40. What is wrong with clean eating?

Clean eating - what it is, what it looks like in real life, and what is wrong with it as a lifestyle.




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Please note, this podcast is intended to be general information for entertainment purposes only. Any figures quoted are correct at the time of recording. As always, please seek the support of a registered professional before making changes to your diet or lifestyle⁠, or if you feel that you are affected by any of the topics discussed.

Related Topics:

Intuitive Eating, HAES, Health At Every Size, Body Positivity, Body Confidence, Body Positive, Anti Diet, Non Diet, Diet Culture, Food Freedom, Fat Acceptance, Fat Liberation, Self Care, Weight Loss, Eating Disorder, Eating Disorder Recovery, Disordered Eating, Nutritional Therapy, Slimming World, Weight Watchers, Cambridge Diet, Cambridge Plan, 121 Diet, Lighter Life, Noom, Coaching, Healing, Health, Wellness, Calorie Counting, Macros

Transcript

Welcome to the intuitive eating and body positivity Podcast. I'm Terri and I'll be talking about all things intuitive eating, body positivity, and Health at Every Size, and shaking off weight stigma, diet culture and food rules so that we can all have a better relationship with food and our bodies.

Hello, everybody. Hello. How are you? I'm okay. I'm doing well. Yeah, all good here. Hope you're good. I'm enjoying the sunshine. A bit more sunshine. Now, with the risk of sounding like a little old lady, I'm now going to say all the evenings are drawing out. It's really nice, though, isn't it? The evenings are drawing outs. God my nan used to say that, and my mum used to say that. Am I just becoming older versions of me? 

It's nice though isn't it, leaving work in the evenings while it's actually light. Left work and it's been sunny. That's quite a novelty lately, and I don't know about you but I'm finding it much easier getting up in the morning, when there's a little bit of light. I hate getting up when it's dark. Oh, God, I hate trying to get out of bed in winter. It's so dark, so cold. And now when the alarm goes off, it's a little bit light. The day is coming. It's a little bit warmer. Just a little bit though. Not a lot yet. But it's really lovely. 

I just love spring and summer. I'm one of those people that thrives on sunshine, and being able to go outside. I mean, I'm not really outdoorsy type but I do need outside space. I do need to go and spend time outside each day for me to be kind of mentally tip top. But oh, it's really nice. I'm really loving this. I love that spring is coming. 

Let me tell you about an experience that I had yesterday. I want you to know that I have these experiences too, that's why I'm sharing. I went to the opticians, I had just a contact lens checkup. I've had a sight test lately so that was all good. No problems at that appointment. Let me just say that. 

And then this week, I had a contact lens checkup which they had to do separately. And they do the usual, tell me what letters you can see, tell me which one looks clearer, that sort of thing. And then she said, I'll just have a look at the actual eyes and see that they look healthy. And so I don't know about this in other places, so this might be completely different across the world, but here at my opticians I sit in a chair, and then this kind of desk comes round with this big bit of equipment on the front and then the optician sits the one side and can kind of it's like a magnifying glass, nope, no, it's like a microscope. That's what it is. It's like a microscope for the eyes. 

So you kind of put your chin on this chin rest. I'm demonstrating this for you, by the way, just so you know, right here now which is pointless on a podcast, isn't it? You can't see me. But you put your chin on this rest and the optician pushes this bit of equipment up towards your eye shines lights looks in your eye, that sort of thing. Now, I'm not a small person. I wouldn't put myself in kind of super fat categories, but I am a bigger bodied lady. I am not going to tell you my size because that's not helpful for anybody but I am you know, I'm I'm not small and I'm certainly not small in the chest area, shall we say. 

And my body has clearly changed since I last had one of these appointments because she pulled the desk round in front of me. It didn't really suit my body. I couldn't have this table right up against me and be able to lean forward and put my chin on the rest, and she's so she tried to adjust the tables so it was a little bit higher or a little bit lower. But I still couldn't reach between where the table met my chest and me being able to lean forward and put my chin on this chin rest. 

