October Eat Clean, Drink Sober Challenge #OurOctoberChallenge

Today is a new day, it’s a new month! Today is October 1st, 2013. Today is the first day of my “October Eat Clean Drink Sober Challenge”.

I know, I know, AHHHHHH. I’m thinking the same thing too. BigBear and I have decided to try a somewhat clean 30 day eating/drinking challenge for the month of October. Hopefully this will make us both feel better and I’m sure it will do our bodies some good. I say somewhat because, well… because I’m sure I’m going to slip up at some point.

My friend Anne told me about this October Eat Clean, Drink Sober Challenge last week, it’s a challenge that she did with friends last year and loved the results. After thinking it over for a little while I brought the idea to BigBear. I just knew that he’d shoot it down in a heart beat, but still I was ready to fight my case. I never in a million years thought that BigBear would ever agree to something like this so I was surprise when he was on board with it!

So what are we actually doing? The answer is kind of simple. We’re going to be eating better for the whole month. Really, really kicking our butts in gear and paying attention to what’s going into our bodies.

Our Haul from the store last night

Not to mention, we leave for Hawaii in 121 days! I mean I know that’s a little ways away but it’s coming!!! I want to feeling amazing when we leave on that plane!

I suppose you can really make up your own rules for the challenge, because I don’t have a handbook or rule book for this kind of thing haha.

Here are our rules for this month:

• No Eating Out!! — This includes no take out obviously
• No Alcohol
• No Soda
• Read Labels!!  Stay under 5 ingredients on that label! 
• Meals should be homemade with real ingredients! (NO boxed meals here)
• If you mess up, don’t give up and get back on track with the next meal! 

It may not be the “correct” clean eating program, but it’s ours for this month! 🙂 Most all boxed, processed foods are being cut out but some things like Peanut Butter and Jelly, Bread and Ham for Sandwiches are being allowed in our challenge BUT I’m going for the natural versions and wheat and grain bread instead of white!

We’ll end the challenge on Halloween!! Perfect day to celebrate and give in to treats in my opinion! haha

I’ll be blogging about our challenge and posting recipes that we’re working on and trying this month! Clean, Healthy cooking (and baking) is going down in my kitchen all month!

So here’s a run down of my food for today:

Breakfast:

Rye and Hemp Cereal
Vanilla Almond Milk
1 strawberry, sliced

Attune Foods sent me the Rye and Hemp Cereal to try out.

I liked it and it’s only ingredients are: Whole Rye Kernels, Whole Hemp Seed, Salt and Barley Malt.

But now with the vanilla almond milk I really LOVE it. Almond milk, let me talk about this for a second. I wasn’t sure that I was going to like this at all. Anne insisted that I get it though and have it with my cereal instead of regular milk. I literally cringed as I put it into my cart yesterday. I don’t know why, it just sounds weird to me. But after having it with my cereal this morning, I’m 100% ok with it now. It was sweet and creamy; it added the perfect amount of sweetness to my cereal.

Lunch and Work day snacks:

Lunch:

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich
— Smucker’s Natural Strawberry Jelly
— Natural Jif Creamy Peanut Butter

 I picked these out because of the labels. (Actually I had already been buying this Peanut Butter for a while so I just needed some better Jam/Jelly for my sandwiches)

See, 5 or less items for each one on the ingredients list and they taste just as good as what I normally get. (Better actually).
For the bread, I picked up this Harvest 9 Grain and Seed Bread.

I’m going to be looking at some more options for breads (Anne told me about a vegan one at Sam’s but my membership expired and I didn’t want to spend $40 to renew for a loaf of bread last night haha) But I think this is a better choice than white bread. Maybe. I think so 🙂

To go with lunch and for snacks later today,  I’ve got grapes, a banana and an apple. I’ve also got some Greek yogurt 🙂 Question for you! What’s the best Greek Yogurt that I can get? Do you think Chobani is a good choice? If not, what would you pick?

Tonight’s dinner will be veggie kabobs with homemade teriyaki sauce over quinoa. I know I’m going to love this, hopefully BigBear will too haha. We’ll see.

Want to join us? I’d love to have some support in this too haha. If you decide to do this with us, let me know! Share your tips, meals ideas and recipes with me! I’ll be using the hashtag #OurOctoberChallenge on my blog, instagram, facebook and twitter if you want to follow along! If you join along us the hashtag if you want so that I can see your awesome meals/idea too!

Ok It’s the 1st…. we’ve got 30 days… Let’s do this!!