Weight Loss Smoothies Can Boost Your Health

Are juicing and blending the holy grail of health, or simply an alternative way of consuming fruits and vegetables that require an expensive machine? If you're considering drinking — rather than eating — some of the healthiest calories you'll consume, you don't want to hear the "juicing will help you lose weight and beat cancer" marketing story, nor the "juicing offers nothing eating that stuff doesn't" anti-marketing story. You'll want the truth.

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The key to successful weight loss with smoothies and juices is ingredient variety and, of course, tasty drinks. If it tastes awful, you're not going to want to stick with it. Working out what fruits and veggies go well together, and which ones make for an awful combo, isn't easy though. That's where the new SteadyHealth smoothie recipe app can really help you. No matter where you are, get access to over 400 different healthy smoothie recipes for weight loss, searchable by ingredient.

Juicing And Blending: What's So Special About Drinking Fruits And Vegetables?

When I first moved to Eastern Europe, where I still am today, I was saddened by the fact that many of the consumer products I loved — mostly in the realm of food, because I'm a foodie — were simply not around here. Gradually, more and more things began appearing on the market, though, and about seven years back, juicers were suddenly everywhere. I had to have one. I still missed the carrot, apple and orange juice with a dash of ginger that I used to enjoy at my favorite Asian fusion restaurant back in London, and I wanted to be able to make that and more at home.

That juicer acquired a permanent place on the kitchen counter, and I'd use it at least twice a day. OK, the constant stream of fruit and veg I found myself carrying home from the farmers' market was a bit of a pain, and I had to make sure all that fresh produce didn't make me go over budget, but clear benefits emerged too.

My tiny picky-eater son not only had no problems chugging down spinach and celery all of a sudden, he'd ask for more. Indeed, he'd even gladly drink the "left-over veg I really didn't know what else to do with" juices that I personally didn't want to touch with a barge pole.

I didn't get that juicer because I wanted to be healthier or lose weight. I got that juicer because I enjoyed drinking juice. The novelty only wore off, somewhat, when I came home with a new toy — a blender. At that point, even those things that previously seemed out of reach could be incorporated in drinks: you know, bananas, nuts, and even soy milk.

Juicing Vs Blending: What You Need To Know

Juicing means separating the liquid in your fruit and veg from its fiber to Differing degrees, after which you're left with drinkable nutrients and taste. While citrus juices can easily be made with manual juicers, you need a devoted juicer to get more creative.

READ How To Get The Most Out Of Weight Loss Smoothies

Blending, however, incorporates everything you put in the blender, meaning you have to remove anything you don't want in advance. You get a thicker liquid, in which you can make use of things a juicer can't handle. Make a smoothie, and you'll get all that good fibrous stuff, but you will also probably need to add a good dash of water to make it palatable.

Will Juicing And Blending Help You Lose Weight?

If you are hoping to lose weight, liquid fruit and veg can absolutely play a key part in that process. Should you opt for blending or juicing though? That depends.

• Choose juicing if a persistent "oral need" is behind much of your initial weight gain. Juicing is not calorie-free by any means, but because it strips your fruits and veggies of insoluble fiber, it doesn't fill you up. It does meet the need to taste something awesome though, and that can mean a lot. Juicing will give you an instant nutrient and antioxidant boost, but do count your juices as part of your daily calorie intake. Juicing is great for people who need to be on low-fiber diets as well.
• Choose blending if you are hoping to feel full after drinking liquid fruit and veg, for instance because you are planning to replace one meal a day with a green smoothie and you know you would go and stuff yourself with cookies if you weren't satiated.

Anyone hoping to maximize weight loss with the help of juicing or blending needs to be aware of the calorie content of the fruits and veggies they are consuming, and is wise to choose green smoothies and juices that contain more vegetables than fruits. Due to their thickness, some smoothies are hard to get through, but by the time you are through, you will definitely feel like you have had a full meal.

The Real Health Benefits Of Juicing And Blending

Those who say juicing and blending have no health benefits that just eating those same fruits and vegetables doesn't offer were right — but, and that's a large but, only partially. The health benefits of juicing and blending may be accidental side effects of enjoying something that tastes good, but that doesn't make them any less powerful. 

