How to Start Eating Clean to Lose Weight and Gain Muscle

Do you struggle to stick to your diet? Eating clean isn’t easy, especially when fatty, sugar-filled snacks lurk around every corner. Luckily, with the right mix of dietary dedication and perseverance, it’s possible to eat cleanly and lose weight with ease.
In this guide, we’ll share eight practical tips to how you how to start eating clean to lose weight, gain muscle and feel better than you’ve ever felt before. Ready to start changing your life? Read on and start revolutionizing your eating habits today.
Do you need help changing your diet for the long term? Learn how to avoid fad diets and make huge changes to your eating habits that really stick with Healthy Eating: Beyond the Diet Hype.

Clean out fattening foods from your kitchen

One of the best ways to change your eating habits is by changing your environment to one where snacks and other fatty foods simply aren’t available. Start your healthy eating habits today by cleaning out fatty foods from your pantry, fridge and freezer.
Start from the top shelf and work your way down, removing sugar-filled snacks and candy bars. Once you’ve eliminated the sugar-packed sweets, go back and get rid of all of your fat and salt-filled snacks like potato chips and pretzels.
A huge part of the temptation to binge eat unhealthy foods is simply having them in your home. Remove fattening foods from your everyday environment and you’ll be replacing them with healthy, more nutritious alternatives in no time at all.

Lean how to cook your own healthy meals

Think restaurant food is healthy? Think again. Even when you choose not to dine at fast food outlets, the meals you’re served in local restaurants are often packed with salt, fat, sugar and other dietary no-nos.
Avoid falling victim to fattening restaurant food by learning how to cook your own healthy meals at home. With some basic cooking skills, you can prepare a delicious breakfast, lunch and dinner in as little as 30 minutes a day.
Don’t know where to start? Learn how to conquer your kitchen and prepare a huge variety of healthy meals without spending more than $5 per day on ingredients in our Healthy Cooking Fundamentals course.

Replace candy and chocolate with fruit

Do you have a sweet tooth? Removing sweet foods from your diet can be difficult if you’ve grown up on candy bars and chocolate cake. Instead of cutting sweet foods altogether, replace unhealthy sweet foods with natural fruits and berries.
From bananas to watermelon, many of your favorite candies just emulate the taste of delicious natural fruits. Replace unhealthy candy with at least five daily servings of real fruit to increase your vitamin quota and lower your caloric intake.
Don’t know which fruits to add to your diet? Nutrition For Beginners will show you how to find the micronutrient breakdown of different fruits to maximize your vitamin intake while keeping your calories as low as possible.

Learn to love the taste of plain water

Are you addicted to soda? If you drink a can of Coca-Cola or Sprite every day, you’re adding almost 140 extra calories to your daily diet. That might not seem like much, but over time it can add up and result in serious weight gain.
Instead of refreshing yourself throughout the day with sugary drinks, keep a water bottle with you at all times and sip on fresh drinking water throughout the day for natural, calorie-free hydration.
As well as helping you reduce your calorie intake, water has hundreds of additional benefits. Drinking at least eight glasses of water per day results in smoother skin, a higher daytime energy level and a far more active metabolism.
Don’t want to give up your daily soda? Learn more about the health advantages of water for weight loss, increased energy and a longer lifespan with our blog post on living a healthy lifestyle.

Package your meals to eat at work

From fast food to frozen meals, the food on offer at the average workplace falls far below what most dieticians would consider healthy. One of the best ways to eat a cleaner diet is to cook meals at home and package them to eat at work.
Instead of rushing out of the office at lunchtime for a snack of fast food meal in one of the nearby restaurants, wake up half an hour earlier and prepare your morning tea and lunch at home while you’re cooking breakfast.
With a couple of Tupperware containers, some basic ingredients like lean chicken breasts and brown rice, and a variety of freshly cooked or frozen vegetables, you’ll be able to enjoy a world-class healthy lunch during every workday break.
Do you need daytime meal ideas? Discover fantastic recipes to reduce your blood pressure and burn away excess bodyfat while you’re out and about with our Blood Pressure Control: A Map to Medication Freedom course.

Schedule one cheat day every week

Healthy foods rarely taste bad, but they’re never quite as satisfying as a hearty meal or fried chicken or barbecue ribs. Keep yourself nutritionally sane by eating cleanly throughout the week and enjoying a cheat meal – or cheat day – on the weekend.
Cheat days are days when you’re free to go wild with your diet and eat as much of your favorite unhealthy snacks as you’d like to. From chocolate to bacon and eggs, no fattening meal or sugar-filled calorie bomb is off limits.
Although cheat days on their own are unhealthy, the habit of eating dirty food once every week quickly becomes stale and you’ll find your cheat day turning into more of a break from routine than an opportunity to stuff yourself with fattening foods.
Are you looking for a diet that helps you lose weight while still allowing you to eat the foods you love? Enroll in Your Perfect Body: Stop Dieting and Start Living for a complete dietary blueprint that includes temptation-fighting cheat days.

Replace empty carbs with protein

From white rice to bread, many of the foods we think of as ‘healthy’ are packed with empty carbohydrates that provide very little energy and huge amounts of unwanted bodyfat.
One of the best ways to make your diet cleaner and healthier is by replacing empty carbohydrates like white rice, white bread and pasta with sources of lean protein, such as chicken breasts, beef steak and turkey.
High-protein dieting works, and new scientific studies are beginning to show that many of the risks of high-protein dieting – from kidney issues to poor digestion – aren’t as serious as they were once thought to be.
Would you like to lose weight using a high-protein diet that allows you to eat all of the lean meats you love? Enroll in our Getting Started With the Paleo Diet course to learn how to eat like a caveman (or cavewoman) and burn away excess bodyfat.

Swap a big dinner for a big breakfast

The traditional Western diet involves eating a light, carb-focused breakfast, a small but filling lunch and a gigantic dinner. This leaves you with a full stomach while you sleep, resulting in your body stockpiling most of the calories as excess bodyfat.
A far more logical dietary arrangements is to eat a big breakfast to fill you with the fuel you need to operate efficiently throughout the day. This big breakfast should be followed by up a mid-sized lunch and a relatively small, light meal in the evening.
Changing your eating habits isn’t easy, but the results can be immense. By spacing out your meals and eating less late in the day and more earlier in the morning, you can stimulate hormonal responses that help you burn fat and build muscle.
Do you struggle to eat large meals in the morning? If you can’t stomach a huge meal prior to work, try replacing your normal breakfast with a protein shake. Learn seven breakfast shake ideas to fuel your day in our blog post on healthy breakfast shakes.

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