Smoothies For Weight Loss: Fact or Fiction?

Starting off the New Year is a great time to set a plan to reach your goals for obtaining a healthy weight. While you may hear some debate as to whether drinking smoothies can really help with weight loss, just like every other weight loss program, the results depend on many factors: how often you exercise, what else you eat, how much you eat, etc..

We’re not going to get into all the factors involved in a weight loss program, but we are going to take a look at how smoothies can help with weight loss.

Breakfast

Skipping breakfast will almost guarantee weight loss failure. When you wake up in the morning, your body is waiting for you to 'break fast' and replenish the nutrients. When you don't break that fast (you just slept without eating, so you were fasting) your body thinks it's going into starvation mode and it must start storing fat for survival. If you make smoothies a morning habit, you have already given your body a good reason to burn fat, resulting in weight loss.

Metabolism

When you blend up a healthy mixture of dietary fiber, protein, antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals for breakfast, you naturally give your body a jump-start for the day. Not only are you consuming a large amount of nutritious foods, you’re keeping your body's fuel stoked, burning fat, which is exactly what you need to do to lose weight.

Nutrients

When drinking smoothies to lose weight, you'll be making the healthiest food choices, and drinking these foods raw. No nutrients or fiber will be lost cooking your food. Fruits and vegetables that are high in fiber will stand out in many of your recipes. Some of the better choices include kale, spinach, broccoli, tomatoes, apples, berries, celery, and cucumbers. And that's just the beginning! Of course, you'll be adding some calcium and protein, along with nuts, seeds, and whole grains, too. Sounds like a tasty recipe for weight loss to me.

Replace

Losing weight with smoothies can also simply be a matter of replacing unhealthy snacks with healthy smoothies. Replace high calorie, high fat, high sugar snacks with low calorie, low fat, low sugar smoothies and you are bound to see promising weight loss  results. Also, many snacks tend to be high in 'bad carbs' which can lead to a blood sugar spike, then drop, resulting in a raid on the candy machine. It's easy to see how replacing unhealthy snacks with nutritious smoothies will give your body what it needs for energy and nutrition, and avoid all those things your body doesn't need.

So, yes, you can lose weight drinking smoothies, but only if you follow a complete weight loss and fitness program. It's not magic, but by making healthier food choices, many made easier by drinking smoothies, you can see weight loss results. Of course, as with any weight loss journey, check with your own health care provider before you change your diet and exercise program.

And be sure to check back throughout the month, as we will be posting lots of delicious and tasty smoothie recipes to help you get your weight and fitness goals off to a great start for 2015! In the meantime, here are some recommended recipe books:

   

Recipe: Blueberry Banana Agave Smoothie

After all the excess of the holidays, if you're anything like me, you're probably in the mood for something lighter! Smoothies are a great way to pack a lot of healthy nutrition into one tasty glass - like this one. Full of antioxidants, fiber, and flavor, this will satisfy your sweet tooth and your hankering for something healthy all in one.

Stay tuned for more tasty smoothie recipes later this month as we share some ways to cleanse and detoxify your body through healthy eating to start the New Year off on the right foot!

Blueberry Banana Agave Smoothie
(Serves 2.)

Ingredients:

Milk and blueberries (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1 cup blueberries, frozen
1/4 tsp. orange zest, finely grated
1 banana, frozen and cut into chunks
1/4 cup plain or vanilla flavored Greek yogurt
1 cup whole milk
2 Tbsp. chia seeds, ground (optional) 
2 tsp. agave syrup
1/4 cup all-natural granola

Directions:

• Add all ingredients (except granola) to a blender and process until smooth and creamy. 
• Put the smoothie into two glasses and sprinkle granola on top and then serve.

Video - High Fiber Muffin Recipe

Here is a quick and fun recipe for some healthy and tasty high-fiber muffins.  Muffins are a great way to get some extra fiber into your diet - they are quick and easy to make, and make an excellent snack or breakfast on the run. If you have a juicer, you'll have lots of leftover fiber - don't throw it away - that's a lot of the good stuff from your fruits and veggies! Instead, use it to make muffins like these. Wow, don't they look delicious?

(The full recipe with ingredients and measurements is at the end of the short video. You'll probably want to hit pause when you get there to write them down, as it goes pretty quick.)

High Fibre Muffin Recipe
For more like this visit: www.legourmet.tv In this recipe video we use the Fibre left over from our Breville Ikon Juice machine. Dont throw out that fibre you need it in your diet. This recipe can use any leftover fibre from juicing.
 

More High Fiber Recipes:
   

Why You Should Include High-Fiber Foods In Your Daily Diet

In today's American diet full of fast food and sugary snacks, it can seem hard to find foods that are actually good for you.  But if you want an easy way to be healthier and feel better, then you should try adding fiber to your diet. 

Fiber is a material produced by plants that we can’t digest.  So why would we want to eat something we can’t digest?  Insoluble fiber dissolves in water and gives your food a thicker consistency.  This makes you absorb sugar into your blood stream more slowly, which can be helpful for moderating or even avoiding diabetes.  Soluble fiber absorbs water, but doesn’t dissolve it.  This makes your stool moist and helps clean out your digestive tract. 

idealized curves of human blood glucose and insulin concentrations during the course of a day containing three meals; in addition, effect of sugar-rich meal is highlighted; (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The most notable benefit from eating high fiber foods is that it can help calm or even prevent certain diseases.  People diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS, suffer from chronic abdominal pain, along with other symptoms such as constipation or diarrhea.  High fiber foods may ease these symptoms without the use of prescription drugs.  Because fiber clears unwanted material out of your colon, it also has been proven to reduce the risk of colon cancer.  If this isn’t enough of a benefit, a high fiber diet has also been advocated for people with high cholesterol because it has been shown to lower overall cholesterol levels. 

Nowadays, people get a lot more processed and refined sugars in their diet than the body was meant to handle.  When we eat simple sugars, our insulin response is triggered causing our blood sugar levels to drop.  This can lead to weight gain because our body stores these sugars as fats.  Fiber slows the absorption of sugar into the body and reduces the insulin response, keeping our blood sugar at reasonable levels instead of bouncing it up and down throughout the day.  High fiber foods are recommended for people with hypoglycemia and diabetes to help steady blood sugar levels - and it may even help keep you from developing these conditions in the first place. 

Berries (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In addition to making us store fat, our insulin response leaves us feeling drained, tired, and wanting another sugar pick-me-up.  The more sugar we have at once, the lower our blood sugar drops afterwards, and the faster we get hungry again.  Fiber is a great way to stop this cycle in its tracks.  It keeps us feeling fuller longer, so we end up eating less.  Plus, what we eat is just a little healthier.

So why not add a little extra fiber to your diet?   It’s not as hard as it sounds.  You can find lots of tasty high fiber fruits (pears, apples, blueberries, strawberries, oranges, raisins, and dried peaches, figs, and apricots), grains (whole grain pasta and bread, bran cereal, and oatmeal), legumes (black, lima, and baked beans, lentils, and assorted nuts), and vegetables (carrots, baked potatoes, sweet potatoes, artichokes, peas, turnip greens, and Brussels sprouts - and lots more) that taste great and are good for you.  Just add a few of these foods to your diet every day, and you’ll be healthier and feeling great in no time.  Happy eating!