Well hello there FitFeat friends! Happy Friday EVE! Gotta love short holiday weeks!
This morning started with a fantastic 5 mile client run in some unusually humid weather. Wow, I thought I’d been transported back to Ohio for a minute with the low cloud cover and muggy air. I left the house with nice straight hair and when I came home, MSP said I looked like I’d showered and let my hair air dry (which is to say: NOT a pretty sight!) Humidity and my hair do not play nicely together. Crazy waves and cowlicks all over!
I do feel for folks who have to run in humidity ALL the time. We are lucky here to typically have very dry air.
I wore my VFFs again today – still love running in them and still finding it to be pain free. My knees are happy these days. Maybe I’ll get the itch to go longer than 8 or 9 in them, but right now I’m back to just enjoying runs as they come.
After my run, I was so craving something fresh. I couldn’t decide between a cantaloupe or a green smoothie. So I did both. Ate a few bites of the cantaloupe:
And then put the rest into a rocking smoothie:
- 1/2 Cantaloupe
- 1 small orange
- kale
- spinach
- flaxseed oil
- pepitas
- 1/2 scoop vanilla plant protein powder
- 1/2 cucumber
- water
It was so refreshing post-run.
Rascal couldn’t even wait for me to stop pouring some into his bowl.
He kept trying to get his face in there before I was done. My pups LOVE when I share my green smoothies with them.
Ready for seconds!
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Have you ever ready any of Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s work? I own his “Eat to Live” book and have borrowed his “Eat for Health” books from the library a few times. Dr. Fuhrman uses the term “nutritarian” as opposed to vegetarian, flexitarian, vegan, etc. because he promotes eating foods based on their nutrient value. For example on a scale of 1 to 1000, KALE scores 1000. From a nutrient density standpoint, it’s the gold standard. (Another great reason to make yourself a batch of kale chips!)
In the “Eat for Health” series he suggests to his clients that rather than making huge changes right off the bat when trying to lose weight or get healthier one should just ADD in a pound of raw green veggies a day to what they already eat. And then over time you will find that because you are eating a pound of filling green food, you won’t need as much of the other less healthy foods you might have been eating. (As the program progresses, one then aims to eat at least 1 pound of raw greens vegetables and 1 pound of cooked veggies and at least 1 cup of legumes.)
I know that when I measure out my greens for my smoothies I typically end up with about 9 oz with the cucumber, celery, sprouts, leafy greens and occasional avocado. I was curious what one pound of raw greens would look like all in one bowl so that I could gauge whether I was anywhere near the 1 to 2 pound mark.
For the sake of pure volume rather than variety, I just threw some veggies into a bowl to weigh. One full head of romaine, a large stalk of celery and a medium cucumber fit the bill.
On one hand it didn’t seem like as much as I thought it would. But then on the other hand, this bowl is way bigger than my head.
Because I’m known to have a pinhead, I’ll show you the bowl next to my iPhone for better sizing reference. 
After weighing out the pound, I took out some of the greens to save for later, and then “prettied up” my salad with some dulse, avocado, red and yellow pepper – and weighed again. I’m over a pound, wahoo!
Then I added 1/2 cup of navy beans.
And called it lunch!
How about you? Do you think you are getting 2 pounds of veggies in each day? Are you a fledgling nutritarian or a full-on card carrying member of the club? I think that between my large lunch salads and my green smoothies, I’m somewhere in the middle!
Have a great day friends!
– Shari B. =)
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Shari Becht is a Fit Living Coach and an ACE Certified Personal Trainer offering online/phone coaching services to people across the U.S. She is extremely passionate about teaching her clients how to start making small changes every day to their own lives, built around steps customized to fit their needs.
If you or someone you know could benefit from Shari’s coaching, please feel free to email her at shari [at] fitfeat [dot] com. For more information, click here.
And I was a little nervous to have something that is considered an “energy” drink at 4:00 in the afternoon, for fear that I’d never get to sleep that night. I ended up only drinking about 1/2 of what I made because I ran out of time and didn’t want to chug it. I had a steady flow of energy during the run without ever feeling jittery and I had no trouble getting to sleep that night. Typically I’m beat when it comes to exercising in the afternoons, so I’d like to think that I felt good thanks to this drink. For the high cost though, I think I’ll stick to single-serve packets and only use it when absolutely necessary, like for long runs.
