Eating Clean

This week on the 15 Week Challenge, Amy challenged us all to eat "clean" for one day, and that day for me was Wednesday. I'm pleased to report that this didn't require any huge deviations on my part. I'm usually pretty good about eating whole foods, but I realized there are still a couple of "processed" things in my regular menu - namely Klondike Slim-A-Bears, Healthy Choice Fudge Bars and Larabars.

On Wednesday, the only one of those I ate was a Larabar. My friend Rachel introduced me to these bars a month or so ago when we went on a Costco excursion and she came skipping back to the cart with a bulk box of them, thrilled because they were so cheap compared to buying them individually. Here's the thing, though. They're not really all that processed. I ate an Apple Pie one as part of my snack on Wednesday.
Ingredients: dates, walnuts, unsweetened apples, almonds, raisins, and cinnamon. That's it. Even better is the Cherry Pie bar. Ingredients: dates, cherries and almonds. Also, it tastes exactly like cherry pie, which blows my mind.

It occurred to me about midway through the day - when I was at work with no camera - that I should really be taking pictures of my clean eating. But I didn't. However, I did take a picture of a lovely dinner I made last week, just because the colors were so pretty. Of course, vivid colors never really translate in my point and shoot, but here you go:
The dinner above is similar to what I ate Wednesday, just with asparagus rather than zucchini.

So, my menu for Wednesday:
Pre-Workout Snack:
1/3 Cashew Cookie Larabar (FYI, not enough to power me up for my hour-long workout. I got serious hunger pangs after I finished the weights and was 5 minutes into the elliptical. Then I fought off a headache for the rest of the day and finally took a migraine pill at about 7 PM. My body does NOT like exercising on low blood sugar)

Breakfast:
Smoothie with unsweetened Almond Breeze, strawberries, blueberries, plain Greek yogurt, whey protein.
3 scrambled eggs with feta cheese

Lunch:
2 pieces of baked chicken
Salad with romaine, parmesan and homemade balsamic vinaigrette

Snack:
Apple Pie Larabar
1 T. all natural peanut butter
1 oz cheddar

Dinner:
Salmon
Roasted zucchini and summer squash
Roasted broccoli

Evening Snack:
Popcorn popped on the stove in my Whirley-Pop

The popcorn may not be strictly "clean" either, although I think it should be okay, since I popped the kernels myself without any mysterious chemicals like you find in microwave popcorn. The popcorn is straight from the Whole Foods bulk bins.