And I said to her, I just don't have the space. I don't have the space to do what you want me to do. And she was a little bit stumped, and she actually said, I don't really know what to do now. Now, this wasn't her being horrible. She just didn't know how to deal with the situation. She is the loveliest optician. I've seen her for quite a long time. She's really lovely. She's very caring, so I'm not taking anything away from her as an optician, but the equipment that she was using, and the way that it was set up was not suitable for people in bigger bodies. 

This is my point with this story. It wasn't set up for anybody in a larger body, which makes me wonder for people that are much bigger than me, how did they cope? Because as I said earlier, I don't consider myself to be really big. I'm not small by any, you know, by any stretch but I'm not really big. There are people who are bigger than me, how will they cope in that situation? 

I didn't know really what to suggest either. I just said  to her I don't, I don't know what you want me to do, because I don't fit here behind this equipment. And in the end, we kind of botched it a little bit so that I kind of pulled this table towards me and used the power of me pulling to be able to stretch my neck, so they could balance my chin on the edge of this thing, but it definitely wasn't comfortable. 

And I don't think the optician was very comfortable in that situation either. Quite rightly so. But the moral of the story is kind of twofold really. 

Firstly, there are so many situations in life that are not geared up for people in bigger bodies. People need to try harder. I was looking at the table later, when she was sat tapping away at the computer making notes. I looked across and looked at this table and thought, actually, if that microscope was just on some kind of sliding platform, or something that would have helped. It wasn't the table that was the issue. The table being close to me was not the problem. What she needed to do was get the microscope closer to me. So why are these things not set up so that she could have moved the microscope on the table to cater for me. 

And also, the other point is, these things crop up in life all the time, when we're least expecting it, and you have to be not ready for it but you need to have an approach to these situations that is, it's not my fault. It's not my fault that that equipment was not geared up for me. It's not my fault that me in a bigger body could not comfortably have my eyes tested. And it's not your fault, either. 

It's the fault of the people that put these things together. It's the fault of the people who put these things together and set the room up for you and the people who make the equipment in the first place. That's whose fault it is. 

So if you end up in a situation where things are not set up for you, and things are not able to cater for you, you mustn't leave feeling bad. You mustn't feel disheartened or disappointed in yourself, or like you're going to go and diet now, because then next time you go, it will be easier. All these thoughts that kind of go through our head. It's not your fault, you do not have to be feeling guilty, because something wasn't set up for you. 

So I just thought, like I said, it's helpful for you to see that I have these things happen to me too. I have these situations crop up through I'm not expecting and I didn't have a solution for it. You know, I couldn't fix it. But the onus is not on me to fix it. So the same for you. These things will crop up in life. Don't be guilt tripped by these things. Just know that the fault is not yours. The fault is theirs, they should be trying harder, alright. 

This week, I was thinking about when we are dieting, but not dieting. Have you been in that place where you decide you're not going to diet anymore? You're not going to go to your slimming club anymore. But it's okay. You can do it on your own. It's fine. I don't need this group. I don't need this plan. I can just do it myself. I will just eat really well. 

And then you decide that you're going to eat healthily, you know, and then that healthily becomes something completely different because you go down the route of overthinking it. And because you're trying so hard to be a healthy eater you can actually end up in much more restriction than you were in before and making the good foods even more good, if you know what I mean. 

We ended up putting the the foods that we deemed to be bad, we end up making them feel really bad. And then the foods that we think should be good foods, we end up idolising those foods and putting them on a pedestal, because these are the foods that we will now live with. So the plan that you had before has gone, but you've just replaced it with another one. Whether you realise it or not. 

Sometimes we just do the, I'm going to eat healthily. But some people try to adopt what is known as clean eating. I'll try and explain what Clean Eating is but actually, the more I try and think of a definition for clean eating, the more I realise, it's not actually that simple to explain, because there's no one way to look at it. 

