The Iron Pirate: Eating Clean is NOT Expensive!

As many of you know, I am an Ambassador for The Eat-Clean Diet. I take pride in planning, shopping, cooking/baking, eating, and living clean. I try my best to spread the word and make people realize how important it is to take care of their health and that of their families.

Yet, disappointingly, I keep hearing excuses like, "Eating Clean is too expensive," or, "Organic is priced too high, and do we really even need to eat organic?" Or my personal favorite: "Eating Clean is so time consuming!"

Here is a fact~ It may not be one that you like or want to hear, but it is the truth: If you don't take the time to clean up your health and feed your body the nutrients it needs and was designed to consume, you WILL experience health problems and disease such as diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, inflamation, arterial plaque, and other issues that most likely will result in heart attack or stroke, and possibly even an early death.

Now, tell me: Is it REALLY too "hard" or "expensive" to eat and live clean when you weigh the alternatives?

When you take the time to learn the concept of Eating Clean, you will begin to understand how toxic our everyday foods are. Take a look at the ingredients in pre-packaged snacks, cereals, chips, frozen meals, sodas, white products such as white bread, white flour, white rice, and all of the "sugar-free" products that are artificially sweetened. Can you pronounce the ingredients? Do you know how damaging these ingredients are to our organs, our memory, and our energy source? Did you know that artificial sweeteners are TOXIC POISON? Did you know that sugar is considered to be a "legal cocaine"?

Clean Eating isn't about depriving yourself of foods that you love. It's about becoming familiar with the ingredients that the men in suits are creating and selling to us, which are making us obese, tired, and depressed... slowly killing our children and ourselves. It's about getting back to the basics of food... becoming familiar with fresh grown foods, and lean meats, poultry, and sea foods. It's about learning how to turn your fatty, sugary recipes into clean, healthy meals and treats that your body will use for nutrients instead of turn into fat and harmful toxins.

Clean Eating will improve your health, improve your energy, improve your vision, improve your motivation, improve your skin, improve your hair and nails, improve your digestive system, and improve your zest for life. Clean Eating will detox your organs, help you to get better sleep at night, and it will help you get through your workdays without those afternoon slumps. Clean Eating will improve your children's health, education, and sleep/behavior patterns.

Clean Eating reverses obesity-related disease. Clean Eating will keep you alive for a long time. Clean Eating will change your life... Add some exercise to the equation, and you will live to be 100! Disease-free!

Let me please clear up the misconception that Clean Eating is expensive. If done properly, it is not. Let me give you some tips on getting started.

First, Get Tosca Reno's book, "The Eat-Clean Diet Recharged," and "The Eat Clean Diet Cookbook," to start with. Tosca's books explain the whole clean eating concept. You will love her books, as well as her cookbooks. If you can affort to get more then one cook book, I strongly urge you to. She has a Vegetarian cook book too... they are all phenominal books!

Second, clean out your pantry, your cabinets, your fridge, your freezer. Get rid of all pre-packaged foods, sodas, sweetened beverages, sugar, and white products such as white flour, bread, rice, etc. You can replace those products with whole grain versions, such as whole grain bread, whole wheat flour, coconut flour, oat flour, etc. Purchase some brown rice instead of the white starchy stuff. Also, get rid of the white pasta. You can easily replace this with whole grain or vegetable pastas that are inexpensive. If you feed your family stuff like chips, cookies, kool-aid or juice products, soda, cakes, pastries, donuts, candy, microwave popcorn, etc... GET RID OF IT!!!!

Third, re-stock your pantry with things like quinoa, whole oatmeal, a variety of seeds and nuts, natural nut butters, 70% or greater Cacao chips (to replace chocolate chips for baking), raw honey, pure organic maple syrup, seasonings and spices that do not contain salt or sugars, NO MSG either! You'll also want to stock up on Garbanzo beans, black beans, white beans, pinto beans, frozen veggies of all varieties, fresh fruits and veggies, motzarella cheese sticks (low skim), unflavored Greek yogurt, frozen and fresh berries: blueberries, black berries, strawberries, boysenberries, raspberries; mangos are great with berries and greek yogurt with a drizzle of raw honey and some nuts on top.

I love to season my foods with lemon, limes, oranges, and even grapefruits. Sea salt replaces regular table salt, and I love fresh cracked black pepper, as well as red chili pepper flakes. I always have fresh garlic bulbs, yams, sweet potatoes, and mushrooms on hand so I can roast up some quick veggies if needed.

The more you plan, the more money you will save. The initial pantry clean out and restocking will be a little pricey. If you cannot afford to do it all at once, then do it one step at a time.

Fourth, you will need to plan! Plan ahead weekly by reserving a couple of hours once per week to look through healthy recipes and make a weekly meal plan. Try using ingredients that you already have in your freezer, fridge, and pantry... for instance, if you have a whole chicken in your freezer, do not go purchase boneless skinless chicken breasts that cost $5 per pound! Roast up that whole chicken, and remove the meat off of it... you can use it for several meals that same week!

Fifth, you will need a list: once you've created your meal plan, you'll need to go through your kitchen and make a grocery list of what you will need to pick up. Watch for grocery store circulars and mail adds throughout the week so you can watch for sales. I usually do my meat, poultry, and sea food shopping in a sepparate trip then the rest of my groceries. I also purchase my produce fresh, at least once or twice per week. If I find seasonal fruits or veggies at a great price, I will often buy in bulk, and freeze for later use. Bananas, berries, mango, cherries, grapes, peaches all freeze nicely... fruits such as watermellon, kiwi, strawberries, blueberries, and many others freeze very well for smoothies... I like to make individual baggies of mixed fruits especially for smoothies. They are handy, and inexpensive, if you purchase them in bulk at seasonal prices.

Sixth, It's time to execute your meal planning and shopping finds into meal creations! Take the time to visit us at The Eat-Clean Diet website to meet the community members (you'll want to go to the ECD Webpage, and find The Kitchen Table, which is where we all blog with each other) and find recipes, suggestions, plans, and great advice... along with great support and encouragement.

Once you realize HOW to shop for your produce and clean food items, you will no longer waste money. Just think how much you'll be saving by getting rid of the pre-packaged foods, and replacing them with fresh produce and lean meats! For instance, a bag of Doritos now costs about $5. Take a look at what $5.55 got for me today at our beach Farmer's Market: 2 large bunches fresh green baby spinach, 1 pound of fresh beautiful strawberries, 1 large ripe mango, 5 serving-size mini avocados, 1 bunch green onions, 5 delicious kiwi fruits, 4 limes, and a large jicama.

The Iron Pirate

Friday, April 19, 2013

Eating Clean is NOT Expensive!

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