my weapon of choice is a smoothie, mostly

 

This is my Awesome Smoothie and what I take most days for lunch at work. It's my weapon of choice when my body screams for sugar.  I am the type of person who is always on the lookout for that magic diet that will let me lose weight with very little effort or behavior modification.  It doesn't exist.  I've been listening at work to Bob Greene's audio books on losing weight.  I highly recommend them if you need a little voice of reason in your ear spurring you on.  I think "Make the Connection" is his bestseller.

What I really have to come to grips with is why I eat.  Because once I'm cognizant of that,  I do really well by following a healthy eating plan and doing some kind of exercise I like.   For me it comes down to being aware that I eat when I'm angry, happy, bored, sad, depressed.  I'm an emotional eater.  I also eat for fun.  I eat socially.  I eat because I'm drinking a margarita.  I don't eat well because at the end of the day I'm tired and want to watch "Friends" and eat chips and salsa.  I eat for all the reasons except to put good food in my body. 

I want to celebrate everything in life with a cheeseburger.

So in my quest to eat food for the sake of fueling my body, and in a quest to find whole foods I like to eat, I've come up with a few simple recipes I always go back to.  Especially because I have exactly ten minutes in the morning to make my lunch, unless I want to wake up before 5:10 a.m.  I don't.  And about 30 to 60 minutes in the evening to make dinner.

I really like to cook,  and have a workhorse of an oven.  I bought a refurbished KitchenAid mixer and Cuisinart food processor. I like coming home from work, changing into jeans and an apron and decompressing in the kitchen.  Sometimes there is a glass of red wine in my hand.  Sometimes I first have to lay down on my bed and talk myself into cooking.  But it's always worth it.  Most times Steve joins me and we solve world problems.

Then there is the matter of sugar.  It's been compared to crack in the media and in books, and I have to agree.  Last night I ate a package of chewy sweettarts.  My brain immediately became sharper, and I felt really great.  Like, really great.  I won two rounds of Scattergories.  My family feared me.

When I woke up this morning, all I could think about was getting more candy.   I gave in and had a milkshake at lunch. The internal struggle is real.  Three separate times this afternoon I asked Steve to go get me some candy, so I could just sit on the couch and "relax" with my candy.  I then stopped him every time.  I am an addict.

I do allow myself to have 85% dark chocolate and keep it in my cookie jar.  A small piece of that does wonders for the brain.  In fact, if you struggle with depression, some of the best food choices are really dark chocolate (not Ghiradelli with caramel oozing out of it), dark cherries and cashews.  All things I keep in my pantry and freezer.

Back to my Awesome Smoothie.  Here's the recipe:

Combine in your awesome blender:

1 cup of unsweetened almond milk
A good handful of baby spinach and/or baby kale
One scoop of chocolate whey protein
A tablespoon total of chia seeds and flax seeds
A dash of vanilla
One cup of frozen dark cherries
A small handful of almonds, walnuts or cashews
One teaspoon or packet of stevia

Then just blend it like crazy, while singing loudly to Valley Lodge.

This is so good and refreshing and your body will thank you.  Your kids will thank you.  You will feel like a superhero.  And it only took five minutes to create.  Use your weapons wisely.