My Fruitive Challenge Diet: Day One!

I’m excited to begin my Fruitive Challenge today! It’s a big leap of faith because I had never imagined myself committing to a 100% Whole Foods Plant Based diet! But here I am doing it. I thank my brother Gregg for recruiting and motivating me to give it a try. He’s been eating this way for several years now and he looks much healthier than I do. Here he is advertising his restaurant, Fruitive, on Instagram.

Here’s the catch though, for the first two months of the diet, I’m also committed to eating SOS free diet, which means no added salt, oils, or sugar in the food I consume. I have been pretty worried about that part of the plan because I love my salt, oil, and sugar, but I have to say that I had a really good first day of it. I ate fresh fruit for breakfast, rice and salad for lunch, and a rice and beans bowl for dinner. The trick for me is to add a variety of no salt seasonings to taste and to toss in a mix of vegetables including avocado.

I had one mishap worth mentioning though: I popped two big crunchy macadamia nuts into my mouth while driving my grandma home after visiting tulip gardens in Holland, Michigan. I stopped chewing the nuts a couple of seconds after tasting the sea salt. I calmly and safely pulled over where I could spit it out into bushes behind a nearby Subway, then rinsed my mouth out with bottled water. That was a close one. 

I know that a mess-up like that now and then is inevitable and also not a big deal, but I’m going to make it a big deal—in good fun— because this is a Challenge, a Fruitive Challenge! And I really do want to prove to myself and my family that I’m up for this challenge. I can do this! I am doing this! 

My sweet 91 year old grandma understood. She said she believes in me and that she knows I can do it too, but she’ll just watch from the sidelines because at her age she’s happy with her diet just the way it is. I’ll show you her menu sometime at her retirement community.

In addition to eating healthy, I’m also committed to completing a self-imposed daily checklist that includes the following: no screen time in bed, 6+ hours of sleep, daily weigh-in, brushing and flossing twice daily, 6,500+ steps daily, hydrating with 32+ oz of filtered water, blogging each day, and reading or listening to inspiring books. I have other habits I’d like to add, but this list feels about right for me at this time.

I started listening to the audiobook of Atomic Habits by James Clear today. It’s great! It’s so relevant to kicking off my new healthy adventure. I’ll write about it some this week.