To simplify it, though, clean eating is when you try to eat foods that are fresh, that are not really processed, that are not pre packaged. You're going for foods that are whole foods, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, that sort of thing. It's a way of cutting out things like sugar, and dairy, and anything that comes in a package ready. 

Now, when you first look at this, you think, but that's all good, isn't it, you're cutting out lots of pre packaged stuff, lots of processed stuff, the stuff that's not typically healthy for us, and we're replacing it and we're putting in lots of things that are really good for us really nutritious. Fruits and vegetables are great, whole grains, whole wheat, that sort of stuff, really, really good for us. Yes, those foods are absolutely really good for us. They are really good sources of good vitamins and minerals and nutrients, and they cover the food groups like carbs and things like that, that we still need to keep in our diet. So it's not about getting rid of whole food groups in that respect but we are cutting out massive amounts of other foods. When you start going down the processed route, when you start looking at the foods that are processed, what you actually realise is lots of food has a degree of processing in it, you know, and this is where clean eating becomes messy. Clean eating becomes messy. That's a slogan right there.

But this is where it starts to get really muddled, because are you talking about processing as in the full on pre packaged microwave dinners? Or are you talking about it having some sort of processing? For example, in meat, it has to go through butchery. In dairy things have to be churned for example. And that's processing. Even fruit and veg goes through processing because they have to be picked and packed and then they have to be transported. Some of them are treated. There's still a processing element of fruit and vegetables. 

So if you're going to do clean eating, how far are you going to take it? Is it just that you're going to start eating more whole foods more naturally sourced foods? Or are you trying to eliminate all processing from your diet? Do you see what I mean? So for starters, if you're going to be a clean eater, how far are you going to take it? 

There is actually an eating disorder, called orthorexia. And orthorexia is an unhealthy obsession with clean eating, with the cutting out of processed foods, with the eating of food that is as close to its natural state as it possibly can be. A little point to note here is that orthorexia is not, at the moment a diagnosable eating disorder. However, eating disorder charities, eating disorder specialists, doctors, people are now recognising it as a thing, it just hasn't been put into the diagnostics manual yet. So just in case anybody says it's not a real thing. It's very much a real thing. It's just the diagnostic manual needs to be updated to incorporate it. But having orthorexia is just horrible because you have this massive obsession with just eating very, very clean foods. Foods that are really, really natural. And before you know it, everything becomes scary. Trying to eat out is a nightmare. Trying to grab something to eat from the shop is a nightmare. It is just a horrible, horrible eating disorder. So yeah, be aware that clean eating can, if taken to the extreme become an eating disorder. 

So something that started as something that feels like a healthier way to live and eat can actually drive us down those same roots of restriction into disordered eating an into an eating disorder. It's not just the way that it's processed before you get it, that can be an issue either. For example, how are you going to prepare that food? Are you just going to take a carrot out of the fridge and munch on it? Possibly? Are you going to take a piece of fish out of the fridge and munch on it? No, probably not. Because that's likely to make you unwell. Are you going to have rice as it comes to you in the packet, you're just going to crunch on the rice? No, of course not, you're going to cook it. 

But cooking is processing because cooking changes the state of the food. Cooking changes the nutrients in the food. Now cooking will make in some foods the nutrients more accessible for your body easier for your body to digest. But also in some foods, like some vegetables, the longer you boil veg, we all know, the less the nutrients that you actually consume. Because once you've boiled it to death, all the nutrients, not all the nutrients, but quite a lot of nutrients are then sat in the pan of water. So there are pros and cons to cooking but it's still processing. So if you're a clean eater, and you're concerned about the processing of foods, then also how you prepare those foods becomes an issue becomes something that you need to consider something else for you to be obsessed about. 

