Hello? Anybody still here?

Traditional Nicoise Salad

Wow, I forgot this was here!  I started this (second) blog a while back as a place to record my thoughts on spiritual things.  Then I guess I wandered back to my "home" blog and stopped using this one!
So, hi!
What brings me back here to Better Things, is that my family is currently in pursuit of...better things.  We are starting week four of clean eating.  I found myself doing a good amount of posting about this topic at Seasons of Grace but thought, that's probably not all that interesting and perhaps even a bit preachy.  So I'll record food type stuff over here, assuming I don't forget this is here again.  I'm not going to say this is an advice blog so please, don't take anything you see here and make life changes based on my input.  I think of it as sort of a diary for myself.  If you find anything useful, mores the better. 
For my part, consider this sort of the latest generation of the food diary, the WW points tracker, what have you.  I check my e mail, work e mail, FB and blogs daily so this might just work into that routine in a way that's beneficial. 
What I'm saying is, you don't need to visit to cheer me on but if you would like to, I'm here.  Until I'm not, which probably mean I forget about here again.
So!
Week four.  We have, one week at a time, done the following...

1.  Add fruit/veggies to every meal.
2.  No more fast food.
3.  Replace white/refined foods and flours with whole grain.
4.  Make fruit/veggies the basis of every snack.
5. (The next step) Eliminate sugary drinks.  (P.S. I've already done this, working on the Mr.)

And this, is what you call clean eating.  Of course, it can go much farther with organic, preservative free, etc.  We're doing that as well, but I appreciated the 5 weeks to cleaning up your diet pin I found on Pinterest.  It made it rather clear and easy to ease into this lifestyle change.  I wrote the weekly steps on a small white board on the fridge along with a couple additional pointers:  every meal should be protein+complex carb+veggie or fruit;  no food with ingredients you can't pronounce; beware of grocery store items with more than 5 ingredients.  These are the basics we now live, shop and eat by.  You'll notice there's nothing about portion or calorie control?  Yeah, believe it or not, we're not focusing there at this point.  We're focusing on eating whole and healthy and paying close attention to fueling our body in appropriate ways.  Once we've mastered this, we'll look at the calorie concerns.  On a side note, the Mr. has started low intensity work outs a few days a week and clean eating, he's lost 5 pounds this week.  So, yay.

Today's news:

• Greek yogurt with half a banana, blueberries and granola for breakfast.  Ice water with cucumber & mint.  1 1/2 cups of coffee and I'm satisfied, down from about 4-5 cups.
• Lunch: Quasi Nicoise salad:  Green beans (canned last year), shredded chicken breast (left over from Sunday instead of the traditional tuna,) green onion, tomato, boiled egg,  fresh dill, light olive oil with a splash of cider vinegar.  Mini whole wheat pita. 
• Dinner menu:  Grilled tandoori chicken, brown rice stir fried with sprouts & peas, green salad with vinegar and oil. 
• *All meals meat the protein/complex carb/fruit or veggie requirement.
• Beverages in the house:  NO soda or artificially sweetened anything, only prepackaged beverage-bottled water.  Fruit infused water (currently apple & orange,)  iced green tea sweetened with 1/4 cup honey and steeped with apple, orange, lemon and lime slices, no preservative/no sugar added "naked" orange juice, milk.  I made the cucumber mint water in a mason jar for myself this morning.
• Snacks in the house: Fresh fruit, yogurt, wheat crackers, veggies, fresh salsa, tortilla chips, cheese, granola, whole wheat mini pita, hummus.