what goes up, must come down: your overproduction of insulin has resulted in a sugar crash and suddenly you need you're next fix.
Adding in more beans and less bread, will reduce your GI and your Glycemic Load.
The average rating is set to about 50, but we want it much much lower than that!

We compared other "healthy" foods to beans below. Remember, just because a commercial says it will help you lose weight, doesn't mean it will. Often times, those "healthy snack bars" just give you a sugar high then have you coming back to buy another box when you crash.

Food	GI Index Rating
White Pita Bread vs. Black Beans	68 30
Sweet Corn on the Cob vs. Red Kidney Beans	60 25
Brown Rice vs. Lentils	@68 30
Couscous vs. Split Peas	65 25
Rice Cakes vs. Black-eyed peas	82 30

Research Backs Us Up

21 Clinical trials were run proving 2 things for certain.
1. Pulses help you feel fuller longer
2. Pulses help you shed unwanted pounds
"Though the weight loss was small, our findings suggest that simply including pulses in your diet may help you lose weight, and we think more importantly, prevent you from gaining it back after you lose it," study lead author Russell de Souza, a researcher at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto said.
There were 940 adults in the study and it showed that the participants who ate 3/4 a cup of pulses a day lost an average of 0.75 pounds in 6 weeks WITHOUT changing anything else in their diets. Sure, a pound isn't much, but just imagine if you included it in your diet daily along with other healthy diet changes- now we're talking.
According to the research team, previous studies proved that eating beans, lentils and other pulses makes people feel fuller.
That's key to weight loss -- 90 percent of weight loss programs fail, due in part to the influence of hunger and food cravings, according to de Souza.
"This new study fits well with our previous work, which found that pulses increased the feeling of fullness by 31%, which may indeed result in less food intake," he said.
-Read more about the Research work HERE

Did we mention the Bacteria?

Not only are beans low on the GI and GL Index that keep you feeling fuller longer, and are a resistant starch, but because of that, beans are a prebiotic.
You've probably heard the terms "prebiotic" and "probiotic" before.

Prebiotics are a nondigestible food ingredient that promotes the growth of beneficial microorganisms in the intestines. They then become probiotics inside your digestive tract.

These bacteria created from beans then help break down that resistant starch and help strengthen our immune system- even reducing our cancer risks. Most weight loss products are anti-biotic in nature, killing the very important components of your digestive and intestinal tracts. The good bacteria you create by eating beans also helps to wipe away built up blockage in your intestines and cleans your colon.
Want fast weight loss? Eat beans everyday and watch the results.

Key Points to Remember

1. Pulses (beans and lentils) need to be a part of your daily diet. Try eating 3/4 cup a day.

2. Beans have a low rating on the Glycemic Index and Load. Which means you won't have sugar spikes as often, which means you won't have as many cravings. Fat feeds on sugar. Lower your sugar intake and your lower your weight by default.

3. Research shows that eating beans and doing nothing else in your life will help you to lose more weight and keep it off naturally.

4. Your body needs bacteria to survive. In today's world most of us don't have enough, creating constipation, digestive issues, yeast infections and more. Eating beans daily will help build your natural resources back up and also help remove gunk from your intestine walls. Eating beans also reducing your cancer risk.

5. There's no magic pill for what you are trying to achieve. But there are magic beans that will help you get there. The devil's in the details, not a 30 second Shakeology commercial. Feed your body what it needs to take care of you, and... it will. Like magic.

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