Why You Shouldn't Eat Clean: How To Lose Fat More Effectively

all right what's going on guys so in this video i want to talk about clean eating now let me start by saying that if you follow clean eating yourself and it's been working well for you and it's something you feel like you can happily stick to that's totally fine i do think that nutrition is very individual so the problems i'm going to outline here may or may not all apply to all of you but i do think that there certainly are better approaches to dieting that many people would benefit from hearing about because despite its many drawbacks clean eating is still extremely popular in the fitness industry today this was shown just last month in a new survey covered in the latest issue of the mass research review of over a thousand young people aged 14 to 24. now 88 of people viewed clean eating as positive so only 12 saw it as negative in fact 71 of people viewed clean eating as entirely healthy with no unhealthy or harmful features so clearly most people probably including many of you still think clean eating is a good idea and i'll admit that on the surface it really does seem like an obviously reasonable approach you just get rid of any dirty junk foods and instead eat clean nutritious whole foods what could be the problem with that well even though it seems to make sense on the surface as we'll see i think the devil is in the details so the first issue is that no one seems to agree on what clean eating actually means and this has very practical implications if you talk to your typical bodybuilder they'll give you a short list of six or seven foods something like chicken egg whites brown rice sweet potato oatmeal and protein powder and even with a list this short you might already start to notice some contradictions people say a main criterion of counting as clean as being unprocessed whole or natural yet protein powder almost always makes the list despite being very highly processed refined and synthetic oatmeal undergoes extensive processing as well now even though it's still totally arbitrary i can see why brown rice gets the clean label while white rice doesn't because white rice goes through some additional processing to mill out the bran and the germ stripping away some b vitamins and fiber in the process but then as pointed out in the mass write-up it doesn't make sense why sweet potatoes get the clean label while white potatoes don't because neither sweet potatoes nor white potatoes are milled or processed so it doesn't make sense for sweet potatoes to be any cleaner than white potatoes other than the fact that the white color reminds people of white rice or white bread which are more highly processed than their browner counterparts in fact white potatoes could be argued as being one of the best fat loss foods out there because of how incredibly satiating they are per calorie one study found that when compared to other common carbohydrate sources potatoes are by far the most satiating so what counts as clean clearly depends on who you ask and what diet they follow if you follow keto you might say all carbs are dirty if you follow paleo you might say grains and dairy are bad but meats and veggies are fine and this is a problem because as dr holm said in the latest mass review if you tried to eat clean according to every group's definition you'd have an empty plate now this might seem like i'm just nitpicking or playing semantics but not being able to clearly define what the approach actually entails makes it hard to give dietary guidelines based on sound nutritional principles and can end up causing some pretty serious issues as we'll see so the second problem i notice with clean eating especially when it comes to fat loss is that even if it technically works which it can it's still needlessly inconvenient for most people a true commitment to clean eating means you're not able to partake in special occasions or enjoy dinners with friends or family because what's on the menu is off limits and that's kind of a shame because you can miss out on a lot of life for no reason since science tells us that it's perfectly fine to be flexible with your diet and enjoy a variety of foods even some processed junk foods and you'll still lose fat just as well as long as you're in the same net caloric deficit over time and eating enough protein in fact it's actually better than that being more flexible with your diet isn't just good enough for fat loss research tells us that it's likely better than clean eating which leads me to problem number three clean eating just isn't the most effective strategy for long-term fat loss for most people one study from 2012 gave two groups the same diet except one group wasn't allowed to eat bread and the other group was clean eaters especially if they follow paleo aquito might expect the group without bread to do better but in reality after 16 weeks both groups lost the same amount of fat but the group that was told to cut out the bread had way more subjects drop out part way through they just couldn't stick to the diet as well so over the long term the more foods you make off limits the harder it'll be to consistently follow through this is supported by other research as well for example this study examined what they called flexible control versus rigid control flexible control basically means you're flexible with how you schedule your meals you're flexible with your weight loss timeline and you take a non-dichotomous view of foods so you don't see foods as either good or bad or clean or dirty rigid control means the opposite you have rigid timelines you often try to diet as fast as possible and you look at foods as being either good or bad so there are foods you can eat and others that you can't and as it turns out flexible control was associated with lower body mass index less binge eating and better weight loss over a one year program then when the same researchers did a follow-up three years later they found that flexible control was better at maintaining weight loss after three years as well and this shouldn't be surprising the strictest clean eaters are pre-contest bodybuilders and they're the perfect example of people who see cyclical not sustainable weight loss almost without exception bodybuilders will lose fat for several weeks leading up to a competition and then spend the rest of the year being at a higher body fat percentage so even if we just ignore the research and look at the best anecdotes clean eating still doesn't bode well for sustainable long-term fat loss all right the fourth issue with clean eating is that it can easily lead to disordered eating clean eating implies that if there are good foods there must also be bad foods and this is where it can start to go wrong for a lot of people psychologically research shows that black and white thinking about food can cause orthorexia where you become obsessed with