Before you know it, what you've done is created this hierarchy of foods. You have foods that are really, really good and you've got foods that are really, really bad. If you are anything like me, when you start a new diet, or you start well, if you start a new anything, a new hobby, a new exercise, anything, you go online, and you find groups of people that you can get tips and tricks from a community of people that are already doing it so you can learn from them, but also that you can get involved with and you can talk to about this stuff, and before you know it, you're engrossed and you're right in the hub of everything on that subject. 

While that happens with clean eating, too, there are plenty of forums, there are plenty of social media groups, you know, Facebook groups, that sort of thing that you can dive into, and be a part of but in doing that, you risk really exaggerating the good and the bad. People get quite, let's say enthusiastic about this stuff and it becomes a bit of a competition, doesn't it, you know, if you really get into something, and then you learn more about it. And you start to be one of those people that are talking about how to do it properly, quote unquote. And you can potentially find yourself trying to be cleaner in your eating habits than other people. So you're really going to demonise some food. And some of that food is going to be food that is actually very good for you. 

In your efforts to be this perfect clean eater that everybody in these forums wants to be you've done yourself out of some really good food, some really good nutrients, some things that are really good for your body. In trying to eat super cleanly you are taking away things that could be really good for you. 

How do you realistically live like that as well? How do you eat with people when you're a clean eater because by the nature of clean eating, you're going to need to know the ins and outs of everything that is on your plate. You are going to need to know where it was sourced from, how it was prepared. Was it packaged or was it not packaged? If you go to eat in a restaurant, you can't know where those ingredients have come from. If it comes from your fridge, you know what's happened without food. You know how you are cooking it, you know. So how you chose it on the shelf, you know, was it in a packet? Was it loose vegetables? Was it processed in any way when you bought it, and then what you do with it after is your call. But when you go out to eat, you don't know any of that stuff. Nothing. 

So as much as you might enjoy your food while you're sat eating with your friends or your family, after it comes all this guilt and this feeling bad and feeling like you've put something terrible into your body. Because that's the other side of Clean Eating. It's about purity, it's about having the very, very closest to natural products in your body. So if you then go out and you eat food that is not clean, in whatever way you deem clean eating to mean, you're going to have all of these feelings afterwards. The guilt, the shame, the stress, because you've eaten something that is not pure, that is not clean. 

There might be physical knock on effects from this as well. If your body is now not used to eating these different foods, for example, if you've had a rich source on something, you know, or something that's a little bit sugary, sugar plays my stomach up a little bit, then after that the physical repercussions may be blamed on the fact that the food was not clean. That's not really true, though, is it? The food has caused this reaction, because your body is no longer used to dealing with it. It's the stress of the feelings afterwards. Stress has a horrible effect on the body. Digestion is one of those things that takes the hardest hit with stress. So if you're stressed about the food you've eaten, and you're eating food that you have not eaten for quite a while, it can really upset your stomach and then that gets blamed on the food when it's not the food.

Well, it is the food. But it's not that the food is bad for you. It's just that you haven't eaten it for a while. And because you're stressed about what you've eaten, this in turn can make you feel like clean eating is definitely the way forward. Because if this is how food makes you feel when it's not clean, then we really shouldn't be eating it. But that's not true. Not true at all, because actually, clean eating can end up taking away those health benefits you're going for if you are aiming for health through nutrition. 

That is not the way to do it, because you are taking away so much stuff that is really good for you. So many gaps then in your nutrition. Also, if we're going to talk about nutrition from food, and we're talking about clean eating being the best source of this, I would like to put forward this argument. There are lots of cultures around the world that eat foods that don't fit into clean eating. For example, the Chinese eat a lot of rice. It is a fact Chinese and Japanese people eat a lot of rice. Does that make them inherently unhealthy, because they are mostly eating foods that are not clean foods? 

