Robyn's Blog

Dear GreenSmoothieGirl: how do you get started on the green smoothie weight loss program? Please let me know I am interested.

Answer: In my book The Green Smoothies Diet, I cover three different programs you can do. One is a three-day green fast for detoxifying your organs of elimination. Giving them a break from digestion every now and then is a great idea.

The second plan is a 30-day fat burner cleanse for weight loss. This is very frankly the best way I know to do what’s RIGHT for your body, nourishing it, while losing weight as quickly as is safe and healthy–and possible for a person with the many demands of an active lifestyle. I really fret when I see the ways that most people go about “dieting.” Most of them are destructive. Even Weight Watchers’ “point” system doesn’t make a peep about avoiding those acidic processed foods that are harming us in more ways than their calorie density. And you can read elsewhere on this blog about what I think about the “diet doctors.”

You’ll feel supercharged doing that weight loss program because it is first of all targeting your health, and weight loss is just a wonderful side benefit!

And third you can do the green smoothie for life (permanent lifestyle change) program. I hate to call this a program, in fact, because program implies a short duration. It’s how my family and I live.

The book is available (cover price discounted) in the GreenSmoothieGirl.com store. Also Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and other booksellers. I autograph all the copies sent out through GreenSmoothieGirl.com.

I have started meeting with a good friend of mine this week whose wife asked for my help with nutrition counseling. My friend is a regionally renowned musician whose family is going through some seriously tough times. He is amazingly well read, brilliant, educated with an advanced degree, a church leader, fantastic dad, and one of the finest human beings I know. And still, his wife says he is like most of America in one sense at least. He knows nothing about nutrition. He did the Atkins Diet religiously for a long period of time before suffering the consequences of that regimen (health lost, weight regained). He was raised in a fairly chaotic environment and simply doesn’t know.

What a gift we give any child who is raised with a whole-foods, plant-based diet, even while the larger culture around him has gone insane. (Even a child will be gripped by the very visual and easily documented results when quasi-vegetarian Morgan Spurlock, in the documentary SuperSize Me, eats at McDonald’s for 30 days. But unfortunately you have to access the child-friendly version of the movie that they showed at my kids’ school, since the regular version inexplicably contains the F word.)

I got a very long email yesterday from someone who read my intro to 12 Steps and told me that my attitude toward children is “disrespectful” because I state that children generally need adults to help with their nutrition because they make choices based on what tastes good rather than what’s good for them. (Feel free to sound off on this blog about your opinions on that, which are welcome!) The writer said that her children always choose vibrant whole, raw foods and loathe any processed junk food.

When she writes a book about how exactly she achieved that (if in fact she didn’t just get lucky with perfect children), I do hope it outsells 12 Steps. I’ll be the first in line to buy it, because that is not my observation of the vast majority of American children. I speak positively about whole plant foods in my home and attempt to make appealing dishes, and two of my children are vegetarian by choice. However, most of my children will eat fruits and veggies but otherwise make poor choices if left to their own devices at food-related events outside my home.

I wish they wouldn’t, just like I wish I wouldn’t have ever made bad choices. But I honor their choices even if I “require” things of them (and make no apologies about it, while you, reading this, are free to reject my way of thinking and doing things). For instance, when I buy them dinner at Sweet Tomatoes, their first plate of food has to be a giant green salad. In the long run, I trust that their tastes have been “set” to enjoy green and raw plant foods, and their experience with good health because of their diet will be a powerful motivator in the future.

When my girls and I were on our way to California for me to teach classes in San Diego and Fullerton recently (see photo below of the Fullerton class at BellySprout), one of my daughters brought Oprah up. “Mom,” she said, “Oprah is really amazing and accomplishes so much. But she keeps gaining weight. She loses it, but then she gains it all back again. Why is that?”

We puzzled over it as we drove and I realized something very important related to the Introduction to 12 Steps to Whole Foods where I address parenting children to eat well at some length.

