BuzzFeed Clean Eating Challenge: Days 1 & 2

Hellooooooooo!

So as you know if you've been reading this blog I struggle to feed myself. I have the eating habits of a teenage boy and have most recently become mildly addicted to Airheads, the super sugary candy. Last week when I saw this post by BuzzFeed I thought to myself, "Hey, this can solve both my problems. It tells me what to eat so I don't need to figure it out and it should help me to eat healthyish!". And so I embarked on the challenge.

With this plan they have your grocery lists planned out and spread over the two weeks so on Saturday I went grocery shopping for week one. Then I literally became invested in this challenge. Holy poop! Have you ever bought raw almond butter? Not cheap. However between my normal grocery shopping and eating out, the amount of money I spent on groceries was about the same as my normal overall food spending. It's just normally more spread out and easier to not notice how much I'm spending haha. Saturday also involved prep for the smoothie packs of the week and freezing some of the meats I had bought.

Then came Sunday.....Day One.

How it all was supposed to look, my pictures are below

It started off with a kale banana smoothie. Of which I had exactly 3 painful gulps of. I could taste the green. So. Nasty. Instead I had an apple, I figured that was a good trade off.

Just looking at it is making me cringe

Then I went on pinterest in my morning haze and saw all these tasty tasty desserts. And I really wanted chocolate chip cookies. So I made myself some brownie batter. I rationalized this by saying that cheating on the first day wasn't nearly as bad as cheating half way through. At this point my body is still used to eating crap.

Then came along lunch and the shaved asparagus salad. I was intrigued by this so went in with some speculation but mostly curiosity. To prepare it you shave the asparagus stalks with a vegetable peeler to make like asparagus noodles and then sautee them with some shallots before adding that all to a bed of arugula with tomatoes, feta, and the juice of one lemon. Then you top the whole deal off with two fried eggs. Interesting, right?

Well it wasn't bad. I ate most of it but then became mostly full and kinda bored. I definitely ate the egg and feta, the asparagus and arugula not so much.

Without the egg

With the egg

Not a horrible lunch overall so it gave me hope for dinner. Thankfully the afternoon snack was just carrots and hummus. Nice, normal, and something I've had before. No cheating in between lunch and dinner!

Dinner had me highly nervous. Kale, quinoa, chicken all with an orange vinaigrette. At this time I was still burping up green flavor from the failed breakfast smoothie. But I knew if all else failed I would be happy with the chicken and quinoa. 

The quinoa all kinda fell to the bottom. There was much more than what is pictured here.

The dinner wasn't too bad! I kinda had to power through the kale to start because I could tell if it got cold or if I lingered on it for too long I wouldn't finish. But once that was out of the way I got to enjoy my chicken and quinoa! With a very slight orange flavor thanks to the vinaigrette. First meal where I cleaned out the bowl and it gave me hope for the rest of the week as I had now eaten most of my kale supply. 

After dinner it was time to prep the breakfast for day two. Overnight oats which consisted of greek yogurt, almond milk, honey, chia seeds, and blueberries. Doesn't sound too bad right? I'll let you know how it went at the beginning of day two....

Well as you can see from the summation picture at the the beginning of this day, there was supposed to be a snack on the evening of day one of a sliced pear with almond butter. Instead I had ice cream. I'm a horrible rule follower and mint chocolate chip just sounded good. I'll have the pear another night....maybe.

DAY TWOOOOOO

The day began with the product of my overnight oats. Sounded not bad. Tasted like glue. I should have smooshed the blueberries the night before so their flavor could get involved in the overnight party but that's not what the picture looked like so that's not what I did. So much regret. I am open to trying this again with more fruit interaction. 

So so so so so so nasty. I only had one bite.

Since I was already at work by the time I had sampled this (I normally have a yogurt first thing at work) so for breakfast I grabbed a Fiber One bar from the snack closet. And this was also the point at which I decided this "clean eating challenge" was going to become a "clean eating suggestion/attempt" because I have a snowball's chance in hell of doing this if I deny myself the occasional Hershey kiss. So since I've bought the food and am invested in the produce I will make all the meals. I still accomplish my original intention of eating healthier and not needing to think about meals for two weeks. I may not finish the meals but I will try them. Hopefully along the way I find new things that I like! 

So with that new outlook I embarked on lunch. Leftover kale and quinoa with thinly sliced fennel root, chickpeas, shaved parmesan, and the leftover orange vinaigrette. It was intended to be eaten cold but I found it more palatable (the kale anyways) when I popped it in the microwave for a little bit. 

Not as much quinoa this time :(

I ate probably just over half of it before I became uninterested again. I'm pretty sure whoever designed this is an enemy of flavor. Sooooooo I went and got fried rice from Panda Express. Not my proudest moment but that was so good rice. 

The snack this afternoon was supposed to be a tomato/feta/balsamic vinegar salad  but the tomatoes I had were a little overripe and wouldn't hold up on their own as the tomatoes in the summation picture do. So again I had carrots and hummus. Maybe I'll have the tomatoes another day. 

Dinner was Napa Cabbage Wraps and was actually rather good! I think this is something that I can put into my regular rotation of things to make. Uses leftover chicken and is very easy! And it's pretty! The innards to the "wrap" was leftover chicken, mango, avocado, tomato and basil with a lime vinaigrette all cut up small and tossed together kinda like an extra chunky salsa with no spice. Then you spoon that into napa cabbage leaves that serve as like a boat of leaf to eat out of. 

yum yum yum yum yum yum

I ate these while sitting out of my patio this evening. It was a marvelous day and something so fresh and tasty I thought should be eaten outside. I was very satisfied with the dinner today and it gives me hope for the rest of the challenge. 

Nigh time snack today is an orange. I haven't had it yet. I may have ice cream again. WE SHALL SEE!!! (I'm totally having ice cream)

I plan on posting semi-daily about how this goes. In addition to eating better hopefully this gets me back to blogging better! 

And since you've stuck around and read for this long you get to see this gem of a car that I saw in the Walmart parking lot on Saturday. Much more glittery in person. 

pure sophistication