We cannot just tar whole cultures of people with that brush. We cannot just say that because these people do not eat typically clean foods, that they are not as healthy as the people who are clean eaters. It doesn't work that way. It's just not that cut and dry is it. And that also means that your culture can put a real barrier in place if you're trying to be a clean eater. A Chinese person for example, trying to be a clean eater would be really, really difficult. If they are living by their typical culture, they would have to get rid of so many ingredients that they are used to eating regularly in order to be a clean eater. They would have to lose all of those things like the rice, the noodles, soy. Soy sauce goes in a lot of Chinese cooking. That would have to go because that's a processed product. 

What else is there? There's pastries and things like that. You know, the pastry that used to make spring rolls and things that would have to go. There's so many foods in Asian cooking. There's so many ingredients that would have to go and then before you know it, a whole culture's food range has gone because they can't make those foods anymore. 

When we start to look at clean eating through that kind of lens it starts to look a little bit ridiculous as a way of eating doesn't it? And are go when you take those things out of the diet, out of anybody's diet, you're taking so much out of your storecupboard ingredients. You're taking out the condiments. You're taking out sauces and dressings. You're taking out, well, I'm assuming you're taking out things like herbs and spices because they are processed, aren't they? You're taking out packet mixes. You're taking out the basic staples like rice or noodles, like I've already mentioned. But what about the other grains? What if you really like eating couscous or quinoa and stuff like that? 

You have to take out butter, cheese, ham. Oh your sandwich fillings, that all goes. You're taking away the bread so there go your sandwiches, you know. You you have to take so much away that realistically, what are you left with? What are you left being able to eat? This pursuit of healthy eating, this pursuit of eating the very best diet that you can, has actually no become a very, very restricted, minimal diet because there's so little that you can actually eat realistically, if you're being a full on proper clean eater. 

And then the time that it takes after that, the time that it's going to take to have all this clean food. Oh my God, you're going to have to be cooking every single thing from scratch. Now I'm not being funny but Saturday nights here in this house is regularly something quick and easy. You know that I like to go out and play pool Saturday evenings or pool nights. So we go out about four o'clock usually get home sometime between eight and nine. Bang a pizza in the oven when we get back. You know, that sort of thing. That's impossible as a clean eater. 

You would have to pre prep everything. You would have to have the time to be able to cook these meals from scratch. It is exhausting and it is time consuming. Imagine having all of that on top of a full time job and a busy family schedule. Crazy. Absolutely crazy. 

So this really is one of those wellness diets. This is one of those ways of eating that people say it's not about weight loss. But it really is, isn't it? Nobody becomes a clean eater with the sole purpose of being a picture of health and not wanting to lose weight along with that because those two things go hand in hand. Ultimate health to a lot of people, people who go down this kind of eating route is about weight loss too, but now you have weight loss with perfection and that is such an unrealistic way to live. It's so so difficult. 

Clean Eating doesn't have to be the only way that you can eat nutritionally, now. It's not about the processing, it's about the food that you're eating, and this is the way you have to approach it. You can still have a diet that is rich in plenty of vitamins and minerals, and a wide range of food groups, without having to be that obsessive about it. If you want to eat in a more healthy manner, that's brilliant. That really is brilliant. Because in an ideal world, we'd all overcome our issues with food, and we'd aim to eat in a nutritionally well way. 

So we would aim to have plenty of fruit and veg in our diet, a nice balance of carbs and fats and proteins. This is really a good thing to aim for. But you have to overcome your food issues first. You have to get past that diet mentality first. So nobody expects you to do that straightaway. There are other things to focus on first. But to have that goal, that long term goal of, I'd like to have got rid of my food issues and I'd like to be eating quite well, I'd like to be eating in a way that maximises my health, that's a good goal to have. 

You can get to the point where you're trying to prioritise putting some fresh foods into your diet. You can have a goal of increasing the fruit and veg that you eat for example. You can have a goal of increasing say fish in your diet if you think that it would be beneficial to increase your Omega-3 intake, you know. There's lots of different things that you can do. There's lots of different ways that you can focus on your nutrition. 

