7-Day Clean Eating Challenge & Meal Plan (The First One)

Last updated on December 3rd, 2019 at 07:54 am

Switch things up and challenge yourself to eat healthy this week! No cheat meals, no slip-ups for just one week. I’ve also included a sample 7-day clean eating meal plan with a grocery list in case you want to use these.

Last Saturday I had my third time within a week having pizza. AAAAND lasagna for lunch. And we’re not talking sad lasagna, we’re talking cheesy fat lasagna.

It’s not a secret that pizza is the best thing that has happened to humanity and the world. Science can back this up, there are studies. Okay, there aren’t any, but we all know this. Just like we know that celery juice can heal anything (I’m sarcastic and it makes me sad that I have to say it, but what are you going to do).

So pizza + lasagna three times within a week. You know how that happens – it’s someone’s birthday, then you’ve got something else to celebrate and you don’t like wine or bear or vodka. And cake, well you will have cake as well.

Crappy food has made its way into my life since January and is now sitting there confidently, never moving its butt. “I’m not going anywhere” And I want to take it out.

Clean Eating Challenge Goal

So this week will be to get back on track and here’s the deal: I want to keep doing it every month. It will be a reminder in the first week of the month, that you need to take care of your health, no matter what is going on.

We’ll start cooking more, we’ll cut all the crap, the fluff in your diet and we’ll focus on what you actually need to have energy and feel great: nutrient-dense foods.

This challenge is great if you’re a beginner and just figuring out how to start eating healthy or if you want to lose weight and need a little push.

Best case scenario: you keep eating healthy after this week. But if you don’t and decide to have pizza or cookies – your body would at least have adapted to good food. This way, hopefully, you wouldn’t want to keep eating pizza or cookies every time.

Clean Eating Grocery List

Listen, when it comes to eating clean you want to focus on getting as many nutrients as you can from your food without overeating. So you need to eat a variety of good, natural foods.

You can download the clean eating grocery list for the sample meal plan here.

The majority of your diet should be, without a doubt, vegetables. Then come nuts, seeds, fruit, legumes. And then there are fatty fish, whole grains, lean protein, coconut oil and olive oil. And I’ve included some cheese, which you can totally leave out if you’re not eating dairy.

I like to keep at least 1-2 days plant-based or vegetarian. But that’s just a personal preference and you don’t need to do it if you don’t want to.

What Not To Eat?

Anything that has a lot of calories, but no nutrients or is just evil (like diet coke). No soda, no refined grains, unfortunately no pizza, no fruit juices, nothing with sugar, nothing processed. Between a turkey and turkey bacon, you take the turkey.

Sometimes processed foods don’t have more calories than unprocessed foods, but have added ingredients that are super harmful and you wouldn’t even want to touch with gloves. Got it? Go as unprocessed and unpackaged as possible.

7-Day Clean Eating Meal Plan

So this is a healthy meal plan, which pretty much describes how I want to be eating during the next week. To be honest I won’t be strict with it as I want to experiment with new recipes. No eating out and a lot of cooking, but I find it stress-relieving, so that’s ok.

You don’t need to follow this meal plan exactly, pick the meals you like, add other healthy meals you’ve already tried and experiment! Try something new.

To make this easier you might want to meal prep some parts of your meals or your entire meals before you start. I like to cook my quinoa, make tzatziki and hummus upfront, saves me a lot of time. That said: you can also buy the last two pre-made. Everything else I like to prepare fresh: salads, even fish or chicken – I just like the taste better and that’s the only way I can stick to eating healthy – when I eat food I enjoy.

It’s also helpful to make lunches and breakfast the night before (if possible – see notes in recipes how to do that).

You can download the grocery list for this meal plan here.

Now let’s get to the recipes: