This week I decided to make a huge change in my life. I challenged myself to a month long of clean-eating.

Now I know what you’re thinking, why would you want to put yourself through that calorie-counting obsessed kind of lifestyle? I know you’re thinking this because I was like you, until I really started to research cleaning-eating. The name clean eating is a very simple concept. While most people think clean eating is focusing on things like fewer calories and more protein, clean eating is actually the idea of being more mindful of the food you are taking in and staying away from processed foods.

In all honesty, it comes down to the individual person on what they want to cut out of their daily food consumption, and how far they'll take the whole ‘clean-eating’ term. I read a blog that said orange juice was ‘dirty’, while another blogger incorporated several juices into their clean-eating diet. Like I said, clean-eating is an individual experience, and some people have drawn more extreme lines than others. While the title itself sounds intimidating, clean eating is just going back to the natural roots of food - eating food that benefits the body instead of just being a stomach filler.

I didn’t make this decision over night. After weeks and months of feeling uncomfortable, bloated and sometimes even sick, I realized that a lot of my health problems were due to my eating habits. My daily diet consisted of Cheetos, bagels, nachos and lean-cuisines. I’m a full-time college student with a job and a social life, and like many people, I wasn’t putting time into the food that I was putting in my body.

When I decided to do this I was a little intimated by the title. Too many times had I tried various diets that only resulted in me falling off the wagon in less than a month, but I had to stop thinking about this as dieting, because this is less about me losing weight and more about me taking care of my body.

The first few days of clean eating were a little hard. I couldn’t grab any of my go-to snacks from the campus café, and making my meals took a lot more preparation that I was used to. But by day three I was actually enjoying my clean-eating challenge. Overall, I felt great, I felt lighter and happier and I didn’t feel like a giant lump of sludge was resting in the pit of my stomach. This also gave me an opportunity to work on my rusty cooking skills and try out some recipes I’ve been saving but never put aside the time actually make. Huge helper? Pinterest! It has been my saving grace through all of this; my meals would have been predictable and boring without it.

Another huge help has been from bloggers I’ve found who have dedicated their life to clean-eating and are willing to share some of their tips and secrets.

While my challenge was initially set to end in a month, I’m hoping that I can maintain it beyond that. Getting older (at a mere 23 years old), I’m already starting to see how my past unhealthy eating habits are already affecting my body, and while I know I can’t reverse what I’ve already done, it's never too late to start this change.