Brandon - The Everything Eating Clean Cookbook

THE

EATING CLEAN
COOKBOOK

Dear Reader,

We all strive to be healthy, fit, and live the best lives we possibly can. Yet busy days of full-time jobs, carpools, homework, deadlines, and household chores leave little spare time to prepare delicious, homemade, healthy meals, right? Wrong! Ive compiled 300 recipes in this book that will show you how easy it can be to live a lifestyle that is nutritionally clean, easy, and packed with fabulous foods that can keep you satisfied throughout the day.

As a busy mom, I know how hard it is to get everything done and still create delicious and nutritious meals! I am a certified personal trainer (CPT) and a certified fitness nutrition specialist (CFNS), but my credentials as a busy mom, athlete, and normal everyday person trying to live the healthiest life possible are just as important. Thats why these recipes contain ingredients you can find at your local grocery store, and steps that are easy to follow. If you want you and your family to start eating healthier, you have to start somewhere. How about here? How about now?

I hope you enjoy these delightfully delectable meals as much as we do, and I wish you the best on your journey to a healthier you!

Welcome to the Series! Series!

These handy, accessible books give you all you need to tackle a difficult project, gain a new hobby, comprehend a fascinating topic, prepare for an exam, or even brush up on something you learned back in school but have since forgotten.

You can choose to read an Everything book from cover to cover or just pick out the information you want from our four useful boxes: e-questions, e-facts, e-alerts, and e-ssentials. We give you everything you need to know on the subject, but throw in a lot of fun stuff along the way, too.

We now have more than 400 Everything books in print, spanning such wide-ranging categories as weddings, pregnancy, cooking, music instruction, foreign language, crafts, pets, New Age, and so much more. When youre done reading them all, you can finally say you know Everything

PUBLISHER Karen Cooper
DIRECTOR OF ACQUISITIONS AND INNOVATION Paula Munier
MANAGING EDITOR, EVERYTHING SERIES Lisa Laing
COPY CHIEF Casey Ebert
ASSISTANT PRODUCTION EDITOR Jacob Erickson
ACQUISITIONS EDITOR Lisa Laing
DEVELOPMENT EDITOR Laura M. Daly
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Ross Weisman
EVERYTHING SERIES COVER DESIGNER Erin Alexander
LAYOUT DESIGNERS Colleen Cunningham, Elisabeth Lariviere, Ashley Vierra, Denise Wallace

Visit the entire Everything series at www.everything.com

THE

EATING CLEAN
COOKBOOK

INCLUDES:
Pumpkin Spice Smoothie Garlic Chicken Stir-Fry
Tex-Mex Tacos Mediterranean Couscous
Blueberry Almond Crumble and hundreds more!

Britt Brandon, CFNS, CPT

To my wonderful husband, Jimmy, and my beautiful children,
Lilly, Lonni, and our newest on the way: I have you to thank
for making my life an absolute dream come true and for
showing me the true meaning of life every single day!

I would like to thank, first and foremost, Lisa Laing, my editor at Adams Media, for being the best teacher, having faith in me, and giving me this incredible opportunity.

Thank you to all of my wonderful family members who have been so supportive and proud throughout this process. Special thanks to my mom for showing me the importance of faith; my dad for teaching me to never give up; my Miss Pam for always being positive and honest; and my brother, Neal, for being my absolute favorite training partner and most challenging competitor yet.

To my amazing husband, Jimmy, who is my best friend, my biggest supporter, and the absolute love of my life: Your unwavering support and faith in me to achieve my dreams makes me love you even more! Thank you for taste-testing everything over all of these years and being wonderfully honest. I love you so much and feel lucky to be by your side each and every day through this wonderful life weve built together!

And, for my amazing children, Lilly, Lonni, and our newest little one on the way, I thank you for absolutely everything and, yet, could never thank you enough! You make me want to be a better person, to strive to be the best I can be every day, and you are my daily reminder that life is a blessing to never be taken for granted. You have given me a better understanding of what is truly important in life, a different perspective on the world I hope to never lose, and a love that I can compare to nothing else. I love you more than anything, and I thank you for making life more amazing, each and every day!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

The standard American diet (perhaps appropriately known by its acronym, SAD) is turning the United States into one of the unhealthiest nations in the world. Children, young adults, mature adults, and the elderly are all suffering the consequences of poor diets packed with dangerous preservatives, sugars, sodium, and synthetic additives created to preserve and prolong shelf lives and improve taste with minimized expenses. With the prevalence of fast-food options like prepackaged frozen meals, to-go boxes, and drive-through bags that cut time and offer on-the-go alternatives, the average American consumer receives little quality nutrition and rarely, if ever, consumes fresh ingredients.

Skipping breakfast, or not eating at all until dinner, has become the norm for many: A fast-food sandwich is considered balanced because it has meat, lettuce, tomato, cheese, and a bun, and a weeknight dinner that requires little more than peeling back a film and popping it into a microwave oven has become commonplace in households across America. While quick and easy, the dangers from these diets are never-ending and extremely unhealthy, and thats exactly what the clean lifestyle strives to simplify.

Its time to get back to basics literally! One of the main issues that plague Americas health is the overwhelming amount of processed ingredients in the foods that make up the daily diet. When looking at a package of candy, a batch of fast-food fries, or a meal served from a microwave-safe package, its hard to determine the origins of the ingredients or how these foods were produced. Conversely, by looking at a salad, a grilled fillet of fish, or a plate of stir-fried vegetables, its quite easy to determine where the ingredients came from. Put simply, this is the goal of clean eating: to eat foods that can be easily traced back to their origins in nature.

In order to function properly, the body requires proper nutrition from the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients derived from the proteins, carbohydrates, and fats in the foods we eat. In order to function