Clean Eating

I have no idea what clean eating means and I'm pretty sure most people that say it don't have a definitive answer for what they mean. If two people say it they most likely don't mean the same thing.

You might hear the phrase:

Time to start eating clean again.

Which as far as I can tell is a sugar coated (evilgrin.jpg) way to say:

Time to go on a diet because I have been bad and got fat.

Except with the added bonus that I'm going to be cleansed and become superior in some way.
Not just the horrible truth that I will be denying myself food that I like and will return to binging on sooner or later.

In fact the "again" in that first phrase is a tell tale sign that no-one that claims to eat clean really does do whatever their version of it is, year round. In fact it is recommended that cheat days are built in, sometimes once a week. So I'm not allowed to eat "junk food" because it's bad and guaranteed to make me fat, except on the ordained day?

Why don't we just eat all food in the required amounts during the week to make up nutritional requirements? I eat chocolate on a daily basis, especially when loosing body fat. But if you like a larger serving save some of your sugar intake over a couple of days and eat a whole slab aka cheat day.

Natural food is a special type of food that I believe is also associated with clean eating. After all what is cleaner than highly processed whey protein isolate?

You see in practise clean eating and IIFYM are not all that different. With the slight advantage of knowing exactly how much "bad" food one is eating and not feeling the slight bit guilty about it, going to the Calorie counters.