Clean Eating: How Much Should You Eat?

You've decided that you want to start eating clean and living a fit and healthy lifestyle but now what...How do you do that?  What do you cook?  How much do you cook?  Where do you shop?  What workouts do you do?  We've answered most of these in previous posts but want to address the question of "How much do I eat?" in this post.

Clean Eating: How Much Should You Eat?

We don't count calories or obsess over macros. Having a healthy relationship with food is very important and having to count every "point", calorie, or macro that goes into your body can be very stressful mentally. We understand that for certain events, such as competitions or photo shoots, it may become necessary to monitor your intake, but for day-to-day life you shouldn't have to.

Eating healthy meals and watching your portions is where you should start.  Basically, we eat 5-6 meals per day (every 2-3 hours) with a balance of lean protein, complex carbohydrates, healthy fats and a lot of vegetables.

Since you will most likely be prepping your food in advance when eating clean you'll need a starting point for how much food to make!  We wanted to give you some guidelines to get started. Please keep in mind that changing your lifestyle is a marathon and not a sprint and all of us have been eating clean and lifting weights for years so we know our bodies. There is a lot of trial and error involved in finding out what works for you but below are some general daily recommendations:

• Protein – 1.0 gram {for weight-loss}-1.5 grams {for maintenance} per pound of body weight
• Carbohydrates – around 1.0 gram per pound of body weight
• Sugar – under 30 grams per day (keep your sugar derived mostly from fruit)
• Fat – around 0.5 gram per pound of body weight

Remember, do not obsess over the numbers but use this as a starting point.  Once you get used to this lifestyle you will be able to eyeball approximate portions and it will be second nature to you.  We do encourage journaling your food but that is not the same as counting everything you eat.  Journaling your food would mean writing down everything that you eat - this helps when you are trying to pin point something that might be giving you problems such as gluten or other allergies.  It also helps to see where you might be over or under eating.

If you are new to the clean eating lifestyle, check out our "Start Here" page and read our "Getting Started with Clean Eating" post as it will give you more information on the overall lifestyle.  We also have eBooks on Getting Started with Clean Eating and Food Prep to get you started or to continue your journey.  If you are looking for a workout plan to get you headed in the right direction you can get started with our She Sweats 12-Week Transformation and then once you are ready move onto the She Sweats Extreme 4-Week Shred.

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