Nobody says you have to do that. Nobody is asking you to focus on nutrition. When you have other things to think about, you have other relationship with food issues, to think about first, nutrition can come much later down the line. Nutrition can be a focus that you think of when you've repaired your relationship with food. 

If you're ready to do that now, awesome, genuinely awesome, then you can do things to help yourself. You can add fruits and vegetables so that you're getting some vitamins and minerals and antioxidants and fibre and stuff. You can increase the amount of grains that you eat, so that you can help things like the bacteria in your gut and your fibre intake, and all kinds of other things that whole grains give you. There's ways to change up the fish and the meat that you eat, so you're having different types of protein and different vitamins and minerals. Again, there's lots of ways that you can do that. 

You do not have to restrict big food groups, you do not have to restrict processed foods in order to get the benefits of those more natural foods, shall we say. You can just incorporate them into your diet and still have the same benefits. 

And there is also nothing wrong with cooking those products. You do get so many benefits from having fruit and veg, for example. I know I keep saying fruit and veg, but it's one of those things that is the the easiest way to get good vitamins and minerals into you. But you don't have to eat them raw, you know. There is still a lot to be gained from them from cooking them and from making them tasty, and from enjoying the food because if you enjoy the food, you're going to eat more of it. 

Nobody wants to just munch on raw celery sticks all day long. People want to eat tasty foods, tasty meals, made up of lots of different flavours, lots of different textures you know. That's the way to get a really healthy maximising overall balanced diet. You don't need to chop all these great big groups of foods out. 

I hope that's put clean eating into context for you a little bit. It's one of those topics, that's quite difficult because people see it as such a good thing. I don't think the craze of Clean Eating is quite what it used to be. There was a massive, massive thing about it. Everybody was jumping on the Clean Eating bandwagon for a while. I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to eat more of those foods but once you get into the realms of clean eating, and you really get into it and you become obsessed by it, it's it's such a dangerous way to eat. It's mentally dangerous is physically dangerous. And I wouldn't advise anybody to start clean eating as a diet plan as a way of eating as a as a lifestyle. God I hate that. It's a lifestyle. It's not a diet. No, it's definitely still a diet. Definitely still a diet. 

As with anything, this might have raised some questions, because in half an hour or so I can only really give you an overview on the topic. If we were going to deep dive into everything, we'd be here hours. So if anything comes up for you just fire me over a question. Just let me know what you're thinking. Let me know what thoughts it's triggered for you. And I always love to hear your experiences with it. I quite often get people messaging me after podcast episodes come out and they say, Oh, God, I did that. And I remember when, and I love that. So if you've got experiences around this, I'd love to hear from it. I will never mention your name or anything. But if you want to share with me feel free. 

Before I close this episode off, just a note, you may have noticed this came out on a Monday this time. I'm going to start, I'm going to start releasing podcast episodes on a Monday. It just gives me the weekend to get it all ready for you. Because you know that I like to do these as things happen. I like to have these recorded just before I send out. I don't have a backlog of stuff waiting to go out. So I like to take my time over it. And I don't always have that time. So if I give myself the whole weekend, then you're definitely going to get an episode every week for sure. So, with that in mind, I'm going to start releasing episodes on a Monday from now on. Just in case on Sunday you're like, where is my podcast episode Terri? Where are you? Where are you? I need you in my life. 

Also, did you notice the new artwork? I hope that hasn't confused you too much. I have tried to keep it kind of similar but I want to change the colours. I was really not loving the blue on the previous artwork, so I've changed it slightly. Same podcast, same topics. Just the cover looks a little bit different. So yeah, I hope that didn't throw you too much. 

Right? That is it. That's all I have to say this week. Take care of you. Jump in the Facebook group if you want to come chat with me through the week. I'm always in there, really active. If you don't like Facebook, and you don't want to be there, that's absolutely fine too. I'm over on Instagram as well if you want to come over there. 

But other than that, if I don't see you there, I will see you here next week. Take care. Bye bye.