A couple of weeks ago I signed a pledge for October Unprocessed. As the name suggests its a challenge to eliminate processed food products for the month. I’m pretty good about eating healthy food and cooking most of my food myself anyway, but with the new baby in the family I’ve been slipping lately. I really need a kick in the pants to get back into some of my healthy habits … and start losing this baby weight.
I was really unprepared to start today. I didn’t get a chance to get my grocery shopping done before the challenge started, so I had to figure out breakfast with what I already had on hand, which wasn’t much.
Well, first of all … let me back up … I think there could be many different definitions of “unprocessed” so I’ll start by defining my intentions for the challenge. The official website suggests going by the “kitchen test”, basically meaning that if it could be created in your own kitchen with whole food ingredients it is allowed. So even though some of the food items maybe be packaged and sold in the grocery store, because they contain only whole food ingredients they are acceptable. Hummus would be an example. Obviously some reading of labels will be necessary.
The challenge also suggests defining your own exceptions to the challenge. It doesn’t have to be an all or none thing. The point is to make progress and set intentional exceptions (if any) before the challenge begins. My intentional exception to the challenge is for eating out. While I will try to make smart food choices in restaurants throughout the month, I’m not going to get caught up on every single ingredient I order and whether or not it’s “clean”. My other intentional exception will be for a camping trip that I’m going on at the end of the month. Again, I will try to make smart choices, but I can almost guarantee it won’t comply 100%. I mean … you can’t do camping without S’mores. Amiright?!
Breakfast today, with what I had on hand already was: 3 egg frittata with Aidell’s Chicken Apple Sausage (clean) and onions and peppers. An apple on the side.
After breakfast I finally got my weekly grocery shopping done, and stocked up on clean ingredients so hopefully the rest of the week won’t be a problem. I threw together a quick late lunch when I got home.
Baked Tilapia, Roasted Balsamic Broccoli (a new fave!) and Quinoa & Kale. The Quinoa and Kale is a frozen packaged product from Costco and is clean according to the “Kitchen Test”: Organic White Quinoa, Organic Kale, Organic Red Quinoa, Organic Garlic, Organic EVOO, Sea Salt, Organic Black Pepper.
Dinner will be Lemon Thyme Baked Chicken with Curry Vegetables. Do those 2 flavors even go together?! .. I have no idea. Truth is I signed up for Emeals last week, and I’m letting them do the work for me. They create my weekly meal plan and grocery list, they give me the recipe and I just follow it. It takes all the thinking out of the process. I did Emeals a few years ago and really enjoyed it, but I started wanting to explore different recipes on my own and cook what I wanted instead of following a specific meal plan. Well, now that I have the baby I don’t have time for all that anymore. I want someone to tell me exactly what I’m eating, what to buy and how to make it. I’m a week in and so far I’ve liked everything on their Clean Eating plan. Hopefully with that secret weapon I’ll be able to complete this challenge with no trouble.
Eat to Live, Live to Run 