I recently watched a really great documentary about how eating right and exercising can save your life and improve the overall quality of it as well. It's called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead and I think everyone on the planet needs to watch it. There's a problem here in America I like to call the Processed Food Epidemic, and it's killing people. Now, I understand that life is busy and we don't always have time to prepare a glorious, nutrient-packed meal, and it's so much easier and cheaper to pop a frozen burrito in the microwave. Trust me, I know, and I am a victim of the epidemic as well. But here's the question you have to ask yourself: Would you rather save 10 minutes right now and have something canned or boxed for dinner tonight, or spend those 10 minutes preparing something healthy and enjoying and extra 5 or 10 YEARS of life later on? Not to mention how much better you'll feel and look right now if you spend those 10 minutes cooking fresh food. Anyway, that's not the soapbox I meant to get on. I'm just excited when I feel good after eating a healthy lunch and want to share healthy vibes :)
Anyway so this movie was awesome. It chronicles a few months in the lives of two men who participate in a juice fast to lose weight, battle disease, and get healthy. It will blow you away. I just want to share two facts I learned from it.
1. The average American diet is 60% processed foods, 30% animal products, 5% white potato foods, and 5% fruits and vegetables. Does that not SHOCK you?? That's pretty much exactly backwards from what we should be eating. Fruits and vegetables should compose MOST of our diets, and they get shoved behind everything else, and are usually consumed as a thawed afterthought of one spoonful of frozen peas next to the lasagna. One of my new year's resolutions this year is to make my plate closer to half veggies. I do really well some days, and not so well others. It's something that, for me at least, takes lots of time and practice. But I know how necessary it is, so I want to do it. For me, my husband, and my kids, because I want to be with them in 30 years, alive and thriving in a healthy lifestyle.
2. You can't possibly eat the amount of vegetables you should in one sitting. In the movie the narrator showed a plate filled with the veggies he wanted to eat for lunch. This plate was overflowing with green goodness, and there was no way his body would let him eat it all. So instead of eating it, he juiced it. This is the beauty of juicing: You get all the vitamins and nutrients of the veggies without all the fiber and pulp, so your stomach can handle a lot more than otherwise. So it truly is a great way to get a lot of nutrients out of a lot of veggies, and a great way to lose weight.
I've always thought the best way to lose weight is to replace sweets and calorie-heavy foods (animal products, carbs, anything processed) with veggies and fruits, so this juicing thing makes sense to me. But here's why I smoothie instead.
Sugar is not necessarily bad for you. The way you GET sugar is what's bad. In nature, sugar comes from plants, such as sugar cane or fruit (or whatever Stevia is, I guess). Those plants have fiber, which is nature's way of telling your stomach to tell your brain to stop eating because you're full. Fruit has fiber, and so does sugar cane. But what you have sitting in a canister on your kitchen counter is not sugar cane, and neither is what they put in candy, chocolate, ice cream, etc. Food manufacturers have taken the fiber out of the sugar they use so that nothing will tell your stomach to tell your brain to stop eating because you're full. That's why we eat candy until we're sick - we never get full and it's SOOOO GOOOOOOD!! So here's the thing with juicing: I like fiber. It does good things for my body, not just telling me to stop eating because I'm full. And here's the other thing: I like crunchy food. If I were to have a tall glass of veggie juice for lunch, I'd probably follow it with toast, crackers, popcorn, or potato chips. Which would kind of defeat the purpose. So when I want to drink my veggies, I smoothie them instead of juicing them, hoping that the fiber will tell me I'm full.
This is still a work in progress. Even when I make a smoothie I still want something crunchy and end up eating more than I should. Which is why I have an on-again, off-again relationship with smoothies. To me they are a great way to use up plant material in your fridge that is still fine to eat but sure doesn't look like it is (soft apples, wilty spinach, wrinkly grapes, etc). Or, in the case of last week, to use up all the kale you bought because you thought you liked it and then found out you really just don't.
All that aside, here are some smoothies I enjoy. I usually try to have a healthy lunch with a smoothie on the side, just to pack in a few extra nutrients and hopefully tide me over until dinner so I can avoid snacking.
Carrot Milk
2 carrots
1 c milk
1 frozen banana
Blend and enjoy.
Spinach Smoothie
2-3 cups spinach
1 frozen banana
1 c water
1 c frozen berries
Blend and enjoy.
Kale Smoothie
1-2 cups kale
1/2 avocado
1 frozen banana
1 c water
Blend and enjoy
This is obviously not a complete list of every smoothie I make, but take it and invent your own. Also see my previous post about Green Juice, which is basically the second recipe with the berries swapped out for anything else. When making green smoothies you just need to remember one thing: add a banana and you won't taste the spinach. Berries do a great job at hiding it as well, but the banana is the key. It will also make the drink smoother. Another tip for bananas: Buy one bunch just for smoothies. Right when you get home from the store, peel them all and cut them in fourths. Put them in ziploc baggies and freeze them. This way you don't have to add ice, which gives me brainfreeze, and you always have smoothie fixin's on hand.
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