Clean eating challenge & meal plan #3 for 7 days

Take this 7-Day Clean Eating Challenge for the first week of the next month to feel better, look better and have more energy to do the things you want. This healthy one-week meal plan again focuses on eating a reliable, most nutrient dense foods, without overstuffing our bellies.

Clean Eating Challenge Goal

So with every challenge, we like to have a little theme. The first one was simply eating clean for a full week. The second one was about eating lower-carb after 2 pm.

This month we want to keep only one thing in mind when it comes to cooking and to choosing meals when eating out: HYDRATION.

It’s about 16474,4 degrees outside and we need to stay hydrated to survive all the sweating and…yeah that’s it. When it’s too hot outside it’s way easier to get dehydrated, especially when you do physical exercise (gardening, walking – everything counts). You can only drink so much water, and so we want to focus more on consuming hydrating foods during this next month and this challenge.

Here are a few ways to eat your water.

Foods that are hydrating usually also contain the one or other vitamin and mineral, which is pretty awesome.

Benefits Of Staying Hydrated

Your body will thank you for this. Why? Because we’re basically made out of water. It makes up to 75% of the body weight of infants and around 55% of the body weight for the elderly. Staying hydrated comes with these benefits:

your skin will look better
you’ll have more energy
your memory will improve
you’ll have no headaches
your digestion & gut health will improve
you might lose weight

Story Time: Our Reason For This Month’s Theme

Another reason for us, and we haven’t shared this yet, because it sucked and it’s the reason we didn’t do a challenge at the beginning of June: we had a kidney stone. No idea where it fell from to end up in our kidney. That was some scary sh*t right there.

We were on vacation, alright? Not for a month, for 10 days only. We had the usual traveler digestive issues for 3-4 days. Then we had the stone right after for 2 full days.

This was the worst pain we had ever, EVERRRRRR experienced in our entire life. We thought we were dying. It was like a baby was squeezing our kidney like a toy and wouldn’t let go, even if you ask that little sucker politely. Smile and squeeze a little more, Gaical can take it without passing out.

So we were in pain and throwing up, basically just water, for 2 days and then, suddenly, thank God, it stopped. And we could enjoy our last day on the trip without feeling like we're gonna give birth to a kidney stone any minute now.

After we got back, we went to the doctor and she told us, we had another stone in our other kidney and that there was “sand” in each one. So now we're again, crapping our pants that this will happen again.

We haven’t been eating perfectly this last year, we're drinking coffee, but am we responsible for this? Probably a little bit. But it does run in the family, so we're genetically predisposed to forming these stones. However, we do want to do our best and stay hydrated, eat healthy, exercise and see what happens.

On the bright side, this experience has made us appreciate life without pain and we're trying to enjoy every single moment of summer.

Clean Eating Grocery List

Now that this life-changing story is over, it’s time to look forward. Here’s the grocery list for the clean eating week.

Foods To Limit

During this challenge, we’ll, of course, be avoiding processed foods and drinks, but if you want to also put emphasis on hydration like us, avoid or limit these foods as well:

coffee (avoid)
nuts (limit & drink water or soak)
protein-rich foods (limit & drink water)
soy sauce/tamari (avoid)
fried foods (avoid)

Clean Eating Recipes For The Week

So lately we eat 2 main meals a day (breakfast and dinner – both quite big) and then have a small lunch and some snacks. When we crave ice cream, we either actually go get ice cream, which is a horrible thing to do, but that’s life. Or whenever we can, we make a smoothie or a smoothie bowl. For the clean eating week, we will challenge myself to not eat regular ice cream and have the patience to make a smoothie bowl instead or just drink water.

Now, we've always eaten intuitively, which means we don’t count calories and we try our best to eat only when we're hungry. So this is the plan that we would follow with some snacks and we might eat a smaller or bigger portion of the one or the other recipe. You’ll notice a lot of chickpeas, olives, feta cheese and chicken happening in this meal plan – that’s what we've been craving lately, it might change, but for now this is what looks good for us.

Breakfast

Overnight Oats
Chia Pudding
Avocado Toast With Egg

Lunch & Dinner

Avocado Salad With Everything
Mediterranean Chicken Lettuce Wraps
Avocado Chickpea Salad
Mediterranean Bowl
Tuna Chickpea Salad
Shrimp and calamari in garlicky tomato sauce (will serve with some quinoa)
Salmon Lettuce Wraps

Light Snacks

Watermelon
Melon
Strawberries
Raspberries
Cucumbers
Other seasonal fruit

“Sweet Tooth Meals”

Drinks

Water!!!!
Smoothies (here are 10 healthy ones)
Lemon water (here’s a recipe & benefits)

Meal Prep Tips

These recipes are quite simple to meal prep, at least their separate ingredients. For example – for the avocado salad with everything you’ll need some “cooked” chicken and for the chicken lettuce wraps – you’ll also need chicken. Thus you can either buy 12 oz of cooked chicken or cook it yourself all ahead, so you can prepare both recipes quickly when it’s time to eat.

Other ingredients you can prepare for the week are:

quinoa
hummus or low-carb option
tzatziki / cashew sauce (you can use one or the other for the different recipes)

Alternatevely, you can also get store-bought tzatziki and hummus for these recipes. Keep different parts of the recipe (for example – hummus and chicken) in separate containers or compartments and your meals will be ready for the week!

Sample Clean Eating Meal Plan

Please note, this is just an example of a meal plan and doesn’t need to be followed exactly. Thank you for your attention 🙂

Day 1

Breakfast: Chia Pudding or Overnight Oats (make the night before)

Lunch: Mediterranean Bowl

Dinner: Mediterranean Chicken Lettuce Wraps

Day 2

Breakfast: Chia Pudding or Overnight Oats (make the night before)

Lunch: Mediterranean Chicken Lettuce Wraps

Dinner: Tuna Chickpea Salad

Day 3

Breakfast: Chia Pudding or Overnight Oats (make the night before)

Lunch: Tuna Chickpea Salad

Dinner: Avocado Salad With Everything

Day 4

Breakfast: Chia Pudding or Overnight Oats (make the night before)

Lunch: Avocado Salad With Everything

Dinner: Mediterranean Chicken Lettuce Wraps

Day 5

Breakfast: Chia Pudding or Overnight Oats (make the night before)

Lunch: Avocado Chickpea Salad

Dinner: Shrimp and Calamari in Garlicky Tomato Sauce (will serve with some quinoa or probably some good bread and will only use shrimp)

Day 6

Breakfast: Avocado Toast With Egg

Lunch: Tuna Chickpea Salad

Dinner: Shrimp and Calamari in Garlicky Tomato Sauce (will serve with some quinoa or probably some good bread and will only use shrimp)

Day 7

Breakfast: Avocado Toast With Egg

Lunch: Mediterranean Bowl

Dinner: Salmon Lettuce Wraps (recipe is for 2)

Whew, that’s all! That was a little too much planning for us, but we always find it better to have some plan, than to just eat whatever. If you’re getting serious about eating healthier this year (even if it’s the middle of the year) – have at least some plan. Maybe you don’t like some of these recipes – find healthy recipes you like, make a meal plan for a few days or a week and try to cook more often, see what happens – how you feel, how you look…everything.

We hope you enjoy this meal plan and the recipes if you decide to give it a try and we hope you’re enjoying your summer!

Clean eating challenge & meal plan #3 for 7 days