Days 5 & 6 Recap of the BuzzFeed Clean Eating Challenge

This is the recap of days 5 and 6 of my clean eating challenge. See prep day and Days 1 and 2 and Days 3 and 4.

With each passing day, this clean eating challenge keeps getting easier to deal with! I’m happy to report that as I write this (Saturday morning), I’m a week in! Only one more week to go. I’ve started getting a little more lax, but not by much at all. It’s hard to be so regimented when some produce is starting to go bad in the fridge and I had to throw out a whole container of molded blackberries. (Harrumph.) So just call me ‘substitutes ‘r us’.

Ps: I really want Karen’s butternut squash curry and this may very well be the first meal I make when the BuzzFeed Challenge is over. Yum!

Here’s how days 5 and 6 went down:

Day 5: Thursday Breakfast
Cauliflower Omelet

Well lordy be, if this wasn’t the best breakfast so far! Roasted cauliflower is amazing. Omelets with these little florets in it is even better than amazing. After all, who doesn’t love veggies and eggs for breakfast? This omelet sustained me until lunch, but then again, eggs usually do. Although I remembered I have snacks in my desk drawer and they’ve been taunting me ever since.

Day 5: Thursday Lunch
Quinoa-Fennel-Blueberry Salad with Mint & Lime

Yeahhh this wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t imagine eating a fennel salad, blech. Instead, I had a cup of roasted chicken breast, alongside an arugula, blueberry, and chickpea salad with just some apple cider vinegar for the dressing. I thought it was a fair substitute, although it put me under my caloric goal for the day so I ended up having extra snacks at night.

Day 5: Thursday Snack
Carrots with Hummus

My new favorite snack! ….which is strange considering I used to hate carrots.

Day 5: Thursday Dinner
Simple Roasted Salmon with Green Beans & Lentils

It was an exciting night in my house because I love salmon. And I’ve said how great the lentils are. Unfortunately, my bag of raw green beans from Whole Foods was all going bad and making me angry so I had to use a can of green beans. A CAN! Ughhhhh.

Day 5: Thursday Night Snack
Blueberries with Almonds

Blueberries, almonds, and my extra snack: carrots and hummus. A good night was had by all and I went to bed completely full.

*****

Day 6: Friday Breakfast
Chia Seed Pudding with Mango and Pistachios

Oh my goodness, no. This was even worse than the overnight oats! How is that possible? I don’t even know.

Maybe if the almond milk was sweetened, it would’ve been better, but I’ll never know because I don’t plan on making this watery grossness again. I think it was more solid before I packed it for work and opened it at my desk, but even so, the flavor was so unfulfilling that I’m staying far away from anything like it for the rest of my life.

Funny, but I had a feeling about it so I packed a clementine so tide me over. I busted that thing out as soon as I put away the pudding, which was all done with rapid speed.

Day 6: Friday Lunch
Arugula Salad with Salmon, Green Beans, and Dijon Vinaigrette

YESSSSS lunch was finally here! Gobble gobble oink oink. Ever heard of gone in 60 seconds? It’s not only about a car movie.

Day 6: Friday Snack
Carrots & Zucchini with Hummus

I finished all of the lemon hummus I had been eating and opening up the regular hummus. Even though I love hummus and could really eat it every single meal, the original flavor is so inferior to the lemon, and so my snack was lacking today.

Also, because of my lackluster (gross) breakfast, I had half this snack before lunch and the other half after lunch. Splitting my snack up helps curb my bored snacking habit.

Day 6: Friday Dinner
Black Bean Chili with Greek Yogurt and Zucchini Ribbons

(via BuzzFeed because I ate too fast to take a picture, but it was this pretty!!)

My favorite meal so far! It’s just the kind of meal I would’ve eaten before this clean eating challenge. The big thing with me is that for anything to truly work, I have to enjoy what I’m eating. If I make a dinner that doesn’t taste good (and I hate when that happens for multiple reasons), I have a delicious snack to make up for it.

I doubled the recipe so my husband could have some (spoiler alert: he loved it!), and skipped the Greek yogurt. As for the zucchini noodles, well, I wish I made more of them. A++

Day 6: Friday Night Snack
Blackberries with Pistachios

Instead, I had hummus with pita chips and some blueberries. Went to bed full and happy!

Are you doing your own clean eating challenge, BuzzFeed or otherwise? Let me know how it’s going in the comments!