OK. It's weigh in day. Hopefully you woke up, went to the bathroom, removed every article of clothing along with watches and wedding bands, and hopped on the scale. Whatever the results are, send them my way. I'll confess I didn't do so well this week. I celebrated last week's weight loss a bit too much. But this morning got me back on track. So join the Weigh In challenge if you haven't already. Weigh yourself, and send the results to WeighIn@captivate.com. Track everything you eat , pick a plan that's right for you and be slimmer by summer.*



The other night I put spinach in my smoothie. No. I was not heavily medicated. I decided to walk on the wild side, throw caution to the wind, and turn the food pyramid on its head! (I don’t get out much.)

I’ve read a lot about putting odd things in your smoothie – avocado, kale, spinach.

So I was tempted.

I thought, “How cool would it be if this spinach smoothie turns out to be delicious! I’d share the recipe with the Weigh In world, we’d all go on spinach smoothie diets, loose fabulous amounts of weight, and never crave another doughnut again!”

And then I tasted the smoothie.**

And … it wasn’t … horrible. But it definitely tasted like I had just put a bunch of spinach in my fruit smoothie. And it didn’t dull my craving for doughnuts at all.

Had I been a little more patient, there probably wouldn’t have been any green gritty bits in there, either.

I haven't completely given up on my plan to trick myself into eating healthy food. But, I think I’ll try something else next time.

In the meantime, here’s my own fruit smoothie recipe (sans spinach).

½ cup mixed frozen berries***
½ cup fat free greek yogurt or plain yogurt****
½ cup Light Silk Vanilla soymilk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. agave*****
2 T protein powder

Put everything in a blender and mix. For a special treat, top your smoothie with a dollop of Lite Cool Whip.

Any suggestions for my next smoothie?





*Forget bikini season. That's just not going to happen for me. So short sleeve season here I come!

* *The things I do for you guys.

***I love frozen berries because the fresh stuff spoils before I can eat it all. And I’ve banned bananas from my home, ever since I was invaded by an army of kamikaze fruit flies. Yes. The fruit flies have won.

****I used to get fat free vanilla yogurt, but I didn’t like all the added ingredients. Now I just add vanilla extract to plain yogurt and it tastes the same!

*****If you don’t have agave, throw in some honey instead.

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Labels: diet, health, smoothie, spinach

You know you don’t want to be the office grump, but how do you get out of that slump? Make your own Happy Cocktail. (And no – it shouldn’t contain vodka or rum. That’s a different sort of cocktail – one which I’m sure your employers wouldn’t be too keen on you imbibing at the office.)

Make a strawberry raspberry tofu smoothie. All these ingredients are good sources of omega-3 fatty acids, which researchers say make people less prone to depression. Salmon, cod and walnuts are also high in omega-3s, but I figured you wouldn’t be keen on a cod smoothie. But that’s just me.
Chances are you don’t get enough omega-3s anyway. And symptoms of a deficiency are tricky. You might experience fatigue, dry skin, brittle hair, constipation, frequent colds, depression, poor concentration, lack of physical endurance and/or joint pain. Sounds like me on a Monday.

Besides improving your mood, omega-3s have a bunch of other health perks. They may help prevent or treat Alzheimer's disease, asthma, ADHD, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, migraines, multiple sclerosis and obesity.

So feel free to sneak some strawberries (or salmon!) into your diet. You'll feel better and have stronger hair – like on those Garnier Fructis commercials.

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Labels: depression, Omega-3, smoothie