Do you need to eat clean to see results?
You do not, is the short answer. You do not have to eat perfect to see great results.
If you understand the basic principles of how energy works in the body, calories are used to fuel your body in a very basic explanation of fuel for the body.
When you overeat your body then doesn’t need all the calories. So, you are in a surplus and the body stores those extra calories for later as “fat storage”. It takes around 3,500 calories to gain or lose an lb. of fat. So, it doesn’t matter if you ate the cleanest diet ever; if you over ate on those foods you would gain fat.
Clean eating alone is not the answer. Finding a lifestyle you can adjust to for life is the answer!
If that is 90% clean and 10% not so clean, then that works. If it’s 60/40 or 40/60 or whatever you can sustain, and want to do, and know you can stick to long term, that is exactly the diet you should stick to!
There are foods that obviously have more micronutrients than other foods and are “healthier”. But that means nothing if you fall off and cheat every weekend you are doing all the extra work throughout the week to then go off the deep end during the weekend.
I would rather my clients eat dirty and clean and use a micronutrient pill to get what they are lacking than focus so much on eating perfect to then blow it within a week or two. Because that is how you create eating disorders, fall off the wagon and fail then never pick back up where you left off because you did not like the outcome of the diet you tried in the past!
