She Became A Popular Food Blogger After She Lost 170 Pounds By Eating Clean
She Became A Popular Food Blogger After She Lost 170 Pounds By Eating Clean
To many women, emotional eating is a deep-rooted and long voyaged battle. To Erika Kendall, now author of the blog ‘A Black Girls Guide to Weight Loss’, it was a 13-year struggle of the yo-yo dieting, indulging, and working out. For a while, her routine was to burn 700 calories at the gym and then leave to head to Taco Bell for a reward. She justified the fast food thinking her strenuous workout would overcome the food.
Frustrated and at her highest of 330 pounds after her first child, Erika was starting to get sick and couldn’t continue her life in that direction. Now, at age 31, she says that eating clean has ‘saved her life’ and she has lost a total of 170 pounds. She says that substituting her unhealthy eating with other stress relieving activities like movies, books, and yoga, paired with veggies and unsweetened tea rather than a handful of cookies, has given her a new life and she is now able able to put her best foot forward.
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While Erika’s story is inspiring, eating clean can be fairly overwhelming at first. But, after you’ve learned about the principles it takes to eat this way, you’ll notice it takes a fairly easy level of effort. The main focus of eating clean is just to control your portions and avoid obvious unhealthy foods. The whole idea is to eat more whole foods and to be more mindful of the food’s pathway between its origin and your plate, making your consumption as natural as possible. The process involves avoiding processed foods, artificial sweeteners, alcohol, and foods with preservatives and chemical additives. Instead, you are instructed to eat lean protein and complex carbohydrates, get your nutrients from fruits and vegetables, and drink 2 to 3 liters of water per day.
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Multiple studies have shown that diets with fruits and vegetables can curb or prevent life-threatening conditions like type-2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and even cancer. If you listen to your body and how it is reacting to your eating habits, you are able to see that food really is the earth’s best preventative medicine!
To start clean eating, take a walk up to your cupboard. You’ll notice that many of your seemingly healthy foods have many artificial ingredients and words you can’t pronounce. Throw those items out, and look for easy recipes to replace them. For instance, most packaged salad dressings are filled with additives and unhealthy oils and ingredients. A quick web search will show you a lot of clean and easy dressing recipes you can make right at home with ingredients like olive oil, lemon, and dijon mustard! Be creative!
Just like Erika took a stance and changed her life, you can too. What are some foods you’ve made healthy swaps with toward a cleaner eating lifestyle?
Health.com Webmd.com Fitnessmagazine.com