Why We Drink Green Smoothies 3 Times a Day Part 3

 In part 1 of my explanation as to why we drink 3 Green Smoothies a Day I told you about my struggle with weight and my time using Mannatech. Part 2 explained my phase with the Warrior Diet, which while successful left me craving more vegetables than I could chew! So then we started...

Blending Our Greens

Somewhere in the midst of all this Paul asked me what I thought of getting a Blendtec Blender so we could do Green Smoothies 3 times a day. We had been looking at the Blendtec on and off for the past year but it had always seemed like an unnecessary luxury.

We have been making green smoothies for several years but we have also burned through 4 blenders in our 5 year marriage. We knew we needed a quality blender in order to keep up with our usage and with where we were both at fitness wise we knew we needed to shake things up a bit. 

Luxury or not it suddenly seemed like a necessary item and since we had the cash to purchase it we went ahead and bought the Blendtec. (side note: you do not need a fancy blender to make the green smoothies! I personally think the Blendtec does a better job blending than our previous blenders, but apart from killing the motors on the other 4 blenders they did a good job blending the greens up.)

Using the Blendtec three times a day has made all the difference in our lives as far as getting nutrient rich vegetables in our bodies and our boys bodies. Each smoothie is loaded with vegetables, healthy fats and some fruit - nutrients we would otherwise not be getting.

Since starting the smoothies 3 times a day my skin has become the nicest it has ever been - in fact I have entirely stopped wearing cover up or foundation because I actually really like my skin!

I imagine one of the top questions in your mind is "If you are eating 3 green smoothies a day, what else are you eating?" Well, I am glad you asked!
Here is how our eating schedule typically goes:

Breakfast: Green smoothie for everyone. Boys eat additional breakfast of fruit, eggs, waffles, etc.

Lunch: Green smoothie for everyone. Boys eat additional lunch

Pre-dinner: Green smoothie for everyone

Supper: Raw and cooked vegetables, protein, fats and carbs (pretty much still copying the Warrior Diet)

Snacks: Honest, our snacking has almost been eliminated. If we do snack it is on more fruits or veggies, raw nuts, popcorn or crackers.

Drinks: mainly water (I aim for 100+ oz a day), tea, coffee
We are fairly simple.

Once a week we set a day aside to eat all day long and whatever we'd like - this is to give us a "cheat" day so we don't feel the need to actually cheat and it also shakes up the metabolism. While we still maintain our 3 green smoothies we are free to eat anything else that appeals to us on that day without concern. That being said; the longer we've been eating this way the less we want to eat junk food.

 

Back to the smoothies... in order to make them a balanced part of our diet we came up with what we call

"The 4 Smoothie Groups"

The groups being:

Greens
Liquid
Fats
Special

The Greens and the Fats being essential to a healthy, nutrient rich smoothie, the Liquid being needed to make it a smoothie and the Special making it palatable.

While it is in no way an exhaustive list the next part in this series will jump into the 4 Smoothie Groups we have made up  and explain the health benefits of the items we chose to put in our smoothies...