Yesterday I spent a few hours trying to familiarize myself with the basics of Clean Eating. Its a term I have heard thrown around quite a bit on social media and all my friends who have dropped weight and adopted a serious healthy lifestyle swear by it. But what is clean eating? I always assumed it meant no fun, heavy veggies light on flavor. So skeptically I began to Google, right away I found a really user friendly site that broke clean eating down into really basic guidelines to help beginner get used to the idea of changing up their normal eating habits.

The Gracious Pantry not only has free printables of shopping lists, recipes and recipe substitutions but also gives an extensive list of articles and other websites where newbies to clean eating can do further research. Right away I was a little hesitant about clean eating; no flour, sugar or alcohol? Not that I use any of these things heavily but how is a regular 25 year-old girl supposed to survive without these things!?

I have committed to cutting out the easy things first and working my way up from there. I started by going to the grocery store and take a look at the labels on the items I commonly purchase…What I found was slightly terrifying. I maybe understood three or four ingredients within the dozen or so listed on every label.  For example the ingredient list on my breakfast bars, what is Yellow 5 Lake or Natural Flavor?

While shopping last night I tried to stick to the produce section as much a possible. I was disappointed when I saw even the fresh packaged chicken had quite a few added ingredients listed on its packaging. I am going to have to start saving a little better and start getting more of my meat fresh from the butcher. One of the items I was the most excited to try was PB2 Chocolate Peanut Butter Powder. It was one of the few packaged items I bought. I’m not a huge peanut butter fan but I’m hoping this will be a more healthy solution to my very active sweet tooth.

I can tell this is going to be a challenge for me, I attempted making lunches ahead of time and as I sit here attempting to eat one of these pre-made meals I can tell that I am going to need practice. I made Chicken with brown rice, carrots and peas. The chicken was easy to flavor but the texture of the rice carrots and peas is just a mushy flavorless mess. I will keep you all updated as I work to find recipes that are both healthy and satisfying.

A few other websites I checked out during my research were: