As with pretty much everything in the health and fitness world new terms and acronyms are invented daily to confuse you, the normal person.

When you're confused, you're more likely to buy the shiny, sparkly or best marketed product.  

The thing that promises you the results you desire in two simple steps.

1.  Buy product.

2. Get results.

It very rarely works that way and it's a fluke when it does.

'Eating Clean' is a term that has been used in the industry for a long time now, we've been using it at 'Team Achieve' for nearly 8 years.

It seems to have many different meanings from the ridiculously strict to the anything goes.

The ridiculously strict version of eating clean has even got its own eating disorder - orthorexia.  Where nothing passes your lips that isn't in its natural form, this can even be broken down into more extreme versions of only eating raw foods.

The anything goes method is more to do with whether the item is organic or not.  Have as many slices of cake as you want as long as they are organic type thing.

The 'Team Achieve' version of eating clean uses a little more common sense.

I believe that a majority of the food we eat should be as close to its natural state as possible.  Fresh vegetables, fruit, good quality meats etc.

I believe that we have lost touch with our food chain and by cooking meals from scratch, we start to understand more about our food and avoid the storm of chemicals and additives in processed foods.

I believe that we should focus on the quality of food rather than calories until the point that calories become important to measure, more on that tomorrow.

I believe that if you have a slice of cheesecake occasionally it's not going to make a massive difference to the results you achieve and could even boost them.

Food should be enjoyed, part of the enjoyment can start in the kitchen.  It's not a scary place, there is no need to fear it.

I meet lots of people who can't remember the last time they prepared anything from scratch.  In our parents time, everything would have been from scratch.

We can blame being busy but ultimately your body will thank you for making changes towards eating a more natural diet.

The most simple step to our common sense approach is eat less foods that have their own bar code and more that look like fruits and vegetables.

Darren 'mmmm cheesecake' Checkley