Everybody's doing great in week three. By now you should be starting to get into the flow of your intermittent fasting. And by the end of week three, you should be getting over the hump as far as the feelings of hunger and maybe the low energy that you might have felt at first and you should be starting to get your energy back and starting to feel better, and you shouldn't be as hungry. So if you are still experiencing any issues by the end of week three, then you know reach out to me and let's and let's talk about and see what's going on. But one thing you might want to do if you are experiencing any any difficulties or still struggling is you may want to take a good look at your diet and whether you're nourishing your body properly. So that's what we're going to talk about today.

We're going to talk about was clean eating, because as I've already told you before, intermittent fasting is not a cure all It's not going to cover up all your sins. So you still need to eat a healthy nourishing diet. And if you do if you eat a diet of Whole Foods, and healthy foods, and if you go a little more low carb, then you can pretty much eat what you want during your eating window. I don't count calories, I don't, you know, measure my food in any way I just I just eat good healthy food and as much pretty much as much as I want of it. So let's talk about what clean eating is because because there's been a lot of talk in the last couple of years about clean eating. The whole 30 movement has really done a lot to bring people's attention to to what clean eating is so let me tell you, my position on it and what I consider clean eating to be so I consider there to be three basic elements to clean eating.

The first is foods that are free from pollutants, so free from herbicides and pesticides. Two foods that are unprocessed and free free of chemicals. And we'll get into that a little bit more about why the processing is bad and why our bodies don't know how to use those foods. But we're talking about foods that are as close as possible with minimal processing to the way that they were grown or raised. And three would be foods that don't cause inflammation in the body. Because there are a lot of foods that either cause inflammation and almost everyone or like sugar, or foods that cause inflammation and a lot of people even if you're not allergic, you don't have to be actually have an allergy in order for a food to cause a chronic low grade inflammation.

So we'll talk about what those foods are too. So let's start with foods that are free from pollutants and talk about organic foods. Unfortunately, farming is very different from from the way it used to be. And most foods, all foods really, except for organics, although organics, organics can still First of all, there can be cross contamination from from nearby fields of spraying of herbicides and pesticides. And there are some natural, more natural methods that are used on organic fruits and vegetables. So they should still always be washed, but it's nothing compared to what is used on conventionally what we call conventionally grown produce.

So if you look at the I don't know, if you have checked out the Environmental Working Groups, website, it's ew g.org. And they list all of the herbicides and pesticides that are found on produce. So as a matter of fact, they publish a list every year, called the Dirty Dozen and the clean 15. And those are the produce that are tested that year. And they list the top 12 worst that contain the most The Dirty Dozen that contains the most pesticides and herbicides and then the clean 15 which are the ones that contain the least so if you're if you can't afford to buy all organic, then those are the 15 that are the cleanest and that you're probably safer to to buy conventional. As a general rule, you're going to be safer buying conventional anything that you peel that especially if it has a thick peel with a banana but I will say though, however if I do buy conventionally grown bananas I do wash them as soon as I get them in my house because they are sprayed with a lot of things and you don't want that on your hands.

So as much as possible. It's good to to buy organic because they are sprayed from the time that they are seedlings, they're sprayed with so many chemicals. Strawberries are among the worst because they're so susceptible to pests and strawberries. have been found to have as many as 50 or 60 different different pesticides and herbicides found on a single strawberry. So those are very, very scary. I would never eat a conventionally grown strawberry.

So it's very important because this stuff builds up in our bodies. Because what happens is is when this when these chemicals are tested for human safety, you're talking they're talking about Okay, you get this one, you know, bite of it in this in this apple or whatever it is, and is this going to hurt you? Well, no, that by itself is not enough to cause substantial harm to a human being. The problem is is that all of our food is sprayed with these chemicals. And it's not just the fresh produce that we're eating. It's in all of our of our processed and packaged and boxed foods.

