I Have A Frog In My Throat & Other Adventures with My Blender

(A follow-up to our “Tis’ The Season” article, Nov 2008, that discussed a strategy to eat holiday treats while maintaining your weight and even losing one pound over the holidays.)

So how did you do? Last month I threw out a small challenge of sorts, to lose one pound over the holidays while enjoying holiday treats, but otherwise staying on track and exercising with increased intensity. Most of the patients I have seen in my office this past week have lamented their holiday eating and its expected results. If you have a good story or result, I would love to hear it. My own story (glutinous escapade) over the holidays is that I did eat some sugar cookies (enough to gag an elephant) and did experience a little sluggishness (brain, fog, bloated toad, craving more sweets) as a result. But my consistent exercise routine helped limit the damage.

I knew I was a bit “off” so I checked my pH and found it to be a little acidic. A low pH (acidic) is not healthy as it can feed cancer cells and rob you of good energy. Given my wrecking ball mentality I decided to attack that pH with the vengeance of a scorned lover. To change your pH you need to eat alkali foods such as green leafy vegetables. I don’t think there is any spinach in the recipe for sugar cookies which was apparently part of my problem. A rational person would just avoid the sugar and get back to a healthy steady intake of green vegetables. There was entirely too much common sense in that solution so I decided to drown my system with greens starting RIGHT NOW!! I was about to make my usual morning protein shake and as I reached for the bananas my brain said “Hey, isn’t there sugar in bananas?” NO sugar for you Mr. Cookie man, clean up your act NOW!! So I just started grabbing some spinach leaves and other greens from the veggie drawer. Sounds gross, looked weird, but as I put my finished product to my lips I was pleasantly surprised. My soy, chocolate protein, chia, veggie mix was actually quite nice. That was over a week ago and I have continued experimenting with different combinations. What I have noticed is a little extra energy in the morning, my pH normalized quickly, and as I have added more and more greens the emerging green color of my shake makes me feel like I am eating a blended frog which is of course very cool. (thus the title of the article, you were wondering how I was going to fit that in weren’t you?)

Blenderizing vegetables is not an original thought. Jack Lalanne has been selling “juicers” for years. Now I will tell you that there is a big difference between juicing and blenderizing. Juicing leaves all the pulp in the blender but it is that very pulp that is the good healthy fiber component of vegetables. There is also a load of glycoproteins in this pulp that help to strengthen your immune system, so don’t juice it, blenderize it, to get these wonderful compounds. You may have also heard of a high powered blender called a “VitaMix” which I hear are wonderful but also a little pricy. A VitaMix is nice but a plain old blender will work fine to turn those vegetables into liquid form. One of the benefits to blenderizing vegetables is that by pulverizing them into a liquid form you are able to break them down into a fine particle size compared to simple chewing. This allows for greater nutrient extraction as the digestive enzymes are working on a greater number of tiny particles, resulting in three times the rate of absorption.

Do you have kids? Are they great veggie eaters? I have two kids and getting veggies in them can be a struggle at times. Fortunately my wife and I are not afraid to use a little parental deception. If I can lie to them about Santa Claus then certainly I can use deception to feed them. We have been adding a handful of spinach leaves to their protein shakes without any detection on their part. Now this is really saying something because my 9 year old boy has the nose of a blood hound and his tongue could be registered with CSI as a nanno-detector. I once added one raw tomato to his usual jar spaghetti sauce and he immediately detected and refused it. But his “spinach protein shakes” are going right down that pie hole without a problem. Victory for parents everywhere.

You don’t have to put them in a protein shake; you can drink them all by themselves if you choose to. Just mix cold water in a blender with some of your favorite veggies. I recommend using the really powerhouse vegetables such as cruciferous and sprouts of any kind as these are loaded with tons of phytonutrients. I would start with a dilute mix at first and store it in the refrigerator. Drink an ounce or two every day and as you develop a taste for it then increase the concentration and the amount to your own need or liking. This is not rocket science so don’t worry about an exact recipe just go try your own hand at it. There are many good reasons to do this as a habit. The rich content of diindolylmethane, flavonoids and other phytonutrients have a strong anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, anti-oxidant capacity. Even for a well intended person like myself it can be difficult to get the 8 to 10 servings of vegetables recommended each day and being able to make my own organic, fresh, vegetable juice assures me that my diet and health stay on track. I can reasonable get 3 to 4 servings of vegetables in a few ounces of juice given its higher bioavailability.

Make it taste good for YOU. Add some berries or other fruit if you need a sweeter taste or use some agave nectar or stevia. Use the combo of vegetables that suit your own taste buds. I love the taste of sprouts and carrots with cauliflower and bok choy, but experiment and find your own recipe. I would never have tried this 5 years ago and it may not sound appealing to you now. But keep an open mind and someday when your ready give it a try, it might surprise and even delight you.

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