The hardest part about eating clean is educating yourself about the foods that are truly "healthful" choices, and the ones that are just, well... garbage.
So ATL Fitness Club (with the help of our friends at Shape Magazine) is sharing with you this list of what NOT to buy during your next trip to the grocery store. Here's what Shape calls the 7 Foods a Nutritionist Would Never Eat:
1) Rice cakes. These may only have a few calories and give you that "crunch" you're craving, but they'll also send your blood sugars on a roller coaster ride.
2) Fat-Free Salad Dressings. Yes, they are fat-free, but they can be LOADED with sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and all kinds of synthetic ingredients that make the nutrition label look like a page from your chemistry textbook!
3) Seitan. Okay many of us may not even eat this (or know what it is) but we're just putting it out there. Seitan is a meat substitute which is made entirely of wheat gluten. Eating too much of this could cause you to develop a sensitivity (or even an intolerance) to gluten.
4) Shark. Sure, we know that eating fish (certain kinds) will give us a healthy dose of Omega-3 fats, but this type of seafood in particular should be avoided. Why? Because shark meat has extremely high levels of mercury.
5) Refined and Re-fortified grains. This includes most cereals, pastas, and rice products...and you should steer clear of them not only because of the extremely high carb content, but also because the naturally-occurring fiber, vitamins, and minerals are usually removed and replaced with synthetic versions. Gross, who wants to eat lab-manufactured mac & cheese?!
6) Sugar-Sweetened Drinks. Yes, we're talking about soda, fruit juice, sweet teas, and lots of energy drinks! Cutting these out of your diet will SIGNIFICANTLY reduce your sugar intake for the day, not to mention disrupt your body's inflammatory balance (which is totally necessary for efficient recovery from your workouts).
7) Grits. Sorry, Southern Belles and Cowboys...this one is on the DO NOT EAT list! Grits is just another word for "processed corn leftovers." Not many of us enjoy the idea of leftovers in the first place, let alone the remnants of genetically modified products like those yellow cobs o' corn. Furthermore, grits dishes tend to be jam-packed with cream, butter, cheese, and all kinds of other unhealthful stuff we could definitely do without when trying to Achieve The Look .
So there you have it. 7 foods to remove from your vocabulary, your grocery list, your pantry, and most of all, your belly!
As some anonymous person once said, "Your stomach shouldn't be a wastebasket."
--The ATL Fitness Club
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