And so there's so many chemicals that are then building up that they're finding these these chemicals, these glyphosate has been found in in breast milk it's it's found in babies it's form infant formula packaged human formula and infant foods have had this chemical and it's building up in our bodies. And so it's really important to avoid as much as possible. So that's why I strongly recommend that you as much as possible for your budget that you buy organic foods. So that is that again go to ew g.org and I did post on the class page, the this year's clean 15 and Dirty Dozen so you can take a look at that and see what those are for this year. So next, let's talk about processed foods. Okay, so thanks processed foods are when we take a food and we Something starts out is something natural and is grown in the earth.

And it is stripped down and processed with chemicals and then put back together in a different way. And the reason it's done that is for cost effectiveness and for shelf life. Like Take for instance bread. So bread obviously wheat is a natural plant, but it is it's stripped down and all of the fibers taken out the holes taken off. And then it is to make pretty white bread that it's bleached. And during this chemical processing of this bleaching and all these other things that happened to it that is just too awful to even think about.

All the vitamins are taken out of the bread. So that's why bread is then vitamin enriched and vitamins are added back in. But the problem is is the vitamins that are added back in or not those that naturally occur in the plant. The vitamins that are added back in are made derived from petroleum at a factory in China probably. So they're not natural, your body doesn't really recognize them. And they're added back into this food that started out as a plant, but is no longer anything that resembles anything from nature.

If you want to know more about what happens to food during processing, I strongly recommend that you check out this book. It's called Twinkie deconstructed. And this author goes on this journey to discover how ingredients found in processed foods are grown. And so he goes into these factories and finds out all the different kinds of chemicals that they use in processing foods and what happens to their nutritional content when this happens. And so you'll never want to eat anything in a package or a box again, if you read this book, so check that out, too. deconstructed.

So that's the main reason why we try to avoid processed foods is that our body doesn't recognize them. They're, they're, they're riddled with chemicals that are used in the different processing and you got artificial flavors and colors and preservatives. And then again, again, the artificial vitamins whenever they have vitamins added back in. These vitamins are not derived from natural substances they are chemically derived and that your body doesn't really know what to do with them. So processed foods then next, foods that cause inflammation. So again, you don't have to have allergies in order for foods to cause inflammation in the body.

Sugar causes inflammation for everyone. Sugar is extremely inflammatory, and then we're now finding out that the real culprit between real culprit in heart disease and arthroscope fluorosis is actually sugar not fat, which was a whole scam of the sugar industry a few years ago that they came up with some bad science to back up the fact that it was not sugar with it that caused all these health problems. So sugar is bad for everybody sugar is going to cause inflammation in your body. The other things that cause inflammation for most people are is gluten. Gluten, going gluten free is really not just a fad. And there's a reason behind that is because wheat has been extremely hybridized so we just not GMO, but it has been hybridized.

And so what has happened is starting in the 1960s, they started hybridizing the wheat in order to make it more Hardy and so we went from amber fields of grain of wheat that grew to about four feet high and kind of blew in the wind down to wheat plants are about 18 inches tall. And that's because they're very, they're much more sturdy, they don't fall over. And they bred them to have the the chaff fall away easier. So it's easier for processing and harvesting. And so but what happened during this process is the wheat can start to contain more and more gluten protein. And so the wheat that we ate in the 1960s is not the same week that we today and it has much more a higher quantity of gluten protein.

And so, scientists are starting to think now that could be the reason one of the reasons why so many people are affected by gluten because it's not the same bread that we that we used to eat. It's very different. So that's one of the problems with gluten. Why so many people have had a problem and it causes inflammation in our system. The other problem is if you're eating conventionally grown wheat products is that they are also highly contaminated with glyphosate. glyphosate, I would say the wrong glyphosate.

Because what happens is is when they go to harvest the wheat, the wheat is spread sprayed with glyphosate so that it kills the plant and it makes it really easy to harvest. It dries it out domesticates it. So weed is highly contaminated with with this chemical herbicide. So that's another reason why it's some people say Are we really allergic to wheat or is it what is being done to it and what's been done to it? So gluten is inflammatory. Soy, a lot of people find have issues with soy, corn.

