Stepping into Green Juice

Hi gorgeous!

I hope you’ve had a beautiful Easter, and your spring is off to a fabulous start!

This week I’m diving into straight-up practical nutrition advice. The girls in the Body Stewardship Course have just headed into the Nutrition module, and it’s gotten me inspired to chat about pure and simple wellness principles.

After over a decade of wrestling with my diet practices and mentality, I have finally come to the most blissed out, easy and pleasurable wellness lifestyle I never imagined could exist. I eat chocolate and ice cream every day, honestly don’t work out very hard (a 40-minute walk most mornings before breakfast), extra pounds fall off whenever I need them to, and most important, I love, honor, and cherish my body and its roles in God’s plan no matter what little curve balls it might occasionally throw my way.

Now if that sounds impossible, trust me, it’s not! But it is the result of an extremely specific set of habits and mentality, too complicated to fully explain here. But, I do want to talk about one of my favorite (almost) daily practices, that you can add to your routine right now.

One of my favorite recent additions to my wellness routine is green juices.

Green juices and smoothies have taken off as a handy and tasty way to get a big dose of your daily nutrients, and in many cities at little juice bars or health food shops, or even your local Starbucks, you can now grab a juice. This is fabulous, but like many people, myself included not too long ago, you may be a little bewildered about how to get started with them.

When I first started drinking green drinks – which, by the way, just means a smoothie or juice that contains enough green vegetables to literally turn the drink green – I stepped into it slowly, because I was coming out of years of not perfectly healthy eating, and when I had gotten into juicing years before and gone a little too fast, I had some unpleasant detox symptoms like skin breakouts, dizziness, and fatigue. So this time I knew better, and decided to take it slower.

I also wanted to introduce this healthy habit into my life in a way that would be so easy and enjoyable that it would stick and become part of my routine.

So I decided to take a positive, long-term and loving approach instead of a guilt-driven warp speed approach, (which never lasts and only creates self-blame and shame), so I eased into drinking drinks that appealed to me.

I started with blended fruit smoothies from chains like Panera, only choosing yogurt-based drinks, rather than ice cream-based drinks, which are going to make you feel terrible afterward, trust me! Then, during a late night snack craving, I stumbled on the Naked brand of smoothies, and immediately fell in love. I started with strawberry banana and the other berry blends because they tasted more like dessert! I switched my normal dinner time desserts out for these and immediately started feeling lighter and more energetic, especially when I woke up the next day.

Then I upped my game a bit by switching to the Naked brand’s ‘Green Machine,’ which, despite its color, still takes like a fruit smoothie because it’s mostly mango and banana!

I was sitting in a lecture once, drinking one of these, and the woman sitting next to me leaned over and said, ‘Wow, that’s intense. I can’t handle the green ones.’

That’s when it really occurred to me that this is a learning process for all of us. To be honest, I bet if she set her mind on moving forward in her nutrition, she could handle the Green Machine in no time flat. But to be aware of what your current preferences are is important in making a lifestyle change a lasting success. At the same time, if you don’t challenge yourself every few weeks or months, there won’t be any change!

I then decided to challenge myself to move from the yummy Green Machine smoothies to the more green-nutrition focused juices. I started with the Evolution juices carried by many Starbucks. One they commonly carry at many branches is Sweet Greens, which is a mix of various greens with a little bit of apple. That was a pretty good hit of nutrition and freshness that I could feel.

I started to notice, though, that when I drank this drink, I would still feel a little tiny insulin spike that made me a bit hungry. I have always found this to happen if I only snack on fruit without a protein to balance it. And while I could have added a piece of cheese or a bit of jerky along with the juice (and I do when I’m legitimately hungry), I wanted to introduce the juice habit into my life as more of a supplement, when I needed a little pep but not really any energy calories – like a cup of tea, for example, just to give my body the benefits.

A few months later at a Whole Foods, I found the entire Evolution line of juices, and read all the ingredients until I found one that only had vegetables and maybe a little lemon or lime, which yes are technically fruits, but are not sweet enough to cause an insulin spike like an apple or even carrot. This was Evolution’s Essential Greens, which was exactly what I was looking for.

But I knew that while fantastic for convenience, juices that had been cold pressed days before they got to me would still not have the incredible enzyme power of a freshly pressed juice. Our local health market chain where we lived at the time was called MOM’s – My Organic Market – which I love and highly recommend if you’re in the DC, MD, VA metro area. If not, a Google search for juice bars or organic markets should give you an idea of what’s around you.

So I started ordering large freshly pressed juices from them. Often when you go to a juice bar, they will have a set menu and sometimes they won’t have a greens-only juice listed. But realize that they can easily leave out or add the things they have on hand, so be brave and feel free to nicely but clearly articulate just what you do and don’t want included. Make sure they’re clear on it before they get started, so they don’t add in something you don’t want, and then you’re stuck with a juice that doesn’t quite meet what you need.

The reason I am so picky about greens-only is because even though, of course, a bit of fruit has some great nutrition, it’s still going to give your body the sugar signals that can make certain goals like losing weight a bit difficult.

So often I see girls who are frustrated because they are working hard to add healthy habits but not seeing the results they want, and this is frequently because they aren’t aware that their body is going to behave based on the signals it is sent. There are few signals the body responds to as quickly and strongly as a little bit of sugar, even ‘healthy natural sugars’ like fructose, which is the term for the sugar found in fruits.

I’ve now taken this to a whole new level and bought my own juicer – I find this is SO much more convenient, and a lot cheaper than consistently buying juices while I’m out and about. After weeks of research, I settled on the Breville Compact Juicer off of Amazon, and I could not be happier with it! It’s quick, powerful, and super easy to clean. If you’re in the market for your own juicer, I highly recommend it!

So let me make this information easy to digest for you, no pun intended! :

• Juices and smoothies are a great health habit to adopt for dense nutrition that’s tasty and portable.
• Don’t jump off the deep end and make non-sweet juices something you dread having to down, like taking a vitamin. Instead, step into each new level as your body craves it, and you will always look forward to progressively less sweet and more refreshing tastes as you move forward.
• When you’re ready and excited to get serious, and especially if weight loss is a particular goal, drop the fruit and carrot and go just for the greens!

Good luck gorgeous – and do let me know in the comments if you have already tried green juices, and where you are in the process of making them more and more pure shots of green nutrition!

Love and Freedom,

Jackie