When I first started to eat raw foods, I found it helped to focus on what I was adding to my diet rather than thinking about what I was trying not to eat. Early on I noticed that when I began my day with a freshly made vegetable juice, I had more energy, felt better and consequently ate better. One of the major reasons we gain weight is because of malnutrition. We are not getting the life building nutrients we need from a side of fries so our body tells us to keep eating them in the hope that those nutrients might be in the next bite. When you eat lots of fresh uncooked fruits and vegetables, fresh juices and smoothies, your body is getting much of the nutrients it needs and is less likely to encourage you to eat unnecessary foods.

Find Yourself A Good Juicer

A good juicer can be expensive, however, around $300. I use a Breville Juice Fountain Elite which is very easy to clean, an important quality in a juicer. Less expensive juicers often waste food by not extracting enough juice. You can always by a fresh carrot juice from a juice bar, however, for cheaper than a pint of beer.

What To Do If You Don’t Have A Juicer

An inexpensive alternative to juicing at home is making green smoothies, a blend of greens and fruit in a blender. While a deluxe blender like Vitamix or Blendtech is wonderful to have, any blender will work fine. I started making green smoothies with the Magic Bullet and now I use a $30 blender from Home Depot.

One of the most influential pioneers of the modern raw food movement is Victoria Boutenko. After immigrating from Russia, her family became seriously ill on the American diet and in desperation, she switched herself, husband and two children to raw foods overnight, eventually eliminating asthma, juvenile diabetes, obesity, and heart problems from their lives. She is a staunch advocate of the green smoothie and has written an informative book on the subject — Green for Life.

How to Make a Green Smoothie

For people who like a hearty breakfast, a blender full of green smoothie in the morning is an ideal way to begin adding more fresh fruits and vegetables in your life. It’s very simple to make with whatever fresh fruits and vegetables you have on hand.

Fill a blender with greens such as baby spinach, add some water or fresh squeezed orange juice and blend until liquefied. Then add fruit such as two bananas and a mango and blend again. If you like your drinks cold, add ice and blend. The color of a spinach based drink is dark green, and with kale it’s a pale green. Although the color is unusual for a drink, the taste is sweet, fruity and delicious.

Start with forty percent greens to sixty percent fruit and then gradually add more greens as your body starts to crave them. An added benefit to drinking a green smoothie is how easily its nutrients are digested by the body. Blended greens are absorbed by the body even more easily than a salad, for instance, that we blend with our teeth. My brother, a former meat and potatoes high school football coach, now has a green smoothie every day for breakfast and since beginning his raw food journey on January 1 has lost 15 pounds.

While I love green smoothies, I prefer to start my day with a fresh vegetable juice such as carrots, celery, ginger and parsley. I find the lighter I eat in the morning the more energy I have for the rest of the day. We all have different nutritional needs however, and they’re constantly changing. Experimenting with what food make you feel your best is part of the process.

You can watch the rawfood coach Karen Knowler demonstrate how to make a Green Smoothie HERE.

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