4: Fitting Smoothies Into Your Routine
What’s actually just as important as learning to make smoothies, is learning to fit them into your routine. Earlier, we discussed how you could fix your diet just by aiming to get more fruits and vegetables in it naturally. Of course this is a simple solution and is just as healthy as having fruits and vegetables.
The problem, as we saw, was that a lot of people struggle to fit that into their routine. They start out with good intentions but it only takes a long day at work for cooking a meal to be off the table (pun intended). Likewise, if you’re on the train and all you can buy for lunch is a processed sandwich, that won’t leave you with much choice but to break the healthy diet.
Smoothies are effective because they’re easier to fit into a normal routine.
But they are not perfectly easy and from time to time, you’ll find that they can still seem like too much work, too much mess and too much effort. This is particularly true considering that you don’t just have to make the smoothie but also clean the smoothie maker, source the fruits and vegetables and generally put a lot of time and work into preparing them – and they’re expensive!
Our objective here then, is to make sure we are set up to win. You need to make sure that it is easier to stick with your smoothie plan than it is to cheat on it and skip them. This chapter will help you to do exactly that!
The Equipment
The first thing to do is to minimize the amount of work you have for yourself by using the right equipment. Front and center is that smoothie maker itself!
A good smoothie maker/blender/food processor/juicer, should be something that is highly powerful. You want to have the confidence of knowing that you can throw any combination of fruits and vegetables in there (within reason) and that it won’t break or get stuck in the process. You want it to be fast and you want it to not make a mess.
What’s also very important though, is that you minimize the amount of washing up you have to do for yourself.
The big problem here is that smoothie makers are often very inconvenient to wash and clean. This is true in particular thanks to their blades, which are awkward to reach and which rotate when you try and grip them. These factors combine to make cleaning out your blenders a royal nightmare.
Fortunately, some newer models have been designed with this in mind and feature blades that are easy to remove or that don’t come into direct contact with the pulp and thus stay cleaner.
Another handy feature is the ability to remove the top of your blender and go. The first product to get famous for doing this was the NutriBullet but its popularity has spawned countless copycats. The idea is simply that you have a blender and a water bottle combined in a single product, meaning that you don’t have a separate glass to wash up!
Prep and Pick-Up
Prep and Pick-Up is a concept that comes from author Tim Ferriss. The idea is that you want to do all of your work in advance, so that all you have to do when it comes to the crunch is pick it up and go.
In our case, that means that you’re going to prepare your smoothie at the start of the week and then drink it throughout the week. One way to do this is just to make huge quantities of your smoothies on the Sunday and then to store them in bottles in the fridge. Each morning, you can simply grab a bottle and go, without having to actually labor over it then and there!
Some people also find it helpful to freeze the fruits themselves before dropping them into the blender. This is a great choice because it allows them to buy in bulk up front and then not worry about ripening. Keep in mind though, that ripe fruit is less of an issue when it’s being blended anyway!
You can also make your life a little easier by ordering your fruits and vegetables online. This is a great choice if you find you are struggling to get time to head out and get your ingredients as it means they will all be ready for you and you can simply drop them in the blender ready to go. You can also make savings this way!
Note: If you’re interested in making savings on your fruits and vegetables, then the very best way to buy is from a market. If you happen to have one near you, then make sure you take full advantage of that fact!
Easy Smoothies
You can also make your smoothies a little easier in numerous other ways. Using a pure fruit juice for instance can save you time and effort and so too can using purees and canned fruits. These are especially useful for things like pineapples, peaches and cranberries. Why? Because those ingredients are particularly difficult to prepare and involve a lot of peeling and deseeding. By using a tinned fruit, you have it ready to go in a form that is soft and easy to blend!
Bought Smoothie
If you really don’t have time to make your own smoothies, then should you be tempted by store-bought smoothies? Is this a good way to get your ingredients without spending time?
The answer is yes and no…
Of course making your own smoothie gives you tighter control over the ingredients, it saves you a lot of money and all in all, it is a smarter choice. While buying a store-bought smoothie might not sound like a lot of money (perhaps setting you back $2.50 a day) it will quickly add up and that is actually $17.50 a week, $70 a month and around $840 a year!
But then again, if you normally get a coffee every morning, then you can swap it for a smoothie and spend just as much while getting health benefits instead of fuelling yourself with that wired feeling that you get from coffee!
If buying smoothies in town is the only way you can stick with it, then it’s money well-spent. But do be very careful to check the ingredients thoroughly. Just because the ingredients brag about how many whole, fresh fruits they put in, that doesn’t mean that they haven’t also flooded it with sugar, additives and other things. Do your research!
