In the midst of the 10 Day Challenge that we issued to the global practitioner community a few weeks back, I started thinking about the need for improved health closer to home.
We all spend lots of time in the office, so where better to promote healthy habits than in the setting where we toil for 8-10 hours a day?
That’s when we came up with the Smoothie Challenge.
We bought Magic Bullets for everyone on the team – these mini blenders make single-serving smoothies pretty easy to whip up on the go.
The charge was to use two handfuls of any greens (spinach, kale, broccoli, bok choy…) in a smoothie. The other ingredients are up to you – from berries to chocolate to beer – it’s all fair game.
Then we held a smoothie tasting party where everyone presented at least one blended masterpiece for judging by the entire staff.
After a lot of indecision and second tastes, we chose our winners:
In the savory category, our favorites were a spinach-sweet potato-ginger smoothie as well as an “untitled” piece that involved quite a medley of ingredients (with everything from green peppers to iced tea to kiwi in this baby).
Our sweet category winners were a spinach-raspberry-blueberry mélange and an orange juice-spinach-flax seed smoothie.
If you’d like to try the office favorites for yourself, here are some of the winning recipes to blend and enjoy:
• 1 cup well-packed washed spinach
• ¾ cup coconut milk
• 3 tablespoons roasted sweet potato
• 3 large pieces crystalized ginger
• 2 handfuls spinach or kale
• 1 medium banana
• 2-3 teaspoons ground flax seeds
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 1/2 of one chopped pear or apple
• 6 ice cubes
• 1/4 cup cold water
A healthy lifestyle has to include the workplace, yet this is so often the setting where we’re least mindful about our health.
And as we learned from the thousands of practitioners who took our 10 Day Challenge, small changes everyday can make a huge difference.
So while you’re thinking about healthy changes, don’t forget to include the place where you work.
We are just wrapping up our nutrition teleseminar series. If you missed any of these great calls, including the interview with Brian Wansink, PhD, that spurred so many of us on to making changes in our diets, you can still get the complete series.
Just click here to learn more.
Have you introduced a successful health initiative into your workplace? Please leave a comment below. Or, give us your own smoothie recipe (including 2 handfuls of greens).
Great blog post, this is nearly exactly what I posted about the other day. Keep up the good work.
It’s very easy to take on other peoples problems as your own. What I mean is… it’s very easy to try and help other people deal with their issues, however you can’t always be able to help everyone. The best thing you can do for him is let him deal with his own issues and be there for him if he needs someone to talk to. If he thinks that he is stupid and has no future and he wants to be a bum…. then maybe he should get a taste of that life to set him straight. He will find through his own trials and errors that lifestyle is not very glamorous. There is no need for you to set yourself into a panic for things that are out of your control. You can pray for him and hope that he opens his eyes and sees that his choices are not in his best interest. We are unable to change people, but the best thing we can do is try to live our own lives and set a good example and hope for others to follow. You are a very strong woman and you have been through a lot. Keep your head up and all this will work itself out.
Dear Dr. Ruth B.,
First of all, call me a stick in the mud, a conservative, and old school as a smoothie guy! But a smoothie has berries, nonfat yogurt, and a frozen banana. (The frozen tubular fruit replaces the need for cubes — smooooth, no?)
These radical new-fangled smoothies of spinach leaves, yams, green tea and cubes — eeyuk! — are not smoothies. More like roughies! (Due to all the fibrous dark green and dark orange nutrient-dense vedge.)
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Now I have the ultimate smooooothie confection for late in the weekend.
I invented it only today during Sunday football. It is based on two ideas:
The idea of shandy made with beer.
Also the idea of sangria made with red wine.
I call it CERVESANGRIA (Cervesa+Sangria);i.e., it’s a beer-based “sangria.”
Ingredients to assemble:
1. A lot of ice cubes, crushed in a blender
2. Inexpensive Miller High Life Beer (7.99 for 12)
3. Inexpensive Diet Ginger Ale (.99 for 2L)
4. Inexpensive Turkey Hill Pomegranate Lemondade (1.99 for .5 gal)
(A berry flavored lemonade might also be good)
5.Chiiled glasses.
Function of ingredients:
The idea of ice, lemon and ginger is to lighten and smoooth out the alcohol; while pomegranate (or berries) gives the concoction a dark and tart sangria punch quality.
Thus Cervesangria! [pronounced Ser -BAY- San Gree- A.] It also adds to our vocab.
Love smoothies and angel cards! You give me a new idea for a new ritual with my juicing or smoothies. For my favorite smoothie I fill my Vitamix clone with spinach, throw in fresh pineapple and one or two bananas. My favorite green juice is Green Lemonade: I juice one bunch of kale, one head of romaine, 1-2 lemons, 1-2 inches of raw ginger root and 2 Fuji apples. It’s great – quite tart! (The apples are the sweetener)
I have been sharing angel cards with my colleagues. It’s become abit of a routine whereby we pick a new angel card in the morning and share how it might apply or how the one from yesterday fit.
Theer’s nothing like the relief of finding what you’re looking for.