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BE Green Week 3 – Final Week Of Miriam Campbell’s Amazing Detox Journey!

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BE Green Week 3 – Final Week Of Miriam Campbell’s Amazing Detox Journey!

by Miriam Campbell

Week 3 signified the end of 21 days of green smoothies, but as far as I am concerned, the experience is really just beginning. This week I discovered two new delights that I am sure I will repeat many more times over in the future. Find out what these things were, and enjoy another basic recipe….

Take a peek at week 1 and week 2 of my journey!

Final Week went fairly “smoothie-ly”

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This week was a fairly quiet week at home, as my partner was struck down with more illness after our “flu” from the previous week. He went to a real doctor and was told he had sinusitis and tonsillitis, so he was home bound for the entire working week! This is a guy who loves his work, but at least he had his Millennium Falcon Lego and the Sony Playstation to keep him company, along with the cat, of course.

Luckily, I only have a little tiny bit of tonsil material left after my tonsillectomy in 2001. Hence, I still have a bit of a scratchy throat today, but it is nothing serious.

I didn’t quite manage the full 7 days with green smoothies/blended salads/juices only, as I was still snacking on celery, carrot and fruit in its solid state, and I did have some more cooked kumera (sweet potato) with two evening meals. I don’t actually feel disappointed about this though, as I feel this is more along the lines of an integration into my lifestyle, instead of being a specific time bound experiment.

New things I love

lemons188x125As I alluded to last week, this week I have absolutely fallen in love with adding lemon to everything! I even ate one whole, like an orange, because it just looked so juicy. I am blessed with having bought a property that already had a well-established lemon tree in residence. I swear, I do nothing to this tree, and it seems to survive, flourish even! We had a couple of days of heavy snow in 2012 (which is unusual for Christchurch) which did seem to damage the tree, so the following fruit season was impacted severely. I did think we were going to lose the tree, even though it is quite large. I am glad to report that the tree seems to have recovered well. I do occasionally bring in lemons to work for people to take home, and if anyone visits my house I encourage them to pick some for their own use. Now I have a more regular use for them – adding them to my green smoothies and my savoury smoothies!

So, my second new love encountered this week is the savoury smoothie! I haven’t really done justice to all of the fantastic recipes suggested in the BE Green Recipes, as I tend to find a recipe that I can get the ingredients to, and then, when I invariably like it, I just rinse and repeat until the ingredients run out or can no longer be easily sourced. Finally, in the last week of the BE Green programme, I got around to trying a savoury smoothie. I have experienced these in the past, but I usually added a form of sweetener, and I hadn’t used lemon in them before (I don’t think).

Anyway, I made one, and I really enjoyed it, so approximately 70% of my meals after that were savoury smoothies! Who would have thought I would have been happy to give up the fruit based sweet “dessert” smoothies, in favour of the savoury style?

A savory smoothie recipe for you

As in my first week blogular postulation, I shall share the ingredients and quantity required to make approximately 500ml of fantastic looking savoury green smoothie.

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Ingredients:

· 1 and ½ small tomatoes
· About 2 inches of telegraph cucumber (you might like to peel yours)
· 1 large stalk of celery
· 1 large handful of kale
· 2 handfuls of spinach
· The juice of half a lemon (I used all of this piece of lemon in this smoothie – rind and all)

Directions:

To begin with, I blended the tomato and cucumber to form the liquid part of the smoothie (as there is no water added). Then I added the stalk of celery and blended some more. Finally I added the kale and spinach, and blended till smooth. I have a Vitamix blender, but I rarely use it past 4 on variable speed, so high speed is not always needed to create these dishes.

As this smoothie was as bit thicker, I ended up eating it with a teaspoon. Om nom nom.

Bring on more fruit and vegetables!

I mentioned earlier that I feel like this is likely to become part of my future way of eating. Preparation is simple, combination occurs at the flick of a switch, and cleaning could not be simpler – a quick rinse does the majority of the work in a few seconds.

Just tonight, while attending a seminar at my gym about weight training technique and form, I was told that the recommended daily intake of fruit and vegetables has been doubled from 5 plus a day, to 10 pieces of fruit and vegetables per day. The speaker taking the session was a strength and performance trainer, for high level rugby teams around the world. Anyway, I loved the advice he gave near the end. He said there were three things he would recommend that would greensmoothie2-239x265work to support training (pre-workout supplements, amino acids during the workout, and protein and carbs post workout), but if you had $50 per week to spend on supplements, you should go out and spend that $50 on fresh fruit and vegetables, and you might not require any supplements. Oh, and you had to be getting at least 6 hours sleep per night to aid recovery.

I really like the idea of aiming for 10 servings of fruit and vegetables per day, and in my opinion, green smoothies are an easy way to add them to your diet.

I haven’t really been talking about any positive results from my BE Green experience, but I have lost a little weight, and a few centimeters from my belly. I still have further goals in that area, which is why I want to continue to make green smoothies part of my daily diet.

I think my sleep has been of better quality, and I have been able to sleep right through the night more often than had been usual. I have also been remembering very vivid dreams, which makes for interesting conversation and contemplation. A better sleep has led to increased energy the following day, and I have only really had the one headache during my first water fast, as opposed to them being a regular occurrence.

One area that I have seen significant results in, is my skin irritation on my right hand. I have been told that this is aggravated by stress, and dairy foods. Following the BE Green program has made me much more aware of what I am eating, and eating raw food only, means that dairy has been off the menu, and that is the way I would like it to stay. I have had this irritation for years, and now it is almost gone! For that I am very, very thankful.

I hope you have enjoyed reading along with my experience on the BE Green 21 Day Green Smoothie Detox. I certainly enjoyed taking part, and sharing my learnings with you. I am sure I will reap more positive health benefits as I continue to consume a higher quantity (and quality) of raw fruits and vegetables in my daily diet, and I hope others have a go, and reap their own rewards!

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Cleanse your body, improve your energy and  get your healthy ‘glow’ back in only 21 days   with the 21-day green smoothie detox!!   Our next detox begins May 18th, 2014