only eating foods you think are clean or healthy and other potentially more severe eating disorders as well in 2002 stuart and colleagues found that rigid dieting strategies like clean eating but not flexible dieting strategies were associated with eating disorder symptoms and a new paper from 2020 looking at how different eating patterns relate to binge eating and over 1300 subjects found that inflexible eating beliefs and high rigid restraint were more likely to be associated with recurrent binge eating now that doesn't mean that so-called flexible dieting or if it fits your macros is a silver bullet either just because you track your macros and occasionally squeeze a pop tart into your carb count it doesn't mean you've immunized yourself from these potential psychological pitfalls but just simply acknowledging that there really is no such thing as a bad food is a good place to start as the mass review says no food you eat independent of the amount or frequency that you consume it has a measurable negative effect on you and junk foods that are high calorie highly processed highly palatable and low in micronutrients are only problematic if they dominate your diet and this brings me to the final problem that i see with clean eating even though it's touted as being extremely healthy it probably isn't as healthy as you think now to be clear of course there are foods that promote good health like fruits and vegetables and foods that when eaten too much and too often can lead to health problems like ice cream and french fries the thing clean eaters often miss is the fact that the dose always makes the poison even the most toxic and dangerous substance on earth is only actually harmful at a given dose and even water the most essential component to life will kill you at a high enough dose it's no different with ice cream and french fries what really matters is how much of that junk food you're eating and what the rest of your diet looks like and if maximizing your health is your main goal extreme clean eating isn't the best solution depending on just how many foods you eliminate you can easily run into nutrient deficiencies this was shown in studies from kleiner and colleagues which found that male bodybuilders only had 46 percent of the rda for vitamin d and women hit just 52 for calcium while also being deficient in zinc copper and chromium so unless you carefully monitor your vitamin and mineral intake eliminating foods or food groups is an easy way to miss out on key nutrients for health so with all those things in mind what do i actually recommend well first of all i like helm's suggestion that rather than excluding bad foods focus more on including nutrient dense foods so yeah do make an effort to eat more fruits vegetables grains and healthy fats but don't feel like you have to totally eliminate all junk foods or any specific foods from your diet and that's true whether your main goal is health fat loss or both now when it comes to fat loss we know that there really aren't any magic fat burning foods except kiwis just like there aren't any magic fat storing foods ultimately fat loss comes down to putting yourself in a net caloric deficit over time and to a lesser extent eating enough protein people often try to mystify fat loss because it's more marketable when it's mysterious but it really is that simple every diet that's ever succeeded at causing fat loss has one defining feature in common a caloric deficit so for some people tracking caloric intake protein intake and optionally macronutrient intake depending on how detailed you want to get will be the best strategy i personally periodically track my intake using an app like myfitnesspal to make sure i'm in the right ballpark with my calories and my macros in this way if i want to fit some junk food in my diet that would be off limits on a clean eating plan i can do that by just fitting it into my calorie or macro targets without compromising my results at all but of course it isn't that active tracking that causes fat loss and there are no magic macros either it's simply one way of ensuring that you are in fact eating an appropriate number of calories for your goal so you obviously don't need to track calories or macros to lose fat it just works better at keeping some people on track while still allowing for flexibility and variety in the actual food choices for others a more auto regulated approach will be just as or more effective without the same bother of having to track everything this is something i'd need a full video to do justice so you guys can just let me know if that's something you'd like to hear me cover in more detail in the future but very quickly three things to focus on are prioritizing nutrient dense minimally processed whole foods but not eliminating foods entirely you want to be more consistent with your meals when you try to eat similar meals at similar times while also being flexible enough to realize that it doesn't really matter if you miss a meal or if you eat something different occasionally and then use a body scale and progress photos to track your progress over time and i think i'm going to leave it there for this one if you guys would like a much more thorough breakdown of the practical elements of what i recommend for any goal whether it be losing fat building muscle or doing both at the same time i'd recommend checking out my 17 chapter ultimate guide to body recomposition which i'll link down below and as you can probably tell a lot of the info in this video came from this month's issue of the mass research review which i'll leave an affiliate link to down below as well if you guys would like to check that out and help support me in the process i would say the best way to stay up to date with the research on training and nutrition is to simply just subscribe to mass and you can also get there on my website so if you go to jeffnaper.com go to the affiliate tab and click on the mass research review over there and that'll get you there as well uh thank you guys so much for watching don't forget to leave me a thumbs up if you enjoyed the video subscribe if you haven't already and i'll see you guys all here in the next one

Channel: Jeff Nippard

Views: 2,116,232

Rating: 4.8753719 out of 5

Keywords: full day of eating, how to get ripped, what to eat to get ripped, diet to get lean, diet to lose fat, diet to get ripped, best diet plan, how to lose fat, how to lose body fat, diet to build muscle, meal plan to build muscle, muscle building meal plan, athleanx meal plan, athlean x, jeff nippard clean eating, jeff nippard diet, body recomp, body recomposition, jeff nippard fat loss, nutrition, stephanie buttermore, stephanie buttermore all in, stephanie buttermore cheat day

Id: ytN366VCGls

Length: 10min 32sec (632 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 16 2020

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