Nutribullet or Juicing for Health? Part 2of2

Jucing Vs Nutribullet Part 2

In Part two we will be looking at how you incorporate both juicing and the extraction methods into a sustainable part of your life. Whether it’s for a nutritional boot to your day or to help you in your weight loss ambitions. We will be sharing top our top tips and some of our favourite recipes for you to try out and build into your busy lifestyle.
If you missed the first part of this two part series then make sure you head on over to our blogs and check it out. We delved into the pros and cons of juicing and extracting (Nutribullet) for health benefits.

 

5 Tips for Healthier Juicing & Extracting

1. Veg in every glass

It can be tempting to juice and extract only the sweeter things in life. The great thing about these meal replacement smoothies and juices is they allow you to pack in a lot of nutrients that otherwise may prove difficult. If you only use fruit you are missing out on a lot of additional fibre and nutrients that are vital for weight loss and a balanced diet.

Always juice and extract at least one vegetable in each drink. Start with spinach, cucumber and celery as these are easily masked by the sweeter fruits. As your palate adapts move onto different vegetables such as carrots, broccoli, kale and beetroot. This approach also helps keep the sugar content down in each drink which is much better than a pure fruit based drink.

2. Don’t Replace all Your Meals

It can be tempting when starting to change your lifestyle and eating habits to replace multiple meals each day to save time, calories and having to think about planning sustainable eating habits. There are a number of problems associated with this approach. Firstly you will vastly over consume on sugar and this will likely cause spikes in blood sugar levels that will lead to poor food choices as they drop. Replacing multiple meals with smoothies and juices to speed up weight loss may well work in the short term but this is unsustainable in the long term. Until you are able to take a long term view on your eating habits rather than a quick fix alternative then sadly you will never reach your long term goals and will likely remain in the yo-yo diet phase.

The final problem with this approach is the nutritional balance in your diet. While increasing your fruit, vegetable and fibre intake is great you need to ensure you are getting a good balance of healthy fats, protein, carbohydrate and dairy. Replacing multiple meals with liquid alternatives means you restrict the ability to create balance across your diet as a whole.
I recommend meal replacement for breakfasts during the week when time can be an issue for many and an additional shake as a snack following certain training sessions to aid recovery.

3. Portion Control

One of the main issues surrounding the inclusion of juicing and extracting is the ability to vastly over consume both sugar and calories. When juicing it is very easy to juice a considerable amount more than you could consume if you had eaten them in the normal way. Because you are breaking down the fruit and vegetables in the juicing process your body doesn’t have to work as hard to digest the food, this in turn means that the body will absorb the nutrients very quickly, however this will push up the blood sugar quickly rather than a sustained energy release.

Try to only juice what you need and adapt recipes to fit your calories. Juicing and extracting too much will likely lead to over consuming calories and often leads to drinking seconds from the leftovers. If using a Nutribullet only ever fill to the line on the cup. You can add additional water to desired thickness but avoid cramming in lots of extra ingredients.

4. Get Creative

The most exciting thing about both juicing and extracting is the ability to let your imagination go wild and really get creative. Here are just a few things you might not have considered that can be include in your juices, smoothies and shakes.
• Frozen Banana (skin off)
• Frozen Berries, and fruit
• Nuts and seeds
• Oats
• Honey
• Whey protein
• Switch water for green tea
• Almond milk
• Coconut milk
• Coco / cacao
• Ginger
• Herbs such as mint and basil
• Avocado
• Super greens Supplement
• Broccoli stem
• Yoghurt
• Espresso Ice cube
• Kale

5. Know your numbers

The key to all healthy eating is based around knowing your numbers. The food we consume is made up of different macro nutrients. These include Fat, Protein and Carbohydrate. By understanding how many calories are in each macro nutrient it can be easy to judge your calorie intake.

Fat: 9Kcal per gram Carbohydrate: 4Kcal per gram Protein: 4 Kcal per gram.

Fat is more than double the calorie intake of carbohydrate and protein and is partly why low fat diets were so popular over the last fifteen years. Although the recommendations surrounding fat intake are under review at the moment its clear to see that over consumption of fat will quickly rack up the daily calorie intake and negatively impact on your waist line.

You should aim for healthy fats which are essential for good health, these come from sources such as oily fish (not so good in a blender!), nuts and avocado for example. Just keep close eye on the portion size. For example one medium avocado contains around 306 calories and 34g of fat (4g saturated fat). Avocados are a fantastic addition to your diet but you can see over consumption will quickly add in the extra calories, the same is true of nuts.

Know your numbers to stay on track, try using MyFitessPal to track your food and check the calorie intake. This app also allows you to add recipes so when you create a new smoothie you can create the recipe and know exactly how many calories and different macro nutrients it contains.

Try These Out Today!

Beetroot Booster Juice

2 Small Beetroot
1 stick of celery
1 small carrot
1 Apple
1 Slice of pineapple

Juice all the ingredients and serve over ice.
Variation
Juice all the ingredients as above. Pour the juice into a blender with 1/4 avocado and 1/2 a frozen banana and blend. This will make a silky creamy smoothie that will kick start any day.

Kcal: 184 Carbohydrate: 47g Protein: 2g Sugar: 34g
Variation
Kcal: 234 Carbohydrate: 64g Protein: 3g Sugar: 43g
Mint Berry Go Round

Handful of frozen summer berries
Handful of spinach
1 Scoop of Whey Protein
Water
Half an avocado
Mint leaves to taste
Kcal : 316 Carbohydrate: 16g Protein: 21g Sugar 9g

 

Happy Blending, juicing and extracting, be sure to stay tuned to our blog and social media channels for more recipe ideas and inspiration. 

Eat Smart, Train Smart & Stay Fundamentally FIT

Andy

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