60 Days of Clean Eating Challenge

Today marks day 39 into a 60 day clean eating challenge I designed for myself. This isn’t the first time I’ve set myself a bit of a challenge like this, I’ve previously undertaken an elimination diet (which still has me gagging at the thought of white fish) and a Whole 30. This is the first time that a challenge has lasted longer than a month however, which I knew was going to be a big feat for me!

If you’ve been following along with my social media you may have seen a couple of brief mentions about the challenge but on the whole I’ve been relatively quite about the whole thing. I’m not really sure why as I’m sure there would be some people who are interested to learn more about how and why I decided to do this 60 day clean eating challenge.

Why I’m doing a 60 Day Clean Eating Challenge

I decided to do a 60 day clean eating challenge because I found myself eating far too much Christmas cake over the Christmas period! Yep it is all Christmas Cakes fault! I don’t usually eat a lot of sugary foods despite my serious sweet tooth. The excess of sugar over the Christmas period had me feeling a bit average and I really wanted to challenge myself.

It was in the first week of January that I was beginning to feel a bit average so I started thinking about the possibility of completing another Whole 30. I then decided that I didn’t want to be quite as strict as a whole 30, however I wanted to take some principals from it. I kind of liked the idea of doing paleo as well, however I don’t have any issues with some of the items which are restricted in a paleo diet – largely rice, oats, potatoes, dairy products and peanut butter.

I wanted to really challenge myself and I didn’t want to fall back on different variations of sugar that often fall into paleo style creations (rice bran syrup, maple syrup, coconut sugar, agave etc). I decided that 60 days would be a good length of time as it is only a little over 60 days until my birthday.

The ‘Rules‘ of the 60 day Clean Eating Challenge

I began the challenge thinking that I would count calories every day, however I soon got bored of that an I like to be able to eat intuitively compared to counting calories day in and day out. My 60 day clean eating challenge doesn’t really fit into any kind of ‘diet’ that is out there, hence calling it a 60 day clean eating challenge.

Essentially there are a number of food groups which are a big YES in this 60 day clean eating challenge and a number of types of food which are a NO.

No Items
Refined Sugar (I have also included maple syrup, rice bran syrup, agave and coconut sugar in this list even though they aren’t refined)
Artificial Sweetener
Gluten Containing Products
Takeaways (I mean typical deep fried takeaways here, pizza, fish and chips, burgers etc – Sushi is fine)

Some people have asked what I can eat and the list is surprisingly long even though when you first hear about a 60 day clean eating challenge you would think that there wouldn’t be much tasty food you can eat.

Yes Items
Meat
Eggs
Fruit
Vegetables
Rice
Oats
Peanut Butter
Sushi
BCAA
Dairy (milk, cheese, sour cream)
Oils (coconut, olive etc)

Two items in the above list technically shouldn’t be on the list as they contain a small amount of either sugar or artificial sweetener. Those two items are the sushi (sushi vinegar generally has some sugar in it) and BCAAs have a small amount of sucralose in it. However this is my challenge and these were my rules.

Next week I will write a post with some examples of exactly what I have been eating to prove to you that eating clean doesn’t need to be boring or tasteless.

Would you ever do a clean eating challenge like this? – Why/Why not? -Please leave a comment and let me know, I love hearing from you!

PSSST – Want to win a $25 Liquorland voucher? Come on over and check out my Partner Beach workout!