The Eat Clean Diet by Tosca Reno is not fad dieting and is really a “lifestyle” eating plan that promotes good health through healthy eating choices. This program seems simple enough but takes real commitment in our modern “fast food” world.  When we say “lifestyle” plan we mean that this is program based on age-old nutritional beliefs and some modern food science combined.

There are no weird rules that are counter to common sense. You can continue to eat this way for the rest of your life. No more over dependency on grapefruit or avoiding another food group altogether. The Eat Clean plan is well balanced and full of variety.

Eating Clean may even save you money as it saves your health (as you avoid pre-packaged “convince” foods and instead opt for vegetables, fruits, whole grains and lean proteins, you often will spend less).

Yes, it really is that simple to lose weight….

According to Tosca, what you don’t eat is as important as what you do eat when you choose to Eat Clean.

What we thought was interesting is that in the book,  she addresses one of those weight loss questions that we have been wondering about for a few years now. It’s the “Why can’t we  lose weight,  we are  exercising at the gym every day” question.  We are sure that  many of you join us in feeling that frustration when you think that you are walking every day or working out with weights or swimming for miles and miles, and then you jump on the scales at the end of the week, and BAM! Nothing- NO WEIGHT LOSS… or worse, you have gained a pound or two instead with the new muscles you have developed in your arms etc…

Anyway, when you start the Eat Clean Diet, you will watch the weight come off and off and off revealing the muscles that you have underneath the fat. Tosca writes that 80% of how your body looks comes from what you eat each day not how much you move.

80/10/10  Philosophy of healthy

OK What the heck is that?? Tosca writes in Eat Clean Diet that 80% of how you look is what you are eating. That old saying “Garbage In/ Garbage Out” rears it’s ugly head yet again!

But what makes up the other 20%? Well, 10% is based on your genes. How tall you are, how wide your nose is, color of your eyes etc… All those physical features are courtesy of your parents and grandparents before you. The last 10%?  That is the part that Tosca says is the part where you can make improvements to your body with exercise.

To us, this was an eye-popping statement. Even if we are killing ourselves at the gym, the changes are only  working on  10% of our body? WOW.  If we don’t also watch the food going in, it will be hard/impossible to loose weight and make the changes we wanted.   This was the book we needed to help us spend our time wisely  (cooking and working out) in order to make the most healthy changes in our lives. (Tosca also notes that it was the combination of weight training, running and the Eat Clean Diet that made the difference in her shape and more importantly the  overall health of her body)

In a nutshell, the Eat Clean Diet Philosophy

Here are four of the basics to the Eat Clean diet plan (there are more…). It might seem overwhelming at first, especially the part about thinking ahead and preparing your food. But soon you will feel so good that Tosca says they will quickly become part of your daily routine.

1. Eat five to six small meals spread out by two to three hours every day. By eating several small meals over the course of the whole day, you will not become overly hungry for any one meal. Also, dinner should be the same size as lunch as it does not make sense to eat a huge meal at the end of the day.

2.Combine lean protein and complex carbohydrates at every meal. This combination stabilizes your blood sugars and prevents you from becoming sleepy or getting dizzy during the day

3. Drink two to three liters of water each day. Staying properly hydrated is essential for all. This can also help with weight control and feelings of being irritable and cranky during the day. Next time you have a headache, try water first, and see if you are just dehydrated?

5. Avoid pre-packaged, over-processed refined foods. Besides all the extra chemicals, colors and flavoring that is added to these foods, they have given consumers a skewed sense of taste. When you are on the  Eat Clean Diet, you will be able to discover how many foods “really” taste. Eventually you will come to find greasy fast food and high sugar treats are no longer tasty to you.

Tosca goes into much more detail in the book about these elements in the Eat Clean Diet plan. Here we just wanted to introduce you to the basics and to peek your interest in the plan overall.

So we recommend checking out Tosca’s many books on  The Eat Clean Diet.

She has a number of different books to choose from. While we must admit that we have not embraced the Eat Clean Diet 100% during  each and every day, we have converted to eating Tosca’s delicious oatmeal breakfast  daily for a couple of months now and we just love it. We add nuts, flax seeds and whatever fruits that we have in the house.

We also admit that we tend to follow the Eat Clean Diet better on the weekends when we have more control over our eating time and eating locations.

Confession: We secretly love that Eat Clean Diet’s Tosca Reno is not a 20-something young thing, but a 40-something woman with 3 children and a life. The fact that she has all that going on  AND still looks healthy is a just plain wonderful success story for the Eat Clean Diet in itself. I guess that alone is motivation for us to continue to Eat Clean whenever we have a chance.

Has anyone tried the Eat Clean Diet? What did you think?