Green smoothies are a great alternative to some of the other calorie-filled drinks.

Green smoothies help in the elimination process of wastes throughout the digestive tract. I personally love green smoothies as it supports your gut in removing bad bacterias.

Let’s be honest here, it all comes a time when we just need a good old fashion detox! Right?

Yes, I am being transparent and quite frank on this one. Throughout our daily living and activities, we often get backed up with the toxins of the world and even in our bodies. Believe it or not, our bodies are infiltrated with toxins every time we eat something. Unfortunately, we live in a fast-paced society and we’re always on the go! Therefore, many don’t take the time to eat healthy especially by eating the recommended daily amount of servings of fruits and vegetables. I will keep it real, it’s not just our schedules that allow us to result in poor eating habits. No, it’s not. We really can not make any solid excuse for not eating balanced meals throughout the day. We simply have to identify our eating habits as a whole and develop a system that will allow us to meal prep. We have to do better at paying attention and being more disciplined with what we allow in our bodies. Studies suggest, that meal prepping eliminates room for error or room for overeating. Now, I am sure that people have certainly overeaten while meal prepping however, meal prepping reduces this likeliness. With this understanding, I planned for an entire week of detox. Yes! I wanted to reset my body to get back on track. I wanted to replace one meal a day with a healthy green smoothie for 7 days while removing all meat including fish out of my diet. As I started to prepare. I began looking for the greens in my vegetable garden. I began picking out some fresh baby kale, spinach, basil, mint, and cilantro. As I started picking all of my vegetables, my children became interested in what I was prepping to make. Our children became very excited about the idea and asked if they could join me on my detox challenge. I was truly astounded at the fact that my children wanted to not only give up one meal a day but they were also interested in having a vegetable smoothie all week! It’s not like I don’t give vegetables to our children because they actually eat vegetables 2x a day. Yes! We are extremely diligent about that veggie life (hence: our vegetable garden). We believe children thrive on balanced nutrition. We are big on making certain that we are putting healthy snacks out for our children. As we sat and made a meal prep together, I let my children decide on what vegetable and fruit they would like to add in our smoothies each day. HERE’S WHAT YOU WILL NEED TO MAKE THIS GREEN MEAN MACHINE RECIPE:

• fresh kale,
• fresh spinach,
• fresh mint,
• fresh basil,
• fresh cilantro,
• frozen pineapple,
• frozen or fresh banana, and
• fresh Ginger

Before you start to throw your veggies in the blender here are some suggestions that have helped me along the way:

1.  Blend your more leafy veggies with a liquid to get a more “smooth” green smoothie rather than chucks in your smoothie.
2. You’ll want to add in your remaining fruits and blend again.
3.  Notice: I never use ice, as it waters down my smoothies. I use frozen fruit instead. I Freeze some of my favorite fruits like bananas, grapes, pineapple, and berries. You can also buy a frozen bag of fruit to save on time.
4.  Try freezing your leafy greens in a freezer-safe bag.
5. I do not add any raw natural sweeteners in my smoothies. Instead, I add naturally sweet fruits to my smoothie which makes it tastes better.
6. Some of my favorite naturally sweet fruits are pears, bananas, mangoes, apples, and berries.

I find that preparing my smoothies ahead of time is the perfect fast food when I am on the go! I usually prep my green “detox” smoothies first thing in the morning with my coffee and store it in your fridge until I am ready for it.

Tell me what you all think about this. Do you all incorporate green smoothies on a weekly basis> I enjoy reading your comments and questions! Until next time, remember we love you!