That is, we tend to go back to what we learned as children. Oprah can avoid ever spending time in her kitchen and can dictate exactly what she wants to eat, because she’s been rich enough to pay a full-time cook for many years. So the #1 and #2 reasons I’m given to avoid shifting to a high-raw, plant-based diet don’t even apply to her. Those are (1) “I don’t have time to cook” and (2) “I can’t afford to eat right.”

But she was powerfully influenced by the Southern U.S. diet she was raised with: fried everything and lots of animal protein. Even having tremendous advantages of money and a hired help hasn’t been able to overcome that programming!

So it is with us. Let’s look at the positive side of that. If we raise our children to eat mostly vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds, they certainly may stray. (I did for the first half of my 20’s, and you can read my story on the site.) But our children will always have the positive associations that came with eating according to correct principles throughout their childhood. (If you start now despite your children being half-raised, that’s still so much better than NEVER providing those learning opportunities.)

For me, the positive associations weren’t about those healthy foods I was raised with being comforting—my mother wasn’t a “food is love” person like some moms. She spent minimal time in food prep, wasn’t a good cook by anyone’s standards, and didn’t bother with artful presentation.

But I learned that I had energy and a positive mood, avoided illness, and stayed at an ideal weight back then when she fed us lots of raw fruits and vegs and legume/whole grain main dishes—and dessert only rarely, made with whole wheat and the sugar/butter cut in half. I feel sorry for people who never learned that in their childhood as I did! And so, after deviating for a number of years and not liking how I felt or looked, I came back to the “straight and narrow path” of eating simple, whole, plant foods. It’s a lot easier to RETURN to it than it is to INVENT it from scratch as an adult.

My focus on this site is that when you don’t dump toxins and their byproducts (mycotoxins) into your body en masse in the form of processed foods, animal products, etc., you are stronger in the face of viral and bacterial infections.

But these are some interesting, simple, natural suggestions by Dr. Vinay Goyal, who has 20 years of clinical experience in hospitals:

1. Frequent hand-washing (well highlighted in all official communications)

2. Hands-off-the-face approach. Resist all temptations to touch any part of face

3. Gargle twice a day with warm salt water (use Listerine if you don’t trust salt). H1N1 takes 2-3 days after initial infection in the throat/nasal cavity to proliferate and show characteristic symptoms. Simple gargling prevents proliferation. In a way, gargling with salt water has the same effect on a healthy individual that Tamiflu has on an infected one. Don’t underestimate this simple, inexpensive and powerful preventative method.

4. Similar to 3 above, clean your nostrils at least once every day with warm salt water. Not everybody may be good at Jala Neti or Sutra Neti (very good Yoga asanas to clean nasal cavities), but blowing the nose hard once a day and swabbing both nostrils with cotton buds dipped in warm salt water is very effective in bringing down viral population. [Robyn's note: we have a neti pot that you can get at health food stores. My kids use it for occasional head congestion, without my telling them to, because it is so effective. Use warm salt water.]

5. Boost your natural immunity with foods that are rich in Vitamin C (Amla and other citrus fruits). If you have to supplement with Vitamin C tablets, make sure that it also has Zinc to boost absorption.

6. Drink as much of warm liquids (herbal tea, etc.) as you can. Drinking warm liquids has the same effect as gargling, but in the reverse direction. They wash off proliferating viruses from the throat into the stomach where they cannot survive, proliferate or do any harm.

You want to get raw almonds in the group buy (because you can’t get TRULY RAW anywhere else, and the price is awesome) but don’t know how MUCH to get. You love your friends and family. You find the holidays slightly annoying because of all the junk food, right when you want to be strong and healthy against H1N1 and influenza.

I have an idea for you. Make sprouted/dehydrated teriyaki and candied almonds—all natural ingredients, no sugar, no cooking—from Ch. 7 of 12 Steps to Whole Foods. Package a bag of each kind all cute in a lined coffee bag (I bought them online) or cellophane bag from a party store, with a sticker on the bag explaining that these homemade sprouted almonds full of life-giving enzymes with the enzyme inhibitors unlocked, 200% of the fiber, and 200-500% of the vitamins and minerals of regular dry almonds. Give them to your neighbors, kids’ teachers, everyone in the family, co-workers, and everybody who shows up at the last minute with a gift for you and (oh no!) you don’t have anything for them. It’s an easy, inexpensive, unique, homemade gift.

