Want a smooth path to healthy living? Grab a Smoothie!!

For those of you who don’t know, a smoothie is a blended drink of fruit juices/yogurt and ice. The way it is prepared is that you have either a fruit juice or yogurt/milk base and you add a variety of fruits (ideally frozen) and lots of ice to it (to give it texture). First of all, it is VERY tasty, secondly there is no set recipe – you make what you want and last but not the least, it is very healthy. I usually use a base of low fat yogurt to get enough protein and some carbs, add low GI fruits and some ice. You can also use green tea extract (even though I am not the biggest fat of green team – I will discuss this later on), whey powder, multi-vitamin tablets and other supplements. Here are some recipes that you might want to try.

Orange-Pineapple Smoothie
1 cup orange juice
2 cups pineapple chunks packed in their own juice
1 banana
1/4 cup skim milk
1 Tbsp. honey
4-5 ice cubes

Tropical Smoothie
1 tub (150-200 g) Low Fat Yoghurt
1 cup Hi-Lo Milk
½ cup Orange juice*
1 Tbsp. Honey
1 cup Frozen fruit**
1 ½ cups Crushed ice

Banana Blackberry smoothie
1 medium banana, peeled
1/2 cup blackberries
1/2 cup non-fat vanilla yogurt
1/2 cup ice cubes

Supergirl summer smoothie
2 bananas, broken into chunks
1 cup cubed papaya (optional)
1 cup cubed fresh pineapple
1 cup cubed honeydew
3 cubes ice cubes
2 (6 ounce) containers fruit flavored yogurt
1/2 cup orange juice, or as needed

The Any Smoothie
Any 100% fruit juice, yogurt or milk
Any fruit you like
Any kind of ice
Blend in Any blender :-)

Here are a few more tips:
· Use frozen fruit (bananas and strawberries work well).
· Avoid sweetened frozen fruits.
· If it’s too thick, add more milk, 100 percent fruit juice or soymilk.
· If it’s too thin, add more fruit, ice cubes, yogurt (fresh or frozen) or tofu.
· It it’s too tart, add honey.
· If it’s too sweet, add lemonade or a small spoonful of lemon juice.

Smoothies are a very good addition to a weight loss, fat burn or even a muscle building program. You can treat them as a snack or an actual meal. They are healthy enough to even be used as breakfast. I highly recommend getting into the smoothie trend coz I’m telling you right now, this will be one of the best decisions you will ever make. I will be posting about the smoothie diet next time, so stay tuned :-).