“Hi friends, how is your first week of the month going? How is it practicing being intentional this month? We took a rest day (minus writing down all our thoughts about IF) yesterday and it was incredibly freeing.

This week we want to share with you our second overall goal for the year – clean eating. For me, using the phrase “clean eating” as opposed to “healthy eating” helps me focus not on the vague idea of “healthy” but rather the specifics of what a changed diet will do for my body, externally and internally. Depending on my mood or the day, I can construe these ideas of health that are based entirely on what society defines it as. Usually this means I’m visualizing and setting a standard based on the front of magazine covers, Instagram influencers, and etc. While they may truly be living healthy lifestyles, I can easily get distracted by this visual of health and let it be the sole reason for why I’m changing my diet.* Instead of focusing on how healthy eating is actually affecting my physical body and how it looks and feels.

So I choose to focus on the phrase “clean eating.”

Clean eating looks different for everyone. It really depends on how your body responds to different foods and what helps your body feel its best. It’s not about cutting out all the usual culprits we generalize as “bad” and seeing how long you can last doing that. It’s about finding the balance in your diet, filling your diet with the foods that help your body feel and function well and giving space and kindness for the treats as well. 

I’m 100% definitely writing this as a reminder to myself as much as I’m writing to encourage each of you. It’s super easy for me to slip into a rigid mentality of clean eating and not leave any room for kindness when I slip up or when I’m having a day or for the treats that come with celebrations. It’s easy to internally judge myself for the slip up or the treat and/or to lose all discipline to continue choosing clean eating. Because if I slipped up once, then what’s the point? But if I want my clean eating to become a sustainable lifestyle and not just a month long stint, then I need to leave room for kindness and celebrations. 

I also need to remember that clean eating, especially if it’s not something I have been consistently acting on, comes with discipline and being intentional. Discipline to say “no” when I know I’m not choosing the treat for kindness or celebration. Intentionality to look ahead and say “This is what my month will look like and I can plan out when there will be celebrations and treats.” Discipline to say “no” now for the “yes” later. Intentionality in choosing the restaurants and coffee shops I suggest for meeting up with friends and family. Intentionality in looking up how to recreate recipes to fit my dietary needs. Intentionality in choosing to start clean eating, designating a start date, telling someone about it, and dedicating a little time to help pursue clean eating. 

Notes to myself and to you: it’ll take time and it’ll take a balance of kind discipline. But I know how my body has felt when I’ve been eating clean and I know it’ll be worth it. Especially if I know there’s kindness for slip ups, bad days and room for celebrations. 

To kick off my clean eating, I am doing the Whole30 starting February 10th. It’s the best way I’ve found for me to reground myself in the clean eating diet I know is best for my body. If you want to know more of my experience and why I’m a huge fan of it, I’ll be sharing the story later this week (sign up here for blog updates). 

I’ll be sharing tips for clean eating this week on social media and some of my favorite people I am inspired by for delicious foods. 

Thanks for being on this journey of being intentional with the rest of the community and me!”

Do you have a goal of clean/healthy eating? What are some of your tips? Favorite recipes? 

*diet is just the word we use to describe our typical eating habits and doesn’t always equate to an eating lifestyle with an end goal of changing one’s body.