To make the transition from super processed foods to healthier, whole foods easier, we asked doctors and nutritionists for their insider secrets on how to get started, keep going, and never get tempted to look back. Here, their 10 best tips. Start with a single meal. The first step to cleaning up your diet is taking inventory of everything you eat in a day. Write it all down, tally up the number of packaged or processed foods on the list, and note when in the day you’re eating the most junk. Then pick a specific point where you’ll dive in and start making gradual changes. “Breakfast is a great way to transition to cleaner eating,” says Nicole Silber, RD, a nutritionist at Middleberg Nutrition in New York City. “You can do something as simple as switching processed meat sausages to two eggs, or getting rid of sweetened cereals and having whole-wheat toast with unsweetened peanut butter instead.” Build from there until your whole diet is cleaner—but take your time. “If you take a year to make these changes, you can look back 20 or 30 years later and say, ‘Yeah, that was a tough year, but I feel so much better now,’” says Joshua Nachman, LDN, a nutritionist at Johns Hopkins Integrative Medicine and Digestive Center. Get familiar with ingredients. While you probably already scan nutrition facts panels for calories and fat, chances are you don’t tend to take a good look at a food’s ingredients list. But this info can teach you much more about a product (and whether it fits your new, clean lifestyle) than its nutrition stats can, says Silber. She recommends sticking to foods with no more than five ingredients and avoiding products that have artificial sweeteners (e.g. sucralose, aspartame, acesulfame potassium) or artificial colors (e.g. red no. 40, yellow no. 5). Learn to read the sugar price tag. Sugar is probably one of the biggest roadblocks to eating clean. Everything from ketchup and spaghetti sauce to salad dressing and “healthy” yogurts are loaded with refined sugar. Following The American Heart Association’s recommendation of no more than 6 teaspoons of added sugar a day (9 for men) may seem impossible, but it’s made easier with a tip from Jacob Teitelbaum, MD, author of Beat Sugar Addiction Now! Take the grams of sugar on a nutrition label and divide it by 4. That’s how many teaspoons are in a serving. Anything with more than 2 teaspoons per serving should stay on the shelf, says Teitelbaum. Clean out your pantry. Once you’re comfortable with ingredients and sugar content, open up those kitchen cabinets—yes, the place where you’ve stashed a $4 bag of nacho cheese tortilla chips. As much as it hurts to throw away the things you’ve spent hard-earned cash on, Silber says it’ll help you out in the long run. Go through your pantry and refrigerator with the same smart, clean-minded eye you’ll use at the grocery store. Anything you would’ve left on the shelf goes in the trash. Focus on what you’re adding in, not what you’re cutting out. OK, so you’ve done some purging in your pantry and fridge—a miserable task you’ll only have to do once. Now comes the fun part: filling your kitchen back up with satisfying, delicious, and health-boosting foods like eggs and dark chocolate (not to be eaten together, of course). “Eggs are the healthiest protein you can get short of eating another human being,” jokes Teitelbaum. “And good-quality chocolate is 25% times more effective than cholesterol meds.“MORE: The 18 Clean-Eating Recipes Your Pantry Should Never Be Without Don’t deprive yourself. Pay attention, because this one’s important. Everyone we talked to said that the only way you’ll be successful in eating clean is if you’re happy with what you’re eating. So if there’s one junky food that brings you such immense joy that you can’t picture life without it, keep eating it. A little junk here and there isn’t going to kill you and isn’t going to derail an otherwise healthy lifestyle. “No guilt,” says Teitelbaum. “If you feel guilty, you’re going to inhale it before you taste it and then you’re going to reach for more. Take a small portion, walk away, and savor it.” MORE: 8 Clean Eating Dinner Recipes with 5 Ingredients or Less Work (or walk) through cravings. Not depriving yourself doesn’t mean you give in to every single craving, especially at the beginning when junk-food cravings are going to be more frequent. “One of the easiest things to do when you have a craving is to go outside,” says Nachman. As anyone who’s ever eaten an entire box of crackers while hunched over a work project knows, cravings are often a result of stress. So instead of giving in, take that walk. If it doesn’t work, reach for a handful of nuts (just one!) or another filling, nutrient-dense snack. Eventually, you’ll find yourself having fewer cravings, and when you do give in, you might not even enjoy the junk foods you once loved. Silber, who gave up soda and sweet tea in her own switch to a cleaner diet many years ago, said she can’t even tolerate sweetened drinks anymore. “When I did try soda a while after I stopped drinking it, it was almost too sweet for me.” Pack dinner for lunch. Eating clean typically means making most of your own meals. No more hitting up the drive-thru for lunch every day. But cooking dinner and packing lunch every. single. day? Ain’t nobody got time for that. Nachman’s solution: Just make more dinner. “Taking leftovers is an easy way to start bringing your lunch,” he says. “Soups and stews are especially easy to make in large batches.” Struggle with portion control? “Get a bento box [style lunchbox] and fill two of the containers with greens and a larger space with chicken, fish, or another lean protein.” MORE: The 3 Best Clean-Eating Breakfast Recipes to Make in the Microwave Don’t say “eff it” when you’re out with friends. The bane of any clean eater’s existence is a night out with friends who order every fried thing a menu has to offer. But going out to eat doesn’t have to mean saying “screw it,” as just about any menu will have cleaner options. Note: We didn’t say cleanest, because sometimes clean eating is as simple as picking the better-for-you option. To make a healthy choice, Nachman suggests easing yourself into a decision. “Rather than picking up the menu immediately, settle in, talk to your friends, and relax,” he says. “When you’re in a more relaxed state and checking in with your body, you can figure out what your body is actually craving.” Let somebody else do the work. If your budget allows and you have access to a clean-eating-focused grocery store, like Whole Foods, its prepared foods can be a huge help if you’re too crunched for time to make healthy dinners and lunches every day. “It’s going to be much better than going to a fast food place,” says Nachman. Load up on premade salads, greens, and lean proteins to throw into your lunch bag or heat up for dinner on hectic days.
