Healthy Start 7 // Day 1

As promised, today starts our journey with Healthy Start 7, which I introduced as part of my New Year's Resolution series. Actually, we already did the challenge with pretty flying colors if I must say so myself. But today we start sharing it with you. Well, actually, I shared my first recipe to come out of this healthy eating challenge yesterday with some yummy Lemon Blueberry Quinoa Pancakes (that are GF & SF to boot!). You're going to want to try that one...and many of the other recipes that I created while on this cooking journey, PLUS all the recipes from the plan were excellent too!

What is Healthy Start 7? The main focus of this challenge was to eat healthy consuming mainly fruits/vegetables, the protein-packed grain alternative - quinoa, eggs, and beans/legumes, while completely removing all dairy, meats, grains, and junk/sugar/alcohol. There is also a spiritual degree to this process and it is encouraged to focus on scripture, prayer and worship during this time.

Why do this? This way of eating closely aligns with the Daniel Fast. (There are several variations of the plan out there.) The benefits of eating this way for a time are tremendous, in my opinion. Body, soul and spirit and all effected while on this plan. It is certainly healthy for bodies in obvious ways, it clears out the toxins and other unhealthy things we put into ourselves that effect our emotional/mental lives, and in we are surrendering our will and choices about food over to God, eating for health and not for indulgence.

In my final resolution this year I shared that eating healthier is a huge goal of mine. Starting the year off with the Healthy Start 7 way of eating was a great jump start to this goal getting to the next level. Here on the blog I'll share my recipes that came out of this journey as well as photos of many of the yummy and delicious recipes we made developed by the talented nutritionist - Jessica - over at Health + Happy blog.

While today is a Tuesday, you can start your Healthy Start 7 any day of the week. Just do it for 7 days. It helped me to look over everything, decide what I wanted to make and then put a grocery list together. That way I had everything I was going to cook for the week and it really helped me to keep from sticking to it.

So here's Day 1::

::Breakfast::

Healthy Start 7 was an omelet with peppers, onions and tomatoes (no recipe was provided).

If I was going to get my husband to eat this, I had to opt out of the tomatoes, although I love them. I added some of my own flavor and secret seasonings to this very similar to my Sage Scramble. Stay tuned for the official recipe...

::Lunch::

Lunch every day was a salad so I won't share all of my adventures with lunch. There were a few salad recipes included with the Healthy Start 7 recipes. I opted for my own since I really enjoy making beautiful salads. It's one of my things in the kitchen. One of my best girl friends begs me to make her salads...haha. I'll be sharing this *beaut* with you soon...

::Dinner::

Okay, our first Healthy Start 7 recipe. This was ah-mazing. I couldn't believe it didn't have any meat in it. And while my husband's first reaction was: "It'd be really great with some cheese or sour cream on it", which totally made me laugh because, if you recall, we were avoiding dairy. And if you knew my husband, he'd put cheese and/or sour cream on pretty much any stew-ish dish out there. However, he would've settled for my healthy version of sour cream - a mashed avocado - however, ours were not ripe yet. Hubby opted for this recipe to be a "keeper" even without the meat. This recipe was a major win in our house! Go make it!