Eating clean

I had surgery two years ago but never learned how to eat clean so I need some reasonable suggestions. I'm going to do a liquid diet before trying to delete all processed foods. I'm going to call a naturopathic doctor in the morning and see if he will supervise me. My family doctor refuses to supervise me doing a liquid diet even if only for a day or two. I'm not really sure why because he knew that I had to do it for surgery. I read about clean eating and basically what i find it boils down to is only shopping on the out side of the store and basically not eating anything with a label is that correct?

I guess our definitions of "clean eating" can be different.  Clean eating for me is keeping carbs low (and only complex carbs) to under 30 a day, no white flour or processed foods.  I also have eliminated milk (which I love) from my diet as there are a lot of sugars in it.  I have replaced that with the unsweetened almond milk (not drinking it straight, but in drinks, cooking, etc).  I also am not afraid of fat (but someone not far out from surgery may want to avoid that - I dumped on fat for the first 2 years) and have eliminated margarines and added butter and use olive oil with cooking. 

I'm all for liquid diets.  My liquid diet would consist of protein drinks (I favor the Nectar line since they have 0 carb powders) with decaf tea.  I like water, but to this day it still sits heavy in my pouch.  Honestly, I would only do a liquid diet for about 3-4 days until I'm "decarbed" then start adding your protein meats and eggs.  If I'm doing as low carb as I can, I don't introduce veggies for about 2 weeks.  I also use full fat cream and unsweetened almond milk (mixing with eggs, protein drinks, etc).

I think once you've totally decarbed you will feel so much better and will stay motivated to eat clean.  You will also find your hunger cravings will reduce significantly and (not sure what surgery you had) your pouch/sleeve will feel restriction again.

Now, with that said - I need to do this too!  :)

Thanks Jodi for your response and the help. I will try doing the same. I had the sleeve surgery almost two years ago. Not sure why it doesn't show up with my dr info but that' sok i guess

Eating clean to me is staying away from processed food.  That includes most or all breads, cereals, packaged food, juice, etc.  I do eat more veggies than Jodi does but otherwise, our ideas are pretty much the same.  I know you don't have a pouch but you might want to google 5 day pouch test.  You follow the same pattern that we did after surgery, each for a day.  That seems to help the folks who try it.

In a perfect world it would be me only  eating things I buy in the produce section, the meat section and the dairy section (with some whole grains, nuts and beans thrown in) but my world isn't perfect so for me it is avoiding things with sugar and gluten in them.

That does mean I rarely eat processed foods or frozen foods but there are really no absolutes in my world.  As long as it meets my initial guidelines of no sugar or gluten I've been known to have a frozen meal or processed foods, usually the "natural" or "organic" things I find.