Day 0: Preparing for the Start of the Clean Eating Challenge

Helllooooo and welcome to Day 1 of my clean eating challenge!!! I fully expect to not be so cheery as these two weeks of clean eating progresses. I’ve been known to experience some hangry episodes and they aren’t pretty. I believe I’ll be relatively okay, but I’m only human, known to experience cravings of fried chicken and a really well put together burrito bowl.

Today is day 1 and I’ll be having a smoothie, a salad, some roasted chicken, and more today, but yesterday was Day 0 and I’m going to tell you about it. After spending the previous two days confining myself to bed with the flu, I pulled myself together and made sure I looked somewhat human before going to Whole Foods for what was perhaps the biggest produce-buying adventure of my life. Seriously, the produce section was my very first stop and by the time I dropped the last item in my cart – bananas – I barely had room for anything else. (The Whole Foods shopping carts are pretty miniature though, aren’t they??)

Halfway through loading my cart full of produce, I had an insane desire for the hot bar, which made it hard to concentrate as I used and confused perhaps 50 plastic produce bags for all the different items I needed to buy before actually going into other areas of the store. (Hey, they are recyclable!!!) (And, in the end, I did get some macaroni, meatballs, and arroz con pollo, delicious)

Anyway, in case you are just tuning in, I’m following BuzzFeed’s Clean Eating Challenge. After what was most definitely the busiest year of my 30 years of life, I needed a clean eating plan that would tell me, step-by-step, what to do and when to do it. The rules on this challenge are simple, kinda….

• No coffee and no booze. The coffee isn’t such a big deal to me, but I need would really like some red wine. It’s only two weeks…it’s only two weeks…it’s only two weeks…
• Drink at least 60 ounces of water per day. This is going to be the most difficult thing ever. I am the worst at drinking water. As in, when I drink even half that required amount, it’s an improvement from my norm.

And it’s important to prep meals, too. Without this detail, it’s inevitable that I’ll fail as I rush out of the house to work or need to get ready for an outing with a friend and in either case, don’t have time to cook. When I got home from grocery shopping, I prepped as much as I could, which included freezing some meats and then creating prep bags for two weeks worth of smoothies.

I’ll be sharing my experience on this clean eating challenge every other day. Tune in Tuesday to see how today and Monday went!!

What are you doing to restart yourself in the new year? Tell us all about it!