Clean Eating Challenge

A week ago I began a seven day “clean eating challenge”—and I survived! I pledged to eat nothing processed or artificial for one week. I admit I went into it a little blind. It wasn't until a friend asked for my definition of “non-processed” that I began to explore what clean eating really means to me.  

One definition I found said that any food that can reasonably be made in a home kitchen is not processed. Another describes it as foods that contain 5 or fewer ingredients.  I guess for me I just wanted to stick with foods that contain real ingredients and not “products”.  So any foods that contained additional additives I did not recognize were not allowed.  I also wanted foods as close to their natural form as possible. So honey and agave were OK but white sugar and corn syrup were off limits. Whole grains were fine but nothing made with refined white flour.  I wanted food from nature not from a lab!

It honestly wasn’t as hard to eat real food as I thought it would be but I’m certain that is because I have fresh food literally growing outside my front door. (I love it when I can use the word “literally” and mean it!). I also ordered a Bountiful Basket so I had all kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables on hand which really helped me stick to my resolve. I love to cook so it was actually rather fun to explore new recipes and adapt old favorites. I made my own almond milk from scratch when I realized the milk in my fridge had the word “palmitate” in the ingredient list (what the heck is that?!).  I even turned some of that almond milk into a chocolate frozen treat. (It did NOT taste “exactly” like a Wendy’s Frosty as the internet recipe promised it would but it was still pretty tasty!)  I julienned a zucchini from my garden to make veggie “noodles” and served it with an amazing oven roasted tomato sauce made with my Blendtec. Super yummy!  I realized that I actually prefer the taste of brown rice over white rice I just don’t usually plan ahead enough to account for the slightly longer cook time.

The whole experience was not without its challenges; it was a clean eating “challenge” after all.  The first few days I had a really bad sugar withdrawal headache.  And the soda cravings nearly did me in a few times. It was also kind of a pain to have to plan ahead for every meal—especially lunch. Eating right takes so much more effort!  Grocery shopping took more time because I stopped to read every label.  It was actually extremely eye-opening to really consider how much of what is sold in the average American grocery store as “food” is really just junk! 

This was such a great learning experience for me and I’m so glad I did it. Overall I feel pretty good. I even lost a few pounds without counting a single calorie or carb! I honestly don’t plan on keeping my diet quite this strict all the time but I feel like I now have a better understanding of how I can improve the dietary habits of my entire family. I learned that I can definitely do better than I’ve been doing and it won’t be as hard as I thought!