General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why “Clean Eating” is a Myth [View all]Silent3
(15,218 posts)I was eating so much junk before that I had a lot to cut back on, but it made, and still makes, much more sense to me that "the poison is in the dose", that it's the ratios of different kinds of food that I eat that matter, not ritualistic purity. That, and getting a lot more exercise than I used to. (Today, for instance, I snowshoed 5.6 miles.)
I'm coming up on two years of my improved diet and exercise, a year and half since I lost the first 50 lbs, and about nine months of holding steady at a good, trim target weight.
Today, part of what I ate included 280 calories worth of ice cream, and about 150 calories worth of tortilla chips.
I currently exercise enough so that I typically need to consume 3000-3500 calories/day just to maintain my weight. The bulk of what I eat is fresh vegetables, lean meats, whole grains and other starches that I try to keep mostly on the low glycemic index side of things, fruit, Greek yogurt, and protein bars.
With the kind of calorie budget I have, however, I see no problem with 2-3 desserts per week, although I do make them small desserts most of the time, and, except on rare occasion, only eat half of typical portions of restaurant desserts.
I usually eat about 100-150 calories of light popcorn daily (air-popped, or prepared with very little oil, lightly salted, not the funny tasting artificial butter flavor kind), I go back and forth about how often I eat a little dark chocolate (typically 140 calories of it), I eat small servings (250-400 calories) of french fries or sweet potato fries 3-4 times/week.
I usually eat at least one salad a day, preferably one that I make myself with a good mix of vegetables, avoiding salads that are mostly just a big pile of lettuce, nearly always topped with a small amount of bleu cheese dressing. I'm more than satisfied with 50-100 calories of that, and I'd rather use a small amount of bleu cheese than any amount of a "light" dressing, or any other dressing that I imagine would qualify for the nebulously defined idea of "clean".
I certainly don't stress myself out over whether what I eat is "natural" or "organic", or GMO-free, or gluten free, or whatever other thing has become the fetish of the day to be free of. I don't live in a world where I obsess about "toxins", or worry about "cleansing" myself.