Venture into the Green Smoothie Wilderness

Ok, so I've heard great things about how a raw foods diet can completely bring a "dead" thyroid back to full-functioning life, and figuring that mine is only borderline off, it should work for me too. SO I committed myself to a 80-90% raw lunch everyday. While exploring more and more of the raw food life online, I kept running into these things called Green Smoothies. It is basically a smoothie made up of some type of leafy green food (kale, chard, spinach, dandelion greens, beet tops, romaine, etc) plus fruits and maybe veggies (like carrots because their juice is sweet and tasty). Some of the most common fruits I've seen added to these smoothies are: oranges, lemons, limes, bananas, and mixed berries; but I've been told (or rather, I read) that you can use most anything tasty, including apples, peaches, mangos, grapes, plums, and so on. Also, the addition of avocados, ground flax seeds, and cold pressed olive oil can add healthy fats. I thought if I can get that much fresh, raw produce into my diet with only one smoothie, what've I got to lose? I made my first smoothie with some oranges, kale, lemon, and banana. I downed it for breakfast. It was rather tasty and surprisingly filling. I had one each morning for the next couple of days, along with my 80-90% raw lunch.

After reading more about these green smoothies, I learned that many people do what is called a 7-day Green Smoothie Fast. This inundates their system with antioxidants and pure raw goodness allowing for a (mostly) complete detox. I figured if I'm having them in the morning and other people are drinking them all day, then why can't I have them for dinner too? So I did. And it was great. I have never slept better and I wake up much more refreshed in the morning. Also, after a few days of doing this, I don't even need to drink tea in the morning to wake myself up!

I have had a couple of Green-Smoothie mishaps, which is to be expected. One night I added a little bit of everything into a smoothie. It tasted great, but there was enough to make 4 smoothies! I ended up refrigerating the left overs and drinking them the next morning, but they don't recommend doing that because the greens begin to lose their high oxygen content almost immediately. But considering the alternative (wasting the left over smoothie and having something else for breakfast), I figured I'd just drink the 12 hour old greens. I added an extra banana in the morning for good measure. This morning, I only had 2 apples and a lemon left, along with a little orange juice. I added these things in with my water and greens and, though it tasted good, the acidity was so high that the back of my throat started to burn halfway through it and I had to throw it out. Cest la vie. Next time I'll be sure to have plenty of bananas handy because they seem to balance the acidity of the drinks quite well. : )