Clean Eating: What is it and How do I Start??

Clean Eating in our house means:

• Not consuming ingredients that we can't pronounce or cook with ourselves. Read your labels! You would be surprised as to what is really in your food. This includes food dyes (which can cause hyperactivity in children) and natural flavorings, some of which have been linked to Alzheimer's disease. You can read more about that here .
• Lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, meat and whole milk.
• Buying as much organic food as possible. We buy organic meat, dairy, grains and follow the dirty dozen list and only wild caught seafood. Obviously, not everyone can afford to buy organic food and it is not readily available to everyone. You have to do the best with your budget; eating conventionally grown fruits and veggies is better than eating frozen pizza and ramen noodles.
• No sodas, no energy drinks, no Crystal Light, no fruit juices. Water, water, water!!! I do drink coffee and green tea once or twice a day. I also start my day off with a glass of room temperature water with freshly squeezed lemon juice.
• No refined sugars or flour. No Splenda, corn syrup or cane juice. I use honey or maple syrup in place of sugar in recipes. I have yet to find a bakery close to me that bakes fresh, clean bread so we use Ezekiel bread for sandwiches and toast in the morning. I MIGHT attempt to bake a loaf of bread one day, I am a horrible baker and burn everything!

How we started:

1. I threw anything and everything away that had a funky ingredient in it. No more preservatives, flavorings, food dyes, High Fructose Corn Syrup, cancer causing ingredients.
2. Made a meal plan, a list and went to the grocery store. I live in Houston and am fortunate to have access to tons of grocery and health food stores. I love Costco, HEB and Trader Joe's. We buy our meat, eggs and some produce from Costco. Everything else I will buy at HEB or Trader Joe's if I feel like driving to the galleria area.
3. The trial and error process began and still continues to this day. Sometimes my dinner is a hit and other times, my hubby's Persian palate is disappointed. He likes everything to have a lot of flavor and I could care less if I'm eating a piece of bland chicken and brown rice.

And, that is where we are at today in our journey. We haven't quite perfected our clean eating and there are times when we do eat something that isn't up to our standards but we try our best to give our bodies the best fuel possible. What are some things that your family does to eat cleaner?