By the way, those two recipes may be better if you add MORE almonds to the mix, if you feel the coating of teriyaki or sweet spices is too much. When I make one or both of those recipes, I make some PLAIN dehydrated almonds, too, because that’s what I want most of the time. And that way, you can add more almonds to the mix for either of those recipes. (It’s hard with raw recipes to gauge ingredients exactly, because unlike food from McDonald’s, whole plant foods vary widely in size, texture, color, and flavor.)

Then whatever you don’t use, keep for yourself.

Your friends will love you for caring about their health in the sugar-and-flu season (those two things ARE related). It’ll be a delicious treat that they can feel fantastic about eating. They’ll know you’re a health nut (get it? haha) and come to you when they’re ready to make some changes.

And if that’s too hard, just give them truly raw almonds in that cute bag. Tell gift recipients in your card or sticker on the bag that it’s no longer possible to get the most nutritious raw almonds any more, but you went the distance to get them right from the ranch.

Today I’m talking about a product review / comparison of Trio Bars and Bora Bora bars at Costco, both of which I love. I wish they hadn’t discontinued Lara Bars, but such it is. (I met Lara about 6 years ago, and she’s a raw foodist who “walks the walk.”)

Bora Bora bars are 180 – 200 calories (48 grams), three varieties, and cost $1 each and are the higher quality of the two brands, because they have sprouted flax seed and all organic ingredients. I love Trio bars, too, because they taste so yummy and are made from nuts, seeds, and fruits. Trio bars are four different varieties, 230 calories (40 grams), and cost $0.80 each. The price is much better than similar bars. I would buy these over virtually any “protein” bar I’ve ever seen, since the proteins are almost always fractionated versions of soy or whey, both ingredients to avoid. Occasionally at a health food store you can find hemp protein bars, which are preferable if you are really insist on eating bars that force protein to be a bigger macronutrient than normally found in nature.

Occasionally someone writes to me that they’re eating whole foods and mostly raw, without losing weight. I’d be amazed if that’s the case for anyone who undertakes the lifestyle for any extended period of time. I always immediately wonder about thyroid issues. But one thing to look at is the question of how much you are eating of high-fat nuts and seeds. They are good for you, but an ounce or two a day is sufficient. A Trio bar takes the edge off my hunger, but I’ll be hungry an hour or two later. Low-calorie, high-micronutrient food like what is in green smoothies is a very important part of a mostly raw, whole-food, plant-based lifestyle. It is unlikely but possible to be overweight eating nothing but raw plant food, if you’re overindulging in nuts/seeds/unrefined oils.

I like how Costco has more and more organic, whole-food options. However, be careful with your selections. Some of the stuff Costco sells is what I call “feel good” food, which is radically different than “good-for-you” food. They have whole-grain pasta, which is good, and Rice Dream, and lots of organics (produce as well as boxed and other foods). But a lady was handing out samples of “organic” PopTarts recently at my Costco in Orem, Utah (different brand name than PopTart, same concept) and literally shouting about how the product is “so good for you.” Cane juice crystals, the main ingredient, are a very marginal improvement over refined sugar (still a concentrated sweetener). And the white flour was organic. Big deal. Beware of junk food masquerading as nutritious food, which is in fact only about 5% better than the typical junk food.

San Diego class at Windmill Farms Market: lots of long-time readers there, loved it! Ed, you are just THE BEST. Thanks for printing directions to our next class and for being so kind and helpful. Russell, your bringing your book The Green Smoothies Diet and telling everyone you’ve read it three times made my day. I think **I** haven’t even read it three times. Other readers with whom I’ve chatted via email over the past two years, it was so fun to put your faces to your names! It’s kind of weird to have a job where you don’t interact face-to-face very much—mostly email—so I always love to do a class where I meet real, live 12 Steppers and GSG readers. It means a lot to me.

