Healthy Changes, Day 9: Shakes, Two Ways

Day 9 Overview:
Weight:   207.9 lbs (-9.1 total)
Exercise: 2.6 mile walk in the park.
Recipes:  Becky's Morning Shake (not good)
               & Favorite Green Shake (pretty darned good)

All I can say is that I feel sorry for this Becky person if this is how she starts her days.  What a nasty shake.

It isn't so bad once you get a third of the way through it, but I had to add stevia and brown rice syrup to it to make it palatable.  The strangest part of it is a texture issue.  It is almost fluffy or whipped, like sour cream, but more like the airiness of whipped cream.  I was finally able to (mostly) accurately describe it as avocado, almond butter cool whip.  Yep.  I told you it was weird.  I used a little less water than the recipe called for and put in some ground flax seed instead of their powders.  If you are brave or love almond butter and almond milk then I say give it a whirl; otherwise, I recommend you do what I did and go back to the berry smoothie with variations.  All recipes can be found here on the Clean Program website.

BECKY’S MORNING SHAKE
8 ounces of water
3-4 ounces of nut or hemp seed or rice milk (unsweetened)
1/2 of an avocado
2 teaspoons organic almond butter
a pinch of sea salt
1 scoop Nourish
1 scoop Move
OR your own protein powder and fiber addition (flax meal is the most commonly used one, or chia seeds work as well)
optional: sweetener to taste (stevia, agave, brown rice syrup)
optional: 1 tablespoon carob or raw cacao powder
1. Blend all ingredients until smooth.

Farmers Market bounty.

I actually had that shake last night for dinner.  Not to be repeated without major adjustments.  Today I ended up making a shake when I got back from the farmers market since I had a big bag of spinach.  Our downtown farmers market is small and cute, probably about the same size as the one in Boone, which was surprising to me, but packed into a big room so there are a bunch of rows.  There is a huge market off of I-40, but I'd rather go to the smaller one and support more local farmers and craftspeople.

The market winding down for the day.

Here's the shake I made today, and it was definitely more of a shake instead of a smoothie.  I didn't want a repeat of the cool whip mess so I just let it be thinner this time. 

Half-way blended, before the berries turned the "green" shake purple.

I washed and hand-tore a cup and a half of spinach and halved the rest of the ingredients on the list.  I ground some flax seeds since I didn't have any flax oil, skipped the maca powder (but had Henry pick some up for other shakes), used H's GREENSuperFood powder, and cut up a date.  I think I'll skip putting the dates in the shakes from now on.  It is so fibrous that it kills the blender, even if I cut them up first.  I'll just have one for a snack and put a prune or apricot in the shake instead.

FAVORITE GREEN SHAKE
3 cups spinach
1 cup frozen blueberries (or raspberries, blackberries, mangoes, papaya, etc.)
1 tablespoon flax oil
1 tablespoon maca powder
1 tablespoon spirulina AND/OR 1 scoop Clean Greens
1 cup almond milk
2 dates or a few drops of stevia to taste

1. Blend until creamy.

Recipe found here:  http://www.cleanprogram.com/files/clean-recipes.pdf