Rise and Shine healthy friends! It's Day 6 of my Eat Your Greens Challenge and today I want to share a super easy way to ensure you're getting plenty of greens in every day. Since this challenge is only seven days, we need some tricks up our sleeves to keep this going all month...and all year...long. Now, I want to reiterate that supplements are supposed to be exactly that, a supplement to a healthy lifestyle, not a free pass to eat "all the junk". Now that we've established that, I'd like to share expert advice by Keri Glassman. She explains three ways to get your greens through a straw! With summer on it's way, I can't wait to create tasty, healthy summer smoothies...
How To Drink Your Greens:
Many people assume a green juice is for other people. They claim they don’t like veggies. They fear the poison-colored concoction will taste even worse than it looks. They think die-hard green juicers seem nutritionally elitist and willing to compromise their taste buds in the name of super fuel.
While there is definitely a spectrum of green -- from beginner to advanced -- there is a place for you somewhere along the line. I promise. And I’m encouraging you to join the party, because nothing bad happens when people add more whole green foods to their diet. Nothing. Zilch.
There are a few ways to go about getting more greens into your diet, and I promise they’re way easier than you think. Best part? You don’t even need a fork. You only need a straw.
Here are three ways to drink your greens …
1) Hop on the green juice train. If you want to make your own juice, you’ll need a juicer but not necessarily the fanciest one on the market. Juicing is a process that extracts the liquid from whatever you put in it, and it leaves all the pulp out of your cup. The pulp is full of beneficial fiber, but if pulp isn’t your thing, you still get plenty of vitamins and minerals from drinking just the juice. Not into cooked broccoli, kale, collards or spinach? You may like them better in a raw juice. Sometimes the flavors are milder when raw and combined with other ingredients.
Immediately after the juice is made, it starts losing its nutritional powers, so you’ll want to grab a straw STAT. Green juice is sensitive to time (how long from when it was made until it is consumed), temperature (heat can diminish some of the vitamin potency) and storage (air and clear glass containers can also make the juice less potent). But even not-so-fresh juice is better than no juice at all, so don’t let this deter you. Just make sure to put in the fridge and drink within 24 hours if you’re not drinking as soon as you make it. Here’s a great beginner recipe if you’re just getting your feet wet:
Keri’s Beginner Greens Juice
● ½ head of romaine lettuce
● ½ cucumber
● ½ cup spinach leaves
● 1 green apple
Clean all produce well. Toss in the juicer in order and drink immediately.
2) Get your smoothie on. If you don’t have any more room on your kitchen counter for yet another appliance, then your handy blender is waiting for you to let it make a smoothie. A blender can’t separate the pulp from the juice, which is why by definition smoothies are thicker and well, smoother. The smoothie crowd is just as cool as the green juice crowd, and some would even argue smoothies are even healthier than juices because of that pulp stuff I mentioned.
My formula for the perfect smoothie is incredibly simple … 1 cup almond or coconut milk (unsweetened), 1 fruit, a handful of greens, 1 healthy fat, an extra (call it a flavor wild-card...I love cinnamon) and a high quality, plant-based protein powder.
One of my fave healthy fats is coconut because it’s loaded with health-promoting properties, flavor and, of course, healthy fats. The fat in coconut is mostly MCTs (medium-chain triglycerides) and although they are a type of saturated fat, they are not the same saturated fat as you’ll get from say fatty meat.
I love the taste of cinnamon in my Green Smoothies
3) Add a green supplement to your drink. Think green juices and smoothies too much work for you? I’ve got you covered. At Life’s Abundance, we've created a Greens Blend that is jam-packed to the brim with nutrients. All you have to do is mix with water. Yep, it’s that easy. Add a scoop to water and mix. The Greens Blend is made of organic greens (picked at peak nutrient density) and an organic mushroom blend for overall health. The best part? It doesn’t have that I-just-ate-dirt-from-the-yard taste. It has a yummy, berry flavor. You can add to water, your morning smoothie, baked goods like zucchini muffins or even to yogurt. Most important, just drink up. Greens are the master of the health universe.
Great advice from Keri, right? So what's my take on all of this? I must admit, I own a fancy stainless steel Breville juicer. It's gorgeous....it's shiny. Wait, I take that back because it's collecting dust.
Does it make great juice? Yup.
Does it get used? Nope.
It's been sitting in my pantry taking up space because it's a lot of work to use...and mess...and money...for all those veggies I was buying to produce a little bit of juice!
So, I'm thrilled to have a new delicious option. I'm adding this delicious, convenient, travel-friendly Greens Blend to my family's healthy lifestyle and loving it. It's also what the PRIZE is for my Eat Your Greens Challenge, so make sure you read the details on how you could win.
Sometimes I add fresh squeezed lemon juice for an extra detox kick
PS Are you a wellness, nutrition, or fitness fanatic? Do people often ask you for health and wellness advice? I'm also adding this to my business. I've become a brand partner with Life's Abundance because I'm so impressed with their ingredients...I finally have food based quality nutritional supplements I can confidently recommend to my readers. All of the health with non of the chemical junk. If you'd like to add this to your wellness business, click here to learn more. I'd love to talk with you.
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