Fullerton class at Christy Funk’s cute natural baby/childbirth store BellySprout was wonderful. I’m soooo sorry to those who came and couldn’t find a place to stand. Half the attendees at both classes learned of the events through the GSG newsletter/blog. You are busy and I am honored that you spent your evening with me.

Thanks for your support, for reading my book, for making my daughters feel like rock stars.

When I went to CA last week (Thurs. through Mon.) with my daughters, I was hard pressed to get all my work done before I left. I was up very late the night before we left for the airport and consequently didn’t have any time to think about how to get through five days eating well. (If I don’t eat well, I lose my energy and my digestive system shuts down. As long as I’m eating 60-80% raw and 95% whole foods, I have energy and to spare, wherever I go!)

Car trips are conducive to taking lots of frozen pints of green smoothie, but plane trips aren’t. And our hotel room had no fridge, something I usually try to ensure by booking online where you can see the hotel’s amenities. (I had booked the hotel awfully late.) So, besides taking a bunch of VitaMineral Green, buying two boxes of snack bars from Costco which I will review tomorrow, and bringing my BlendTec in the suitcase (which I did not have a chance to use after a day of teaching in San Diego and Fullerton), I was on my own.

The Costco Bora Bora bars and Trio bars helped a lot. That and the oranges my daughter stuffed her backpack with, from the hotel, got us through lunch before we headed to a buffet with a salad bar at the end of each theme-park day. Breakfast at the hotel, sigh. You know how continental breakfast is. What I do when I have to punt like that is scout out what the best thing is to eat. I don’t touch donuts/pastries, ever. I don’t drink juice—too much concentrated sugar. Cold cereal, no. So every day, after my run, for breakfast we ate oatmeal (instant, unfortunately—you made your own with really hot water) and two oranges. Not wonderful but not too bad.

You probably don’t believe me that I’ve never fed my kids at McDonald’s, but while I’m telling you outlandish tales, here’s another one: we’ve never eaten a meal inside a theme park, even though we vacation at them about once a year.

Tomorrow I’ll do a product review to compare the healthy snack bars at Costco that got us through, since planning for our California trip was minimal at best.

I’ll also post some photos of the class I taught in Fullerton, if I get them from Christy, which was lots of fun.

In my research I report on in detail, in The Green Smoothies Diet, I asked 175 regular green smoothie drinkers what health benefits they achieved.  Because to participate, you had to be in the habit for only 30 days or less, I had one issue I wanted to explore that I wasn’t able to.

So I have a question for you now. This isn’t particularly scientific, but I would like to know from those of you who have gone through a winter with your green smoothie habit:

Aside from any initial “cleansing reaction” (diarrhea, headaches, etc. are experienced by 18.5% in my study, for up to 2 weeks after beginning a very healthy new habit) . . .

Did you notice getting sick less after beginning to drink green smoothies regularly?

I would like to hear about your experience here, if you’ve been down the path for a while.  That is one of the greatest benefits for me and my family: before massively increasing our greens consumption, we used to get sick, and now we don’t.

I think as people go into this winter with all the fear generated in the media about H1N1, GS is a simple habit that I feel much better about promoting than injecting yourself with live or dead bacteria!

Please tell us your experience.

So I told you about my close encounter with concrete on a run last week.  I told you that day, at a GS class I did, one of the event organizers dabbed lavender oil on my battered face that made the swelling go way down, quickly.  Then I went home and smeared coconut oil on the wounds on my chin, lip, and cheekbone several times a day. That kept the scabs soft and helped me not worry about infection. The scabs were gone three days later and the wounds barely noticeable.

(Craig did entertain himself saying things in public like, “Do that one more time and I’ll smack you AGAIN!” And I was glad to have the end of the comments from my male friends about finding the violent boyfriend who did that and avenging the deed with a hubcap and a cheap bottle of wine.)

But while the scabs have virtually disappeared on my face, the similar-sized scabs on my knees are still ugly looking and going nowhere four days later.  This is despite that the knee scabs had not been repeatedly splitting open, like the scabs on my lip did, every time I laughed.  (I laugh a LOT.)

