Fruit & Veggie Smoothie

I once went on a week long juice fast, drinking only smoothies similar to the one you described. It really does make it a hell of a lot easier to get those nutrients, and you can also put In protein powder to make it a full meal.

 

Juice fasting is an effective way to cleanse your body of harmful toxins, and lose weight at the same time. Its not particularly easy, and i would suggest you do your own research before jumping into it, as fasting can be strenuous.
personally after the first 3-4 days, i had more energy and felt great. The weight loss would depend on how long you are willing to commit to it, but you could drop 5-7 lbs easily.

 

I have a juicer I use occasionally, mostly juicing vegetables. It doesn't fully replace EATING vegetables, so you shouldn't really count it as your serving of vegetables/fruit for the day. It's more like an extra kick of awesomeness.

But, it is annoying to clean just because it takes so much space in my dishwasher. If I juiced every day, I'd have to run the dishwasher twice each day. It's also more expensive to buy all the vegetables. One glass of juice used a lot of vegetables/fruit. While this is a good thing, nutritionally, it's bad for the wallet. While eating one apple would be considering a serving size, to get a considerable amount of apple juice you'd need like 4-5 apples.

 

Well you can use a blender too...wash it right afterwards, that way it does not take up space.

 

blending and juicing are two different things though. blending is basically just chewing the food for you... juicing is separating all the "solid" stuff and providing you with just the juice.

Neither is better/worse. Eating/blending provides good fiber. Juicing has no fiber, and it's literally just juice, so it's easier and more effective for your body to digest. Plus, you can drink much more "juiced" fruit/vegetables than you can blended produce, because there's no fiber so it's not filling. Meaning, MORE nutrients absorbed FAST (that's basically the benefit to juicing).

 

You can only absorb so much of each nutrient at once so you may be wasting nutrients if you drink too much juice at once.

Also, some nutrients aren't as healthy when absorbed quickly such as monosaccharides. Drinking too much fruit juice spikes your insulin so just be aware of that...

Juicing should be used as a therapy more so than a dietary staple. Smoothies on the other hand are wonderful.

Juicing and smoothies have different functions but IMO for the everyday person...smoothies > juicing

 

I didn't mean you can literally drink more juice, I meant you use more produce in a serving of juice than you do a smoothie. So you're getting more nutrients. I didn't word that ^^ post too well.

And yea, you mostly want to be juicing vegetables and just using fruits for some extra flavor.

A juice definitely isn't a meal. Not even a snack really, it's just... a drink. So smoothies are definitely the way to go in terms of "meal replacement."

 

I knew what you meant

Juices are much more nutrient dense than smoothies, but your body can only absorb a finite amount of each nutrient at once so it might be wasteful to drink 32 oz of juice in one sitting. Splitting the juice up with your meals throughout the day would be a better bet.

Only time I personally drink juice as a meal is if I'm going through a cleansing phase and I drink a shit ton.

 

1 cup of blueberries, 1 banana, 5 strawberries, a slice of watermelon, a splash of OJ, and a celery stick.

 

Add vegetables and roots, such as ginger carrots and broccoli. If you can find it, add Aloa Vera to your smoothies. Commonly called the miracle plant, it has a considerable amount of health benefits.

Some of the other ingredients i can think of are cauliflower, tomatoes, flax oil...avocados? damn im blown...But there's also spices that are good for you, such as turmeric, pepper seasoning, cinamon...i tried chili powder in it one time. I usually just ended up experimenting, and finding flavors i liked.

Hell you can even add protein powder to smoothies