What nelie said - it's an eating style that evolves. I would have gone nuts if I tried to do it all at once.
I'd do some reading and start making one change at a time. Make a menu that includes some "superfoods" to start with. Add one or two things a week. Baby steps.
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What do I do with things like peanut butter, ham, white potatoes, fiber one bars, and sugar free fudge pops. How do these things fit in? Or do I say good bye?
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To your specific question: I try to eat whole foods / clean foods as much as possible and here's how *I* handle those things (everyone is different and others might have different opinons):
Peanut butter - I eat natural fresh peanut butter that I get from Whole Foods all the time. I don't think you need to eliminate pb from a healthy diet. It's full of protein and good fats.
Ham - can be very salty, especially processed ham. I eat pork all the time, and ham (like Honeybaked ham) on special occasions. I try not to eat deli ham just because of the sodium and nitrates in it. When I can find brands that are nitrate free, I'll sometimes get that.
White potatoes - I think these get a bad rap from all the low-carb diets out there. Potatoes are amazingly healthy items as long as you don't pile them with butter, sour cream, etc. A medium (about 150g) baked potato with the skin is chock full of vitamin c, potassium, folic acid, b12, and even 2g of protein. All for 120 calories. I often have a baked potato for lunch, topped with steamed veggies or shredded pork loin or something like that. Yummy, healthy stuff.
Fiber one bars and sugar free fudge pops - Truthfully I consider these junk. I don't eat processed "bars" of any kind. I don't think they provide enough nutritional bang for the calories and they're full of chemicals. Every once in a while I'll have a Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich, but I try to stay away from them.
One of my non-whole-foods things is that I will use artificial sweetener every once in a while. I use Splenda to sweeten my yogurt in the mornings and sometimes in my oats. I'm lucky in that I tend to not crave sweet things, so it's not something that I use very often. When I bake I use real, organic cane sugar, rather than processed white sugar or artificial sweetener. I'd rather eat less of something sweetened with real sugar than more of something filled with chemicals.
Hope that helps a bit. I'm by no means the expert on whole eating / clean eating that some of the women around here are ... but I'm learning my way.
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