Spring Greening

On Wednesday, I often talk about sports nutrition and today I’m going to chat about cleansing and clean eating.

I will never be a food blogger because if it has over 5 ingredients, I probably will not take the time to make it.

My weekday meals are almost identical with an odd ingredient swap here and there, but I try to have fruit and vegetables make up the bulk of my diet. Sometimes, especially during a training spike, I move from eating a fairly regimented, healthy diet to something modelling this:

Now, I will be the first to say that I have plenty of flex room in my diet for treats and foods I enjoy – running marathons allows you to have a bit of wiggle room! But if I am not consuming the right amounts of fruits and veggies, I find my inflammation increases which leaves lots of room for sickness, injury and feeling sluggish in training. Not ideal.

At the turn of every season, I do a wee check in to see how I am doing. Truthfully, the spring checkin-in is often the most bleak because winter has left me despondent, training less hard and with the sinking feeling that the heat will never return.

As I was planning my “spring cleaning” this season, I was chatting with my friend, Leanne about her new book and she told me to give a few recipes a try. Now, some of you may remember the last time I partnered with her…
She assured me that this time, it was a cookbook that even I couldn’t mess up.

I have never done a juice cleanse and with my training beginning to ramp up, the idea of cutting out ANY food made me a grumpy girl, so I decided to test out a few smoothie and juice recipes, adding more nutrients IN to my diet rather than doing a cleanse. I am not against cleansing, in fact, Leanne explains all about the benefits and safe and healthy ways to ensure that you can complete them.

I had a read through the cook book and it is FULL of beautiful photography, in depth explanations and exquisite recipes.

Leanne has complied all the tools you need to know how to do a cleanse. For a clueless cleanser like me, it was interesting to read the different plans she provided.

I was impressed at how simple she made the lists. If I were to follow a cleanse in the future, I would definitely start with the Restore Cleanse. Simple, easy to follow and using ingredients that I already use.

But since I was happily adding smoothies and juices to my pre-existing 5 ingredient menu, I decided to whir together a simple juice to add to my lunches this week.

This week, I have added a greens smoothie in the morning, eaten a big salad for lunch and added a big green juice in the afternoon after work in addition to the other fruits and veggies I have been eating. I have high energy to rock my 5 am workouts and my digestion has been rock solid!

The recipe I sampled from the book was from the Greens section because I am one of the believers in spinach in a smoothie. It was a super simple, refreshing drink with lots of citrus, which was exactly what I was craving as I had a sore throat coming on.

YUM!

This was absolutely delicious and fit the necessary criteria of foods I will consume as it has 5 ingredients and is ready in 5 minutes. Now we are operating at my speed.

Wanna give it a try? (For the record, I blended it for 30 seconds, so you can totally make it in 4 minutes and 30 seconds).

Want more? Leanne is doing a TON of giveaways over the next 6 weeks on her blog. Check them out here. 

Want to get the book and try it out for yourself? Just click the little green button!

Ever tried a cleanse? What was your experience?

What’s your favourite smoothie recipe?