30 Day Smoothie Challenge: Day 3

I haven't blogged in a while because, really, I've been lazy. I've been home since Mother's day and I cooked a ton until June 7th (my Nana's birthday) when I had to have knee surgery for a car wreck I was in in December. But I am now forcing myself to blog about all the food I make and my new weightless goals.

On the day before the accident, I decided I was going to run a half-marathon this year and lose 35 lbs while doing so. I'm not a big girl at all, but I am not satisfied with my body. I have actually lost 4 lbs since the accident, which is huge for having to be mostly sedentary. I attribute it all to the food I put in my body. With 6 months left in the year though, I need to hop onto my diet plan and stick to it.

I really like making smoothies for breakfast, because they're easy and fast. Plus I can hide lots of veggies in them. When I was looking for smoothie recipes, lots of people were talking about this 30 day smoothie challenge. While I have yet to find a website with all of the 'rules', I have taken rules from different 30 day challenges and combined them to make my own.

The rules are:

• add one smoothie (homemade is best) to what you eat every day
• it's best to have a fruit and veggie smoothie, but just fruit or just veggie are okay
• You aren't SUPPOSED to use it to replace a meal with the smoothie (but I drink two a day and replace breakfast with a smoothie since I usually don't eat breakfast anyway)

The best part about this is that you can experiment with different fruit and veggies everyday! I've also read that you can lose as much as 15 lbs, feel better, and your completion is better with this!

On day 1, I started a food, weight, goal journal and I haven't perfected it just yet, but I'm only on day 3 of having a food journal I actually use. I'm not trying to count calories as much as I'm trying to eat better and be more aware of what I eat. I weigh myself every morning/before I eat or drink anything and write in my journal as I make my smoothie. 

My journal is written out like this:

Day

Date

Day of the week

Morning weight:

Today's Goal:

This week's goal:

This month's goal:

Vitamins: (yes/no)

Breakfast:

Mid-morning snack: (if applicable)

Lunch:

Mid-afternoon snack: (if applicable)

Dinner:

Notes section

# of bottles of water: (This is a tally and on the very bottom of the page)

So since I'm on day 3 It looks like this

Day 3

7/11/12

Wednesday

Morning weight: 163 (down 1 lb)

Today's Goal: Drink more water

This week's goal: lose 2 lbs

This month's goal: lose 10 lbs

Vitamins: (yes/no) yes

Breakfast: Smoothie (Bag of cantaloupe, low-fat vanilla greek yogurt, 2 handfuls of baby spinach, 1 cup of grapes, 1/2 apple, 1 banana, 4 pieces of celery)

Mid-morning snack: (if applicable) none

Lunch: 1/4 chicken breast, potatoes, green beans (leftover) ***didn't eat very much***

Mid-afternoon snack: (if applicable) smoothie (1 apple juice box, 1 apple, 1 banana, 1 handful of frozen strawberries, 2 handfuls of baby spinach)

Dinner:

Notes section

# of bottles of water: (This is a tally and on the very bottom of the page)III

It's only 4 o'clock so I haven't finished yet, but you get the gist of it. Also, I have a 600 mL camel bak I drink out of because it's easy to know how much I've had to drink. The goals are each a step up from each other but none of them are insane for me to get to with the amount of activity I'm allowed to do only being a month out from a major knee surgery. 

The smoothie I have pre-made in my freezer is from AllRecipes and is super easy!

It calls for 

• 1 banana
• 1 cup of grapes
• 1 (6oz) tub of vanilla yogurt 
• 1/2 an apple, cored and chopped
• 1.5 cups of baby spinach 

It's a good basic recipe, but really who is going to measure out all of that every day? I pre make them!

On Sunday or Monday, I'll go to the store and get a bunch of bananas, 2 bags of grapes, 7 tubs of LOW-FAT GREEK vanilla yogurt (Oikos comes in 6oz already), apples, and a big container of baby spinach. I'll divide all of the fruits into sandwich bags for in the mornings, so when I wake up I just have to grab a handful or two of spinach, the yogurt, and the fruits to make my smoothie. (I don't bother measuring out the spinach for real because if I have too much, oh well. It's better for me. Also, this makes two servings and says it's 205 calories on the website, but the yogurt I use is really good and low-fat, so I don't think it's even that much.

After making about 10 smoothies in the last 2 weeks I've learned a few things.

1. A blender that is 27 or 28 years old doesn't work very well
2. If the blender is smoking, it's time to replace it (and my wonderful parents did)
3. Putting the spinach in first with a little bit of liquid works best, otherwise it takes forever to blend.
4. I probably need to cut the apples into smaller chunks.
5. You can't taste the spinach because the banana over powers it.

Now a word of warning, this smoothie will be BRIGHT GREEN. Get over it. It is so yummy I could eat it every day.

Today, I experimented with the basic smoothie and added cantaloupe and celery to my smoothie. The cantaloupe was delicious, but I could kind of taste the celery at the very end. Does anyone know what can cover this up?

For my smoothie this afternoon, I just combined the frozen/fresh fruits I had (1 apple, an apple juice box, a banana, a handful of frozen strawberries, and 2 handfuls of spinach). Aside from the strawberries being tart, which I didn't know before hand, and the vomit-like color of the smoothie, it was delicious! 

I wasn't kidding, it looks gross.

I promise I'll try and post on odd numbered days in the challenge with my journal page for that day, a smoothie recipe, and tips I've learned in those two days!