Here’s my embarrassing truth: I love green smoothies.
I love the convenience, I love the super-charged vitamins and minerals, and (yes, really) I love the flavor.
As a fat person, I’ve gone through my share of extreme diet trends, including low fat, low carb, low calorie, vegan, intermittent fasting, paleo, juicing, and even the lemonade diet (nasty lemonade for two. fucking. months! And people wonder why my metabolism is whacked?). Naturally, not a single one of those actually magically created long-term weight loss.
But the one I actually enjoyed was doing paleo with green smoothies. Mostly because I love green smoothies.
FYI: A smoothie is different from juicing. Juicing extracts the juice from fruit and vegetables, requiring you to throw away or compost the pulp. A smoothie is where you throw in everything but the rind and blend it all together. It requires a hell of a strong blender, if you want to do anything more than spinach, strawberries and apples; I often do beets and sweet potato in addition to the softer stuff, so I use a NutriBullet Pro (900 watts) but honestly I’d go for the VitaMix if I could afford it.
I used to think of them as diet aids, though. I would do smoothies in order to cut calories/fat/hunger/my soul when doing anything that was not low-carb (because green smoothies are not now and never will be low carb food). I only “allowed” myself green smoothies when I was successfully torturing myself in other ways. I had to earn green smoothies, damnit!
…except, maybe I don’t? I mean, part of the goal of intuitive/unrestricted eating is to follow your instincts. I’ve been craving green smoothies lately, but could not rationalize making them because, I don’t know, I’m a bad person?
No one ever said a former dieter’s food complexes made sense, okay?
But I don’t think I’m a bad person, and I have no interest in torturing myself via food anymore, so I thought: why the hell not. It’s not all-or-nothing! I don’t have to be vegan or super-paleo or Gwyneth Paltrow to enjoy a green smoothie. I can have a green smoothie for breakfast while STILL eating pizza for dinner!!!
*blinks in shock* How can such a thing be true?!??!?!
But it is.
Honestly, incorporating green smoothies into what I eat as-is will help me get more vitamins and minerals into my body that I wouldn’t otherwise, because I am not someone who is naturally drawn to eating a lot of fruits and veggies. I mean, outside of watermelon season. (I will eat an ever-lovin’ ton of watermelon. NO REGRETS.) Like, I am not that person who will ever turn to you and say, “you know what? A salad sounds spot on right about now!” I just…I just cannot even imagine.
I’m sure it all has to do with my fucked metabolism and carb addiction and my wonky gut biome, but the solid fact is that I will always, always go for the mac’n’cheese before the kale. Always.
Fortunately, I love green smoothies. I had one this morning. It was AM-AZE-ING!
If you are at all curious, here is what I usually do for a green smoothie:
- 1/4 apple
- 1/2 small banana
- 1/2 small avocado
- handful of blueberries (frozen)
- small hunk of sweet potato or carrots
- Two handfuls of spinach
- Water or coconut water
I swap out a lot; the joy of a green smoothie is how utterly flexible it is, according to tastes or what’s on hand. I personally don’t like kale in my smoothies, so I stick with spinach. I sometimes add a dried fig or some almonds, switch out blueberries for stawberries or peaches, add a half of an orange if I feel the need for citrus, put in 1/2 a large beet for something different. I love adding fresh chopped ginger for a special zing. Occasionally I will add cucumber, and I don’t even know why.
There are approx. 1.347 million “recipes” for green smoothies, and all of them are pretty good. Some call for almond milk and some aren’t actually green, but whatever. Total yumminess.
