Make Healthy Eating Stick With These Surprisingly Easy Tips + a Green Smoothie Recipe That Doesn’t Taste Like Swamp

In a perfect world we would all be like Jennifer Aniston, glowing as though there were a human sized soft-glow light bulb inside of us, always turned on.

Do you agree with me that she probably eats one chocolate chip for dessert and calls it a night?

That’s what I imagine when I think of Jennifer Aniston eating dessert.

Just one little chocolate chip, sitting on a fancy plate, placed on a big dining room table, next to her bottle of Smart Water. She’s sitting at the table alone, in a white cotton dress and bare feet. Her tanned legs are draped over the side of the chair, her hair is down and it’s slightly messy.

She picks up the single chocolate chip, holds it between her thumb and index fingers, looks at it lovingly, and then places it gently in her soft mouth, closes her eyes, and then relaxes into her tiny little sugar rush.

You know what the jacked thing is?

All she wants is that one fucking chocolate chip.

That one tiny morsel will completely satisfy her. Then off she goes, to do her bedtime routine.

It’s only 8pm but tomorrow is Wednesday and that means 4:30am Pilates. Wednesday morning is her favorite morning of the week, so she happily sashays off to her bathroom, her hair bouncing and her glow shining brighter with each step.

Well, this world is not perfect. It is in fact, perfectly imperfect, chaotically beautiful, sinfully delicious, heart wrenching, orgasmic, and at times, unbelievably hard.

If there’s one thing I’m certain of in the midst of all of it, it’s this.

Eating a healthy dose of whole plant food on a daily basis makes life easier. As does meditation, exercise, forgiveness, getting good sleep, laughing, and lots of other things.

I’m not an expert on all of it, but food is my thing and my job is to help you eat the healthiest food possible, until you have that light, that glow, that radiance, shining brightly and cascading on everyone who’s lucky enough to be in your presence.

Here are some guidelines that will help you stay on track with eating clean, vibrant, healthy food.

I’ve been doing this for a long time and I have many tips for you, so I’m making this post a two parter.

Check back on the blog next Tuesday for part two.

1) Don’t over drink

Yes, alcohol has lots of calories, but that’s not my issue. Calories, schmalories. Whatever.

When we drink too much (and I have done that aplenty), we crave greasy, heavy food the next day. Wake up from one too many and reach for some berries and walnuts? It’s not going to happen. You will want heavy carbs and greasy Chinese food ASAP. The shit part about post night-out cravings is that they’re physical cravings, not mental cravings, making them much harder to stave off.

Skip the third cocktail and pass the blueberries.

2) Nibble throughout the day

Contrary to what many diets say, snacking is a fantastic idea.

We should be snacking throughout the day, as long as we’re snacking on the right things.
If we go without eating until our tummy rumbles, our head pounds, and we feel like bitch-slapping the next person who smiles at us, we are almost guaranteed to over stuff ourselves AND eat way too fast when we finally do eat.

If we snack throughout the day, we will never reach the bitch-slapping point and overeating won’t be an issue.

Just remember to snack on the right things. Nuts, fruit, veggies and green smoothies (like the one below) are all excellent choices. My rule of thumb is this: If it has a nutrition label, don’t snack on it.

3) Get in the habit of batch cooking

If you work a Monday through Friday job, I recommend planning your weekly menu and grocery shopping on Saturday and then throwing on some tunes and batch cooking for a couple hours on Sunday.

It’s amazing what a batch of beans, a salad dressing, a soup, and a batch of grains, and a yummy sauce will do for you throughout the week. If you don’t have a traditional Mon.-Fri. schedule, choose the two days that work best for you, and block out shopping and cooking time each week.

If you prepare ahead, you will never be faced with a sad empty fridge staring back at you and the pizza delivery number at your finger tips.

Alternatively, you can join my weekly Plant Fueled Meal Plans and all of your dinners will be planned out for you. All you have to do is follow along.

4) Announce your decision

Once you know that you want to eat healthier, stop toying around with the idea and stop putting it off until next week.

Instead, consciously make the decision.

Write it down, tell your family, friends and co-workers, announce it to our private Facebook group. Whatever you have to do to make it official so it’s not just in your head. When it’s only in your head, it makes it way too easy to say “Fuck it” and make a U-turn for the drive-through.

Announcing your decision to your friends and family will help to hold you accountable AND you’ll create an automatic support team. Or at the very least, they’ll know not to offer you a cheese danish that they picked up fresh from the bakery.

5) Don’t beat yourself up when you slip up

Because you will slip up. I will, he will, she will. We ALL will slip up once in a while.

There will be an unexpected run-in with chocolate cake, donuts might suddenly appear, we’ll definitely find ourselves in an airport without a sack-lunch at some point. Ice cream will sweetly call our names, potato chips might be the one and only answer, and we might just find ourselves at 2am, licking yellow cheese sauce from our fingers because we don’t have any silverware to eat our chili cheese fries. It’ll happen.

And when it does, DO NOT beat yourself up over it or feel bad about it. Accept it, recognize the fun in it and get back on track – easy as that. Move on, give yourself a break and continue on your path.

Just like the late beautiful Aaliyah below with her song “Try Again”.

Okay – take these tips in. Reflect, ponder and I’ll have part two for you next Tuesday. Same time, same place.

In the meantime, here’s a green smoothie recipe that you’ll fall in love with upon first sip and NEVER get bored with.

It’s time to get glowing. 

Green Smoothie That Doesn't Taste Like Swamp

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Author: Molly Patrick of Clean Food Dirty Girl

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Ingredients

• ▢ 8 oz. purified cold water 237ml
• ▢ 1 banana
• ▢ ¼ of an avocado
• ▢ 1 tbsp hemp seeds
• ▢ 2-4 leafy green leaves (mix things up by switching between kale, collards and chard)

From here, you can either blend and drink as is or you can choose from the following to amp it up:

• ▢ Berries
• ▢ Parsley
• ▢ Fresh turmeric
• ▢ Fresh ginger
• ▢ Beets
• ▢ Lemon juice
• ▢ Lime juice
• ▢ Red cabbage
• ▢ Mint
• ▢ Raw cacao powder

Instructions

• Blend everything until it’s creamy and smooth and drink up.

Notes

If your bananas get too brown, peel them, cut them into quarters, place them in a bag and pop them in the freezer. This will not only save bananas from going bad, it will make your smoothie icy cold and delicious.