A lot of people do have issues with corn and corn is one of those foods that is In everything and one of the reasons is because it's a subsidized crop. So the United States government pays farmers to make corn even when we don't need as much corn as we have. So So corns and everything. So corn is used in all kinds of you can look in, in you know all of your processed foods, and you're gonna see you've got corn syrup, corn starch, cornmeal, corn flour, it's in candy, yogurt, fruit juice, salad dressings, cereal, snack foods, it's in everything. And 99% of corn in the United States is genetically modified and accordance genetically modified to either withstand large amounts of glyphosate sprayed on it to protect it from pests or there's some corn that is actually genetically modified to contain the pesticide in the corn. So they splice In a gene of a pesticide so if a bug eats the corn it dies and then they feed it to us.

So one of the reasons why people have such trouble with corn and corn is not only in the processed foods that we eat but corn is also in our meat because guess what they're doing with all the extra they're feeding the cows. So the cattle get all this corn which is not excuse me, which is not a natural food for cows. And so not only are they getting food that's not now not a natural food for them which just turns to sugar but they also it's it's also sprayed with with these chemicals and the poisons. So that's another one of the foods dairy, a lot of people are have trouble digesting dairy. Eggs, some people have trouble with with protein and eggs and then anything that is that is artificial Trans fats obviously extremely bad for us. That is not a natural fat.

Our body does not know how to process trans fat. It causes inflammation, vegetable oils, canola oil, any kind of any kind of process chemically processed vegetable oil is going to have a trans fat even though it is not on the label. It says zero trans fats. And that comes from a labeling loophole, which I'll actually talk about here in a minute. artificial colors and sweeteners. All of these things, many things that are used in the United States are actually banned in other countries.

There are a lot of chemicals and artificial colors and sweeteners and flavors that are banned in other countries that are still allowing the United States. So let me talk let me talk real quickly so I told you about tax a little bit about genetically modified as far as corn is concerned. Talking about just genetic genetically modified foods all together. So two of the biggest genetically modified foods in the United States are corn and soy. 90 something percent of soybeans are also genetically modified. They're grown in the United States.

Again, the only reason that these foods are modified is to withstand higher amounts of spraying of pesticides and herbicides. They are they are literally bred to withstand the spraying of poison on them. And so what makes them there's I mean, there's a whole issue of whether the body can even recognize a process of food has been genetically modified, it has been spliced with another another type of organism because sometimes there's there splice with non plant organisms. So that's a whole nother issue, but I'm just talking about the fact that the whole reason behind it is so they can withstand the spraying of herbicides and pesticides to make Bigger crops and make the harvesting of these crops easier. So that is the reason right there to avoid GMOs. Okay, just as much as you can just avoid GMOs because they're, they're very harmful to your body.

Okay, we talked about the wheat. See artificial sweeteners are definitely inflammatory one that that I wanted to point out that a lot of people have been using as a gob a syrup and people use it because they're like, well it's just you know, natural from from the Gabi, which is a plant. The problem with a gobby syrup is that it is pure fructose. And so you don't want to use a lot of it because fructose is completely metabolized in the liver. And so if you're eating a lot of things with fruit toasts, then you can overload your liver. It fructose, overconsumption of fructose is linked to diabetes and heart disease and cancer.

So it's you know, it's one thing when it's natural and a piece of fruit I mean you still don't ever want it to even overdo fruit but when it's natural and a piece of fruit it has the fiber and all of the other all the other enzymes and bits and pieces of the fruit that that the body recognizes and knows how to digest but when they just this fruit toast is extracted and it's in large quantities in you know, packaged and processed candies and cookies and things like that. It's it's too much for our liver and it doesn't know how to handle it. So you really need to avoid like the high fructose corn syrup and, and artificial fructose. Okay. So that is that's sort of the the elements of of clean eating the things that you need to avoid Keeping your food is a natural state as possible.

Avoiding herbicides, pesticides, chemicals. And just try here's the thing if you want to eat clean, you're pretty much going to have to make your food because it's really hard to eat clean when you're eating out. So I strongly recommend that you cook as much as possible. If you are not used to to cooking I did, I brought a couple of my favorite cookbooks to show you. This one is really good the whole 30 so this is based on the on the whole 30 plan which is a perfectly good plan to follow and it has a little bit of information in the beginning about sort of how to follow the whole 30 plan. It's just about eating whole foods.

