7 Day Clean Eating Challenge

Whew. What a week it's been. We just stumbled in the door, fresh back from our short little California rendezvous. It was a great time, quick though, and definitely a good decision.

After traveling for 24 hours+ hours, meeting with lots of people, exploring Biola's campus and the surrounding town, hanging out with super-cool friends, all within a 72-hour window, we are exhausted. And our diet has suffered quite a bit.

Since we gave up white flour, it's really helped us to think more about the foods we're putting into our bodies. For the last couple of weeks, we've been pretty slack on the white flour because of the amount of outings and celebrations we've encountered recently. So we're starting it up again this week, full out.

Trying out different healthy-eating challenges and practicing different methods of sneaking in good-for-you foods has always been helpful for me-- it kind of spices things up and gives me something new to try. Shape Magazine has proposed a 7 Day Clean Eating Challenge, and I have committed to doing it! The rules are simple:

1. Eat only whole foods: i.e. things that you recognize and would keep in your kitchen. So, incorporating more foods in their whole form oatmeal and blueberries, rather than a pre-packaged or box-mix blueberry muffin.

2. Keep meals simple: don't over do it with the amount of ingredients you use in a meal.

3. Eat slower.

4. Eat regularly: not going more than 4 hours between eating, and not skipping any meals.

5. Listen to your body: eat when you're truly hungry, stop when you're satisfied. The challenge doesn't limit portions, but rather encourages giving your body what it needs, and not giving it what it doesn't need.It's simple enough. Shape's website gives a lot of great ideas of things to eat during the challenge, and I even found a clean-eating meal calendar, which I'm definitely going to use! It's so much easier to do these things when your meals are planned out. Then you can't cave as easily in moments of temptation (do I hear a sermon coming on??)

We already incorporate a lot of these principles into our daily diet, so just as a way to purge from the airport fast-food we ate this week (plus some we had a couple days prior to that), I'm gonna give this a go this week. And, Lord-willing, I'll blog about it.

the mrs.