clean up dietCherry blossoms are in full bloom, birds are chirping and the sun is out! There’s no doubt that it’s spring time.

The Healthy Eating Hub office starts to become very busy at this time of the year after many of us emerge from a long winter of inactivity and excess comfort food. Are there are few excess kilos hanging around your waistline?

‘Clean eating’ is a popular term these days with the phrase being touted by many a health and fitness blogger as the answer to leanness and curing ill health. Whether you keep up with popular trends or not, the notion that we may need to clean up our diet is not actually a bad analogy at all, so long as one uses a little common sense and doesn’t make extreme dietary adjustments.

Just like a messy kitchen stifles the potential that kitchen has for producing all measure of delicious food, so too does a ‘messy’ diet stifle your body and mind’s full potential.

You can still pull off a vegemite sandwich in a messy kitchen, you’ll survive on that but what if you could create a delicious whole foods meal with all the trimmings? Your body can survive on excessive alcohol, coffee, refined grains and processed products but it doesn’t perform at it’s best.

Rather than advising we all go off and follow the latest clean eaters on Instagram (many of whom have their nutrition knowledge a little confused) I’m going to share with you my top tips for cleaning up your diet this spring.

1. Cut out the alcohol. Regardless of how many antioxidants certain drinks contain, alcohol does not promote good health in our bodies. Ensure you give yourself a minimum of 2-3 alcohol free days a week or better yet make them all alcohol free!

2. Go easy on the non-water drinks. Coffee, soft drink (including diet drinks), cordial, protein shakes, fruit juice all contain a significant amount of energy for very little nutrition. Water is the best thing to drink. Period. Need some further motivation to drink more water? Check out this great article by Samantha: Time for a Drink?

3. Don’t ‘smoothie’ everything you eat. Your body has been designed to chew and digest (break down and absorb) food. It’s good for it to do that. Blended, juiced or cold-pressed fruit and vegetables shouldn’t be the only way you eat them. Give your teeth and jaw a chance, they’re dying to chew up your food for you!

4. Eat five different types of vegetables a day. With every additional serve of vegetables that you eat you decrease your risk of death from chronic disease by 5%. Regardless of what else you eat, if you meet this daily vegetable target your body will be better off. Here are 8 different ways to eat vegetables to inspire you to get in more of the good stuff!

5. Snacks don’t have to be bliss spiralling protein balls, they could be an apple too. Or a banana, maybe a quartered orange or perhaps a couple of kiwi fruit. Healthy snacks don’t have to be complicated recipes and in fact, all these ‘clean eating’ treats on the internet are all processed food – you just processed them at home and you condensed the sugar and fat of certain foods into easy to eat, bite sized mouthfuls. Yes, they contain less additives than packaged food and they’re made from nutrient dense foods, but by processing nuts, nut butters, nut meals, dates, seeds and coconut oil you just created the most energy dense snacks around. Twice that of TimTam in some cases. Don’t eat a Tim Tam though. Instead, eat whole nuts, and whole fruit. Need some snack ideas? Check out these two previous articles: Healthy Snacking for Diabetes & 27 Low Energy Snacks

6. Fresh is always best. Processed meats such as ham, bacon, salami, sausage, rissoles, nuggets, etc are all poor alternatives to just eating 100% fresh, whole meat, poultry or seafood. Just by making the switch you’ll feel just as full on less fat, sodium and other additives.

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