And there are a lot of nice recipes in here that are easy and nice to fall easy to follow. Um Oh, I forgot to tell you about weed belly. I'm sorry. If you want to know more about hybridisation of wheat, the history of wheat, how we came to be so inflammatory and bad for us. I definitely recommend this book by Dr. William Davis. It's called wheat belly and he goes into the entire history and the science behind behind wheat.

Okay, another of my favorite cookbook authors is Danielle Walker. And she has several books that are called against all grain This is her meals Made Simple and you can see the flags I have one because I love this cookbook. She also has the celebrations cookbook for special occasions and this is her This is her meals Made Simple and I like easy because I'm like a five ingredient or less person okay. I did put a handout on the on the website this week that has some some sample recipes. Those are some that I have compiled. They're not my personal rescue didn't write them.

I don't write recipes. That is not my forte, one of the reasons is I'm more of a intuitive cook. And so I will tell you what I put in it, but I can't tell you the exact amounts because I just sort of throw in a little bit of this little bit of that. Um, this is one of my absolute favorites, non non paleo. I'm Michelle Tam is the is the author of this she has two books, I think this is the second one ready or not. And what I like about her books is that this one in particular, this one is divided into multiple sections by how much time you have.

So if you have a little more time, or if you're like really in a hurry, and she's got the recipes divided up that way. The other thing I really like about her recipes is there's a lot of pictures every step of the way. So that's really nice. It's very easy to follow. She uses Instant Pot a lot um and She has a lot of recipes for sauces, clean sauces that can then be used across multiple recipes so you can use them multiple times and she also uses has recipes for leftovers so if you know make a batch of something she'll have all the recipes later on free freezing that and leftover so that's really good. I really like this um, the instant pot is another good appliance if you are interested in in eating quickly, especially on weeknights, I love my Insta pot I use it multiple times a week.

It's basically an electronic electric pressure cooker. Not like if you had a pressure cooker that you put on the stove and you know set the lid and it's like scary. I got rid of mine when I got my Instant Pot I got rid of that pressure cooker because that's scared the hell. Insta pot is very safe if you're like worried about you know pressure cookers it's you know got safety mechanisms. Just electric plugs into electronic you know you set the time and it does its thing and then you release the pressure and that's it. And it's wonderful because you can make a lot of one pot meals, you can cook things very quickly.

It makes wonderful rice if you rice cooked meat it has my slotting feature so you could put some butter in and like brown your meat and then let it cook the rest of the way again, there's a lot of one pot recipes. I have some instant pot recipes on my Pinterest boards if you want to look there. Also like I said, nom nom nom nom paleo. She has a lot of instant pot recipes. And I just I just think it's an absolutely fabulous appliance. So if you want some easy, healthy cooking ideas.

Another thing if you want to, you know for for healthy eating is meal prep. I'm not real great at I do it once in a while, but a lot of people will spend a couple hours on, you know, maybe a Sunday and cook the food for the week. So cook a couple of different types of, you know, meat chicken, cook a whole bunch of vegetables and then use that for the rest of the week. And you can either portion it out right then and there. Or you can just, you know, put in containers and take it as you need it and you have lunches you have dinners and everything's already done. I'm not very organized.

I'm not great at doing that. But I have been doing it lately for Buddha bowls, because I really do like Buddha bowls. That's meatless meals. I'll make a big batch of whatever my base is. Costco has a really nice, like a wild rice and Kimo mix that is organic. And so I'll make like a bunch of that for my base.

I'll roast just fill up my oven with with vegetables all roast a big baking sheet of sweet potatoes of broccoli garbanzo Beans let's see what else mushrooms have I'll do a whole bunch of vegetables and then make up a batch of tahini dressing and that's it and then I can just throw this all together and I have got a beautiful to great vegetarian, very filling healthy meal so those are fun to make. So you know if you do a little bit of meal prep even if you get you know part of your meals for the week, done ahead of time and then you know you can always do you know you could do like add a little bit of you know, rice or, or something else you cook an instant pot or something and rice cauliflower is nice you can actually buy frozen cauliflower already rice if you if you want to.

