I’ll be the first to admit that I generally don’t make the best food choices. It’s not like my diet is terrible, but it’s definitely lacking in the fresh vegetable department. We’re in a busy season of life (hubby and I work opposite shifts, we have an active toddler, I just started a small business, etc…) so it been easy to fall into the habit of reaching for convenience foods or things that are “grab and go.”

I started noticing recently that I felt tired and run down quite often, and it almost felt like my body was begging me to feed it some better fuel. I knew I wouldn’t be able to make a complete lifestyle shift overnight, but I decided to challenge myself to eat clean for 5 days. I didn’t read or follow any specific plan, I just decided just to eat “real food” for one work week.

I thought it would be fairly simple. I have a salad that I love to eat (minus the croutons during this experiment), so I knew that would be my go-to lunch. Breakfast was fresh fruit, turkey sausage, Larabars, or eggs. I planned out 5 dinner meals with healthy meats and veggies. I can do anything for 5 days, right?

Monday was easy. I snacked quite a bit on fresh fruit and felt pretty satisfied. I had a busy day at work Tuesday, and after work I rushed home to eat a quick dinner before going to an event at church. As I headed home around 8 PM, I felt so bad. My head hurt and I was so hungry! All I could think about was ice cream from Chick-Fil-A. I know, I’m weak. I managed to make it home (passing 2 Chick-Fil-A’s!) without giving in to that temptation, but as soon as I got home I popped some ibuprofen and washed it down with some sweet tea. The sweet tea was a conscious choice. After I blew it with the tea, I went ahead and had a chocolate chip cookie. Told you I’m weak. I went to bed feeling much better, though!

I’ve been learning lately to embrace that I can’t expect myself to achieve perfection in every single area of my life. It only took me about a day and a half to realize that my diet is most certainly not going to be perfect, and I’m okay with that. I stuck to the clean plan about 60% of the time for the remainder of the week. I managed to resist the free donuts and cake at work during the week, which was a major win for me. Although I skipped out on those things, I found that my body just craves some carbs, and I don’t seem to function too well without them. Although this little experiment wasn’t about weight loss, I did lose about 1 pound. Overall, it helped me to be more conscious of my food choices and to put more effort into making better choices, even if I can’t always make the best choices.

Stay tuned next week when I’ll share my favorite chocolate cake recipe! (Totally kidding about that, but I couldn’t resist!)