Dieting with Smoothies
Lots
of people enjoy easy dieting and are searching for healthy and quick
weight-loss solutions. Healthy and quick does not go together well. I
hate to break it to you, there are no short cuts to a healthier
lifestyle and especially to loosing weight. You could starve yourself with too little food and accomplish some weight loss, of course, which is not healthy at all. Drinking raw vegetable and/or fruit smoothies all in good measures, can certainly help a lot, especially when that means that your daily hamburger intake is being reduced to one only once a month or perhaps never again.
What can a green smoothie do for
you? I don't have all the answers and I am not a nutritionist or
physician. There you have it. I can only share with you what my
experience is. I am 220 pounds. -see the fat guy with the beard to the left, that is me.
I have had this weight with 5' 8" height
for over 5 years. I started gaining through desk jobs, less activity
and also depression. During 
my
chemo and radiation therapy I went down to 185 pounds. Those were the
recent weight-glory days. Although, loosing weight as a result to cancer
therapy is not recommended. But its the positive thing when
considering the difficulties cancer patients experience anyway. Picture right, you see my family with Vicente Fox (Former Mexican President). Compared to his height and being skinny, I am short(er) and fat(er). - Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy! Apparently no family resemblance, right?
About Dieting with Smoothies
I am going to write about my common sense experience
of how hard or easy it is drinking smoothies in respect to my goal to
loose weight and manage it and at the same time to be healthier. Look at
me to the left above. I look like a fat pig. I try to cope with my obesity. I even try to tell myself that this is who I am.
First I am going to
discuss the easy over-portioning when making a smoothie. You too may
have felt bad guaranteed at least once in your life when you had to
throw away some food. In fact, I am willing to bet that you did not
throw it away but you squirted the food down into your belly. You argued
"it is just a little leftover, I don't want it to go to waste; Or think of the many hungry children". Instead
it went to your waist. The same thing can happen when making smoothies.
It is very easy to make too big portions. Learning to portioning
correctly is especially key with your smoothie raw diet. And a smoothie is going to be even more powerful when over-feeding with it because it is far greater enriched with nutrients than a regular un-blended meal.
It is not as easy as looking at your
regular diet and put the same amounts into your blender and just blend
it up. For example, if your lunch would consist of a whole banana, 1
apple, 1 orange, and 1 carrot, by the time you put all these
ingredients into your 3 hp high performance OMNI blender for your smoothie dose, you would
guarantee yourself some hefty over-portioning. Instead, use 1/2 banana,
1/2 apple, 1/2 orange, 1/2 carrot and 1 cup of water. You will end up
with about 30 fl oz of smoothie, far more than already plenty. I hope
this makes sense. And of course, you just need to learn to make your
right size smoothies.
Why would a whole apple, orange, banana,
and 1 carrot just barely fill you while when blending 1/2 that food into
a smoothie could actually over-fill you? During the blending process
with a high performance smoothie blender, the cell walls of the
ingredients get microscopically broken apart. In other words, it is a
pre-digestive process, much more efficient than your teeth and your saliva could
accomplish in the same time. As a result, the emulsified ingredients are
absorbed faster and more thoroughly. I don't know what the percentage
difference of absorption between the two meal intake processes are.
In theory it makes sense, but it would require a scientifically
performed study to know for sure what the portion difference is. The emulsified ingredients in the
fruit and vegetable smoothie release also much more phyto-nutrients into
your blood stream. In addition you can experience all 100 % or nearly 100% of fibers
and natural fruit sugars with your smoothie.
Yes, you got it, NO SUGAR is needed. I
am from Austria originally - came here to the USA in the 90's to live
the American Dream. The first thing I could smell at the JFK Airport,
when entering the Airport through Customs, were the French Fries and the
Sugary - Sweet meals and treats. The Airport smelled like a saturated fat candy factory to me. Well, back then I had a waist size 30.
Today I have difficulties staying below waist size 38. I can't say that
the smoothie-diet helps me loose weight fast. I have noticed that one
large smoothie portion like one mentioned above can keep my hunger and
cravings under control for at least 6 hours (in my case).
I hope this little story gives you some ideas of what you might want to do in respect to your green raw vegetable and fruit smoothie dieting. My common sense tells me that a healthy medium between eating well, nothing for breakfast, just lots of pure water, then a good hot smoothie-soup with seaweed for lunch, and a green smoothie for a 5 o'clock dinner will suffice. Of course a daily walk of at least 1 mile and lots of raw-fresh air between pencil pushing and steering wheel pulling may help you with your weight loss goal.
Diet - Weight Loss Meal Choices