And I've gotten that at Whole Foods. So that's something you can add spiralized zucchini is nice and you can just do like a really quick, you know, tomato based sauce. So there's a lot of different things that you can Do please. You know, take a look at my Pinterest boards. If you want some ideas for some more recipes, everything I have on there is simple because again, I do not follow complicated recipes. I'm not good at following recipes at all.

So I kind of like look at it and eyeball the general and then I just sort of throw it all together. So I don't do complicated. So take take a look at those and and see what you think. And that's it, I guess for clean eating. Actually, you know what, no, I didn't go into the I didn't go into the food labels real quick. So basically labeling laws allow a manufacturer to have an error in their labeling up to 20% 20%.

That's a lot. And then they get to decide what the serving size is. So there's the other the other loophole that's important is that if a food has less than half a gram per serving thing of trans fat or sugar, they get to round it down. So what they do is is they take and this is how you see certain things like canola oil and things where they say it's zero trans fat. It's not true, it has trans fat. But so what they do is they they modify the serving size, they're allowed up to 20% error.

And they modify the serving size so that it comes in at point five grams or below and then they're able to say zero. And so you'll see that a lot with foods that you know, you absolutely know if you look at the ingredients that it has trans fats, if it has canola oil in it, it has trans fats, okay. So but because of the loopholes in the labeling laws, they're able to lie to you so you have to be really really careful when you're reading your ingredients. Again, and you probably already know this, be careful about serving sizes like to show people this Ben and Jerry's, you know, container and we all know how big this is. Injuries is and it is four servings. I don't know in what what world that is four servings but yeah, that's four servings.

So 25 grams of sugar. It's 100 grams of sugar in that container and I mean, I know I've eaten a whole one in one setting so I'm sure that you guys have to. Um Yeah, so on my little metal example here, this was a my favorite food to pick on is Doritos, actually. And Doritos, the second ingredient after corn, which we all know is is is problem now. second ingredient is vegetable oil, sunflower canola and or corn oil is the second ingredient but it's still they have the nerve to say that there is zero trans fat in this food. And that is not true.

Let's see what else Oh The other thing I wanted to talk to you about is what they put Doritos. Doritos has Three different types of MSG. MSG, and it's all its cousins with all the funky names. Do I have that here? Okay, so additives that um, trans fat I mean I'm sorry, MSG. monosodium glutamate, which is MSG had hydrolyzed vegetable protein hydrolyzed protein hydrolyzed, plant protein, plant protein extracts, sodium cassone, calcium carbonate, yeast extract, textured protein, or otherwise yeast hydrolyzed, oat flour.

These are just some of the names of MSG. And so MSG is an excitotoxin and it is a chemical that can cross the blood brain barrier. And it tricks your brain into thinking that something tastes good and that's the only purpose is to make difference. tastes better to your brain and it's just filling your brain. So a food like Sorry, I'm like waiting all over the place. I feel like Doritos happens to contain three different excited toxins.

So if you've ever sat down to eat a bag of Doritos and gotten completely addicted to it and you think it's just the best thing in the world, it's because it's littered with excitotoxin so if you have kids don't feed this crap to your kids. I mean, it is just it's completely addictive and they make it that way on purpose. Okay. All right. So that lookout for other names for sugar you know, sucrose, high fructose corn syrup, barley malt, dextrose, fructose maltose, rice syrup, corn syrup, a god a fruit juice concentrate, lactose maltodextrin. That is just a few of the other names for sugar.

Looking out for hidden trans fat if it's got hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil, of any kind, even label says zero trans fat. Look for canola vegetable, soybean, palm and corn oils is hidden sources of trans fats. So, that's it. That's how you clean simple, right? Okay, let me know if you have any questions and I hope that you have a fabulous day.