Clean eating breakfast, lunch, and snacks

Tosca Reno suggests eating six small meals a day that consist of a lean protein and a complex carbohydrate. In my mind, this meant skinny meat with bread. Yep, clueless. To make matters worse, she expands carbohydrates into starchy and non starchy and we need less starchy than others! Gah! I started to freak. But, after learning the benefits linked to pairing protein with carbohydrates, I decided to figure out what foods fall under the lean protein and the complex carbohydrate categories.Thankfully, her book The Clean Eating Diet Recharged made it pretty easy to understand. (No freaking out necessary!)

I took what I learned and created a chart to make meal planning a breeze. (Note: The following chart does not contain all the foods that fall into the protein/ carbohydrate category. Also, I am no expert! Please check out Tosca's book for more information.) To use this chart, simply choose a protein and then a complex carb. to enjoy with it from either the second or third column! Happy meal planning!
6 Meals Explained Previous post: Clean eating beverages.
Next post: Clean eating desserts.

Portion Control While Eating Clean

Relevant Clean Eating Rules:

• Eat within proper portion sizes.
• Eat fruits, vegetables and lean protein in six small meals throughout the day

Tosca Reno herself explains portion sizes in this youtube video. 

Also, I found this chart to be helpful: (source unknown)

The do's and don'ts to clean eating

The rules of clean eating are clearly spelled out, but let's get specific!

Do:

1. Six small meals a day

2. Drink half our body weight in ounces daily

3. Eat within portion sizes.

4. 3 ingredients maximum on food labels.

5. Limit saturated fats

6. Buy organic, when possible.

7. Consume healthy fats

8. Plan ahead, take clean snacks to go!

Don’t:

1. Eat before bed time

2. Eat at fast food restaurants

3. Sugar

4. Preservatives

5. Artificial colorings

6. Processed food

7. Carbon foot print

8. “Fake foods” i.e. high calories, low nutrition

My personal cheats:
Sour cream, corn tortillas, and rice chex may have more than 3 ingredients on their food label, but as I don't know how to make sour cream we're keeping it in the fridge. Also, being a celliac (unable to eat wheat/ gluten) we can't purchase the clean eating approved wheat bread or bread crumbs. So, as a substitution we're going to keep buying corn tortillas for wraps, fajitas, tacos, and quesadillas. We'll keep buying rice chex because they work so well as gluten free bread crumbs in recipes, but are a whole lot more affordable than actual GF crumbs!