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Image description: A glass with a green smoothie surrounded by apples and kale.

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I have joined the green smoothie craze.

The universe presented me with several pieces of information, plus one sudden craving for All.The.Greens! that together got me going. I’ve received a lot of questions about the green smoothies, so why not put them in one place?

Why are you doing this?

I’m doing my own #3Things not-yet-craze, in which every month, I’ll try three things that through baby steps can improve my life. January’s was drink more water, meditate, and deal with one piece of paper from the pile every day. February’s #3Things are green smoothies (the water drinking was successful), meditate, and deal with one piece of paper, etc. It’s a work in progress.

Why green smoothies?

I’m pretty motivated to improve my general health and have been thinking about smoothies for a while. Fruit smoothies are not necessarily the answer — fruit has sugar and I don’t want to have more of that. Vegetables are a good way to up your nutrition game, especially those dark leafy things, but I have reached the ceiling on how much I can chew before my jaws start hurting because of my rheumatoid arthritis. So a smoothie seemed a good way to increase my vegetable intake.

Image description: A glass with a green smoothie, surrounded by apples and kale, at the top a banner with the text: “Can Green Smoothies Improve My Chronic Illness?”

What are smoothie packs?

Part of what holds a lot of people — me included — back from making a smoothie every day, is the time and effort involved in putting together several different vegetables. Instead, meal prep to the rescue! Basically, you take 20 minutes and put together enough bags with smoothie ingredients for a week (or more, if you’d like). Then pop them in the freezer and when you’re ready, it’s ready. Pour it in your blender, add ingredients that don’t stand up to freezing, and away you go!

I use the awesome silicone reuseable Stasher Bags for the packs. Because with this many bags on the go, that could be a lot of plastic. The Stasher Sandwich Bag is the perfect size for 1 smoothie.

What’s in your green smoothies?

Here’s what’s in my smoothie packs so far:

A handful of baby spinach

About 1/3-1/2 handful of kale (baby or grown-up, depending on what you have)

Some frozen, steamed cauliflower, probably about three quarters of a cup. *

A half piece of fruit — orange, apple, pear, canned pear, pineapple, berries. Whatever you have or would like.

I pour one of these smoothie packs in my NutriBullet, then add water and a teaspoon of nutfree seed butter — these are amazing — and blitz away. You can also use milk — cow, soy, oat, almond — and nut butter.

* I use cauliflower as a thickening agent, as I can’t eat bananas or avocado due to the potential cross allergy with latex. One head of cauliflower is enough for a fair number of smoothie packs, up to two weeks or so for one person.  I’ve also heard that oats can be a good thickening agent. As I have quite a lot of oats, I plan to try this.

Do green smoothies make you feel better?

The goal was never for the green smoothies to make my RA or fibromyalgia better, but rather to improve my general health. Because if my general health is good, it will support my chronic illnesses. I think. That said, it’s possible it could do something for the chronic illness part of my health, but it’s much too soon to tell. I’ll keep you posted if anything changes.

But the green smoothies may be helping something else. About halfway into my so far two-week streak of daily smoothie consumption, someone asked me whether it was doing anything for my gastrointestinal health. That was the point I realized that the acid-spewing beast that normally lives in my stomach had been more quiet for several days. Coincidence? Definitely worth paying attention to.

I do know that this is a really good second breakfast for me. Due to aforementioned beast, I tend to graze throughout the day, not always healthy snacks. Having a smoothie is proving to be a great buffer between breakfast and lunch, so I don’t eat entirely too many things.

Tell me more about the #3Things

I was inspired by an article I did for HealthCentral, in which I suggested that you could get on top of your RA by doing one thing a month. In my personal life, that became three things a month — one for the body, one for the soul, and one to get control over my home.

The first Thursday of the month, I host a sort of #3Things support group on a Facebook Live where we can share how we are doing, celebrate successes, support the try-agains, or together set fire to a goal that’s not working. Virtually, of course.

Every Saturday morning, I do a #3Things check-in on my Facebook page as a way to help each other keep going.

It’s fun and it keeps us motivated. I’d love if you could join us!

What are three things you’d like to do to improve your life?