The Benefits Of A Plant-Based Diet

Whether you are initially drawn to juicing and blending because, like me, you enjoy juice or smoothies, or you start juicing and blending because you want in on some of the health benefits and then find you really enjoy juice or smoothies, juicing is quite "addictive". That is, it's not so strange that you want more of something that tastes good. If you have a juicer or blender and use it regularly, which is hard not to do, suddenly, not getting that good old "five a day" becomes a challenge!

We live in a world that just doesn't stop. Creating lovely, balanced, healthful meals from scratch is what best serves your health, but if you don't always (or even usually) have time for that, you're hardly alone. What you really need is quick solutions that are still healthy, rather than processed fast foods. Juicing can play a wonderful role here. Making a great juice or a wonderful green smoothie only takes a few minutes of your time, no more, really, than heating up that dubious microwave meal you might have chosen. Even if you still eat that microwave meal in addition to drinking that goodness, you'll still reap the health benefits of consuming the fruits and veggies.

A plant-based diet is any diet predominantly made up of vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, beans, and whole grains. If you've been eating a sub-optimal diet, juicing and blending are great ways to inch towards a plant-based diet, which incidentally has the following health benefits:

• A lowered risk of heart disease
• A decreased risk of cancer
• Reduced cholesterol
• Cutting your odds of developing hypertension
• Less of a risk of developing type 2 diabetes
• Lowered odds of nutritional deficiencies, or shall we say — the knowledge that you're taking in a boatload of vitamins and minerals that benefit your health?

READ Juice It Up For Better Health

The Benefits Of Raw Foods

Juicing, by definition, offers you raw foods. Followers of a raw food diet boast that they enjoy a smoothly-functioning digestive system, improved skin quality, more energy, and weight loss. Raw foods help you wave goodbye to artificial trans fats, reduces your sodium intake, and offers the full range of nutritional benefits in foods that lose nutrients when cooked.

Don't you want to go on a raw food diet? I don't blame you. Juicing, however, offers you a daily infusion of almost effortless raw foods, giving you some of the benefits of eating more raw foods while still allowing you to eat anything else you want.

Why The Arguments Against Juicing Actually Aren't

But I heard...

You've heard that juicing might not help you lose weight because fruits tend to be high in calories and sugars. You've heard that replacing meals with a nice juice might be a bad idea, because you'll either starve yourself or be so hungry that you'll stuff yourself at the nearest McDonald's later on. That brings us to another point — juicing means you lose all the fiber that was in the fruits and veggies you are using before, and that's a shame, because that fiber is actually really important.

Yes, juice can have a lot of calories. Surely though, it's clear that the calories you get from the aforementioned fast food outlet aren't the same calories you'll find in a juice made from 100 percent pure fruits and vegetables? Yes, juice can have a lot of sugar, if you incorporate a lot of fruits. Surely though, it's clear that refined (or added) sugars of the kind you'd find in store-bought cookies or even a salad dressing aren't the same thing as the natural fruit sugars you'll find in home-made juices? Nuff said: not all calories and sugars are bad.

Yes, drinking juice instead of eating meals can leave you hungry, which is why you may not want to do that. If, like me, you replace mindless unhealthy snack time with healthful juice time though, that's a different story. The solution to sustained and healthy weight loss isn't a fad diet, including a juice-only diet, but a balanced, responsible eating plan in which juice can play a role as well — the role of making sure you get the vitamins and minerals you need, for instance.

Yes, juicing rids your fruits and vegetables of most of their insoluble fiber content. Soluble fiber, which binds water to itself and turns into a kind of gel that aids digestion, isn't affected by the juicing process though. You need insoluble fiber too, and that, of course, is why you might like to enjoy smoothies some days, and juices on other days.

READ Juicing: Benefits And Downsides

The Bottom Line

Juicing and blending can be an absolutely wonderful way to help you attain a healthier diet that contains more of that fresh produce that is so crucial for all your body's systems, in turn lowering your risk of several diseases you really don't want. It can bring a boost of quick, easy, and healthy vitamins and minerals into your life, offering you the external side effects of health — like increased energy and improved skin — in the process. The main reason juicing and blending do such a great job of making you healthier is that the "liquid vitamins" you get also taste good. Who doesn't want to get healthier by enjoying something that tickles the tongue?