Okay, so the only difference, which is remarkable, is the application of coconut oil (and originally, lavender oil).  I didn’t care about my knees, whereas I did care about my face.  I took my parents to lunch today, and was telling my mom about this.  She said she wishes she had known her whole life what a wonderful moisturizer and anti-bacterial organic, cold-pressed coconut oil is—she feels she could look younger and would have saved a lot of money!  Like me, she loves it and it’s the ONLY moisturizer she uses. It’s whole foods for the skin. (Why do we buy all these products full of refined oils, at best, and chemicals, at worst?)

She loves that by applying it, it soaks in and is used as NUTRITION no differently than if you ate it.  I put so much of it on, topically, that I don’t always concern myself about getting some in FOOD every day.

Anytime I see a child with eczema, I give the parents coconut oil.  The year we began using it topically as well as internally (as food, replacing other oils, such as in baking and sautéing), eczema disappeared on me and my kids.  Ditto my circulation problems (cold hands and feet) during the winter.

Here’s a photo of me and Craig three days after my accident, 50% healed—not so bad, huh?

So a few hours before my morning class in Midway, I went out for a run, and the concrete jumped up and tripped me. I was headed downhill, and my toe caught the edge so hard, I went down face-first before my hands even hit. I thought I broke my jaw—but I’m blessed because it’s just sore and I didn’t lose any teeth.  Unfortunately I had a big Daffy Duck lip and big bloody scrapes on my chin and cheekbone. (My bleeding knees were covered for the class, at least.)

I held ice to my face all the way until I got to the class, but it was huge and ugly and I didn’t even bother trying to conceal anything with makeup—that would have HURT.  So that was my look as they mic’d and professionally filmed the thing., LOL!  (And oh, for a few days after, endless “violent boyfriend” jokes.)

Here are a few photos from the class (that conveniently—or vainly??–don’t highlight my smacked-up face). That’s Leslie blending away with me, and in a photo in the black shirt.

Anyway, Kerry (who helped Leslie with the event) came up before I spoke and dabbed my facial wounds with doTERRA lavender essential oil. Oh my goodness! By the time the class was over, my lip’s swelling was 75% gone and I felt and looked SO much better. Crazy! I know a GSG reader who sells those oils: Chelsea at chelseastevens@gmail.com.  You’ll want some of THAT in your arsenal of natural remedies against emergencies.

I did a book signing afterward and these are some of the highlights:

Two ladies on the front row, Nancy and Cheryl are longtime GSG readers.  Nancy’s husband had bladder cancer and has been cancer free for 2 yrs. doing the GSG thing. He actually hasn’t radically changed his diet, just does GS and wheat grass juice every day. (That’s just informational, not a recommendation or suggestion that GS alone cures cancer.) Cheryl adopted green smoothies for health benefits and lost 80 lbs. without “dieting.”  I love these stories, if you can’t tell.

And my old college roommate Helen, who I haven’t seen or heard from in 21 years, had been reading my site, is very “into” nutrition, and looks WAY more gorgeous than she did back then! That was super fun. The ironic thing is that when we were 21, we ate nothing but crap and we just looked at our roommate with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and all her “weird” food and colonics and stuff, and just scratched our heads.  Life has a way of making 180 turns sometimes, doesn’t it?

The token guy in the audience said he makes green smoothies for a bunch of firefighters and they love it. I told him my experience with guys has been this: they’ll eat anything you feed them but most of them won’t make it for themselves!  (I’m thinking of a few of y’all who read this blog—feel free to sound off—who are notable exceptions!)  Trivia quiz for you: see the photo, I am holding up two fingers. I’m asking, “What are the two biggest deficits in the American Diet? Only ONE of them do doctors tell you about.”

First one to answer this question correctly, here, can email us your address and we’ll send you a free copy of The Green Smoothies Diet (or any recipe collection you’d like). Hint: I write about this regularly in my books, etc.–it’s “gospel according to GreenSmoothieGirl,” of course.  Some experts may disagree with me.  (But they’re wrong.)  I’m magically blogging while on the road in California, but I’ll answer whoever gets it right first when I’m back Tues. Oct. 20 and send you your prize!