This time – swear – I will get right to the recipe ;-) This is for my friend Joy from Girls Gone WOD Podcast. Joy and I text incessantly, and we’re both doing the WAG program. She has recently been starving on the program, and her coach told her that she needed to increase her fiber intake. We both are busy in the mornings, so I texted her my “easy smoothie packs” idea, as it’s even easier than my pancakes recipe (which takes cooking).
Of course, texting being texting, the text came through in jumbled pieces. I promised Joy that she would not have to whip out her Decoder Ring, and that I would do a quick blog on what I said. So here we go.
Every Sunday, I make up “smoothie packs.” These are all pretty much the same. They are each made up of two packs, a freezer pack and a cabinet pack. In other words, a “fresh ingredients” pack and a “dry ingredients” pack. Make as many as you think you will use in a week. Each pack is:
FREEZER PACK:*
1 cup berries
2 cups greens
0.5 cup beans (garbanzo, white beans)
CABINET PACK:*
3T Bulletproof Upgraded Collagen Protein Powder
1 scoop protein powder (I use one with ZERO CARBS, see photo, below)
1T chia seed (or flax seed)
1t turmeric
*I am listing all the ingredients as cups or table/teaspoons, but you want to be sure that you weigh the grams, if you are going for exact accuracy. It’s not that bad – you’ll become an “assembly line.”
Berries: You probably already know this, but berries have lots and lots of fiber. Fiber keeps you full. Berries with more seeds – though they will have you picking your teeth after drinking your smoothie – have more fiber. I usually stick with organic blueberries or organic blackberries. I scour the grocery stores I frequent and make sure I stock up when they go on sale. Remember that grocery stores can’t sell things after their “sell by” date – but that date is statutory, it doesn’t mean that the thing has “gone bad.” (Especially stuff that’s frozen.) You can get some really sweet deals this way if you keep your eye out.
Greens: I buy big bunches of organic greens on Saturday and chop them up into rough chunks on Sunday. MAKE SURE THEY ARE DRY before you freeze them, or else you will wind up with chunks of ice! I also get a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box every week, and sometimes there is stuff in there that I’m unlikely to use quickly (parsley, anyone?) If I’m in that predicament, I make sure I chop the greens up and freeze them for my smoothies immediately. Especially during the winter here, I get a ton of kale, collard greens, etc. in my CSA. Anything like that goes immediately into my “chop for smoothies” pile. (NOTE: If you find yourself buying veggies and then winding up with limp carrots, etc. in your fridge, keep a bag in your freezer and throw them in there instead of throwing them away, if they’re not too far gone. They make the PERFECT addition to bone broth. This is also what I do with the back/neck/insides of chickens from my roast chicken. Once the bag is full, it’s time for soup.)
Beans: Garbanzo or butter/great Northern/canelli beans are best for this, because they have no taste. They make your smoothie a little “creamy” and add a LOT of fiber. If beans give you gas, add a few drops of Beano to each smoothie pack. Beano is epizote, a leaf that is a natural enzyme, and eliminates gas from stuff like beans by helping you digest the fiber. (Magic…)
Collagen Protein Powder: HERE is an article on this product. Helps with tissue repair, flexibility, reduces inflammation, etc. I add 3 tablespoons.
Protein Powder: If you look at the pictures, you will see the protein powder that I use. It has ZERO taste, and ZERO carbs. As many of you probably have discovered to your “horror,” various protein powders have various levels of carbs/fats/protein/etc. Obviously, track everything if you are doing macros – even though this is a “protein powder” if it has carbs and fats in it, they count, too.
Chia Seed: Again, added fiber.
Turmeric: It’s supposed to be super good for you. Google it ;-)
INSTRUCTIONS: Every morning, take one Freezer Pack and smoosh it down into your Nutribullet or “smoothie maker of choice.” Add the Cabinet Pack on top of this. It will fill it to the top of the biggest cup of the Nutribullet. Now, you can pretend that I didn’t say this for warranties’ sakes (smile), but you can really fill the Nutribullet right up (above the Fill line). Now, add water. Make a little “hole” in the Cabinet Pack (e.g., dry) stuff so that the water goes down into the cup. Make sure that you add the Freezer Pack FIRST and the dry stuff SECOND, because if the dry stuff is on the bottom of the Nutribullet when you invert it, it doesn’t work as well.
I’m sure that you already know this, but on most macro trackers, you can make a “Recipe” or a “Meal” out of various things that you eat all the time, and then you can just click on it to log it. I love that! NOTE: I have personally saved mine as a “Meal,” because this logs each ingredient separately in your tracker (at least, on My Fitness Pal). This way, if I swap out the blueberries for blackberries, or if I swap out collard greens for kale, I can just delete that one ingredient and enter the other one. With the “Recipe” feature, you can’t swap ingredients out like that.
So there you go, Joy, no Decoder Ring necessary – make up seven packs of each, and use them throughout the week. Then make more :-)
One thing that I’ve found to be important – I heard this on a nutrition podcast once – is to “chew” your smoothie. The adage was “drink your food and chew your liquids.” The idea being that you need to chew things that are solid for long enough so that they liquify – it gives your body time to break it down and start digestion going in your mouth. Similarly, you shouldn’t chug liquids that have calories – because the only liquid your “caveman body” knows is water; therefore, it will not muster up all the things it needs to break down this “liquid” as a food unless you chew it and signal to your body that it’s a “solid.”
Now it’s your turn:
*What easy tips or tricks do you have for me?
*If you’re on WAG, what’s your favorite part? Least favorite?
*How are you doing with tracking?
(I personally suck at it – my coach actually cut me slack and said I just had to stay within my protein grams this week LOL)