How To Eat Clean For Beginners

Welcome to my 'How To Eat Clean For Beginners' guide, a super EASY starting plan to help you get going on your journey to getting your family to have a Clean Eating Diet.

You'll find everything you need to know about cutting processed foods, including the 12 Clean Eating Rules, Grocery Shopping list, Weekly Clean Eating Meal Plans and loads of delicious family friendly Clean Eating recipes!

I'm so happy you're here!

If this is your first time visiting the website, or if you are new to eating Clean, then you've come to the right place. This easy to use Clean Eating Guide will give you everything you need to know about cutting processed foods and eating Clean, whole foods as a family.

Eating Clean For Beginners

Like you, I'm a Mom who wants to feed her kids good food. And by good food I mean Real food: food that's eaten as close to the way it was grown or raised as possible, with as little processing as possible. The concept is pretty basic, but it's got lost somewhere along the way.

I recommend reading this Guide from start to finish if you're new to eating Clean or just getting started with cutting out processed foods, but feel free to use these links to jump to the resource you want to know more about:

Clean Eating. What is it?

Knowing how to eat clean for beginners is vital for your journey to succeed. Clean Eating is choosing to eat meals made using good quality, whole food ingredients.

Whole foods are basic primary ingredients like meat and poultry, eggs, whole grains, fish, beans and legumes, fresh vegetables, fruit, nuts and seeds and dairy. Most of these foods exist naturally or require minimal processing before you can eat them (like cooking, chopping, blending or fermenting).

It is about choosing real food over processed food.
It's about improving the quality of the food you feed your family.
It's about being in control of your health.
It's knowing and caring about where your food comes from.
It's teaching your kids to make good food choices now and into their future and how to recognize the nonsense fed to them every day in the form of marketing messages, advertising and the media.
It involves feeding your family healthy, nutrient rich foods.

What Clean Eating is NOT!

It is not complicated
It doesn't require you to count calories or weigh your food
It is not a diet
It is not new
It's not an endless list of 'revolutionary' new super foods that you have never heard of and now 'can't live without'
It's not low-fat, no dairy, low carbs, no sugar ... nope. None of those

What is Clean eating all about?

Clean eating is simple.

And it's this simplicity that can confuse people. An Eat Clean diet is an extremely flexible eating plan. It doesn't require that you eliminate whole food groups from your diet (like carbs, fat or meat), you don't have to count calories or even quit sugar.

It also doesn't dictate that you HAVE to eat certain food groups, so it suits a wide range of lifestyles including: Vegans, Vegetarians and Flexitarians.

The only thing that complicates Clean Eating is that modern day life has changed how families eat. Two generations ago, meals were cooked from scratch at home. Families sat down together at meal times & takeaways were a rarity.

Today, the family dynamic has changed. Many homes have both parents working full time, whilst others have a single parent raising a family.

Spending an hour or more every day cooking dinner from scratch isn't feasible for most. Food Manufactures have lapped this up and Supermarkets have been flooded with ready made meals, processed to the max - that are designed to appeal to our pockets and our taste buds.

And that would be fine - except that while we are saving in time and effort, we are paying for that convenience with our health and that of our family.

Clean Eating is a more intuitive way of thinking about the food we eat.

How To Eat Clean

Clean Eating is about being mindful of where our food comes from and it's journey from its origins to our plate. It's about taking accountability for our food choices and the impact they have on our health and the environment.

This transparency in food production begins with the growing or raising of our food, how it is processed and finally how we prepare it before feeding it to our family.

Follow these 4 Steps to Get Started with Clean Eating as a family. As a beginner, eating Clean feels a like like going back to how your Grandparents might have eaten.

Clean Eating Rules

For a beginner, Clean eating rules are simple. And 'rules' makes it sound strict, but it's really a very easy thing to get and once you're in the mindset, you won't even need to think about it. Promise :)

Eat Real food
Choose one ingredient foods
Read the label
No numbers
Natural sweeteners
Be mindful, always
Choose Wholegrain
Drink water
Plan to snack
Load up on the vegetables
Eat good fats
Portion control matters

Download a Printable Copy of the 12 Rules of Clean Eating

Clean Eating Food List {printable}

To get started quickly, grab a copy of the Clean eating foods. It's a huge list, and having it stuck on your fridge door will help you get off to a good start, fast.

There's literally a ton of stuff you can make to feed your family. Pretty much anything you and your kids love to eat now, can be made as a 'Clean' version. And you know what? It's WAY better!

Easy Clean Eating Recipes For Beginners

Starting a new way of eating can be tough, right? And Clean eating is no exception, especially if like mine were, your family's used to a somewhat processed diet. But I'll tell you, it takes very little time to get used to, even for the younger kids who seem to object to any type of change at all.

In no time at all, my kids had their favorites and recipes they started to ask for over and over.

We've got loads of recipes here for you to go through, so no one's going to miss out. Have a browse through all my recipes here, and grab my Quick Start Cook Book so you've got a copy. These are the real recipes I cook for my family.