My Cleanse, Part 1 *Oatmeal Smoothies

Good afternoon, ladies and gents!

It is a very beautiful day here in Houston.  I meant to write this post this morning, but the outdoors beckoned and I couldn't resist laying out in the sun.

Today I wanted to talk about the diet I introduced last week.  I lost a total of 6 pounds last week.  Forgive me if I've already mentioned this...I'm just super excited about it!  I've always had a tendency to be overweight but have fought my entire life to keep the weight off.  The past couple of years I've grown content and let myself go, so to speak.  More recently, I've been really tired and lethargic.  I'm out of breath when I engage in long periods of physical activity.  I don't feel comfortable running or looking down (my other chin is REALLY getting in the way!) and basically I was very disappointed in myself for failing to stay fit and healthy.

Enter my new diet:  I went on a one week "cleanse." My hope is to lose more weight so I will feel comfortable exercising again.  At this point, I am still a little uncomfortable but I believe I'm off to a good start and I feel motivated to do more.

I wanted to share with y'all some of the recipes for my "cleanse" last week.  I put cleanse in quotations because it was really more of a soft cleanse.  I didn't only eat celery and grapefruit, or only drink juice.  Instead, I focused my meals on fruits and vegetables.

In the morning, I drank an oatmeal smoothie that I had made the night before.  I found the recipe here: Make-Ahead Oatmeal Smoothies

These are the ingredients I used, plus I've added almond extract a couple times.

The result was a delicious, albeit grainy, smoothie.  I want to start adding some protein powder this week.  I haven't yet because I've looked at a few stores and a lot of them add sugar.  I'm definitely not trying to add more of that!  The strawberry banana smoothie was definitely my favorite, but Monica Matheny (the author of The Yummy Life) offers a variety of recipes to choose from.  You can really have a lot of fun here, mixing and matching fruits and veggies of your choosing.

Distributed amongst 2 cup Mason jars for easy access during a busy work week.

I made six in one day, 3 for D and 3 for myself then I wouldn't have to worry really about breakfast for the next few days.  We get up so early in the morning that it is really unrealistic to believe we would scrounge up a healthy breakfast.  It would be so much easier to stop at a fast food restaurant or the donut shop.  But this way we really were able to stick to our diet and were not tempted to stray.

I would love to add more, but I'll save those for next time.  I did make a variety of good foods for us to graze while we were trying not to salivate over all the restaurants we drove by.  I took notes along the way to share with y'all.

Well, I look forward to seeing y'all next week.  Until then, I hope you have a great weekend!

xx.