03 Feb Resolutions and Green Smoothies.
It’s the time of the year when resolutions formed on New Year’s Eve are either in full swing or beginning to blend into the background. Whether it was to lose weight, do more exercise or reduce stress, the list of options is never ending. Generally speaking, the main theme is usually to improve your holistic health in some way.
The problem with resolutions is that often we bite off more than we can chew, and before you know it the new habit is happening less and less. This year our Perth Naturopath, Michele Grovsener, decided to keep this in mind and break down the concept of New Year’s resolutions into bite-sized chunks. This meant changes using natural remedies that she could implement while improving her health greatly.
So how do we form a new habit?
The concept of forming a habit is through repetition, by imprinting new behavioural patterns on our neural pathways. There’s a general assumption that it takes approximately 21 days to form a habit. This concept was documented in the 60’s by Dr Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon who observed that it took his patients this amount of time to adjust to their cosmetic surgeries. This has been challenged more recently by researchers from University College in London, who found that the average timeframe was 66 days and that individual times varied from 18-254 days. Yikes!
The take away message I got from my research was that to achieve success, I needed to be realistic about my resolution and the time I was willing to put into making it happen. I had failed in the past but this year was going to be different.
Pick one small habit that packs a punch!
I often ask my patients to include more green vegetables into their daily diet. This one small habit that can be a life changer. The realism though, is that often the execution of change can be more daunting than the task itself. So with this in mind and armed with a new Nutra-Bullet, adding a green smoothie to my diet was going to become less than a 5-minute job each day. My real challenge was to make it happen every day for the next 365 days.
I am pleased to say that I am on Day 18 of making a delicious green smoothie for my family that has more green vegetables in it than we can consume at breakfast! It contains a plethora of vitamins and minerals ranging from vitamins A, C, E & K to the minerals magnesium, manganese, iron, calcium, zinc, selenium, Vitamin B1, 2, 3, 6, 12 and folate – just to name a few. It takes no time at all to blitz up, gets the thumbs up from my kids and even the husband, plus provides me with 1-1 ½ cups of extra green vegetables to my daily quota.
The below smoothie can be modified to suit your individual tastes, but should optimally contain more vegetables than fruit. Feel free to include additional extras such as coconut or flaxseed oil, chia seeds, nuts, acai, turmeric and even protein powder to make it a more complete meal.
My Green Breakfast Smoothie Serves 2-3 people
- 1 cup baby spinach
- 1 cup kale, stalks removed
- 2 stalks of celery
- 1 lebanese cucumber
- 1 avocado, peeled and stone removed
- ½ lemon, skinned & pitted
- 1cm round of fresh ginger
- Handful of mint or parsley
- 1 frozen banana
- 1 kiwifruit peeled
- 500ml of filtered water (or more if needed)
Blitz in a blender until smooth and creamy.
I always try to buy local organic or pesticide free produce for my smoothies to reduce my toxic load. I have already noticed more vitality and energy in all my family members.
I invite you to join me in my challenge and make a small change that has lasting health benefits!
Michele is one of our Naturopath’s available at our Perth natural medical clinic, NatMed in East Fremantle.
