Eating Vegetables for Breakfast

I love fad diets.  They are always so full of promise, style, and simplicity.  Drink six glasses of lemonade, eat only meat for five days, have smoothies for every meal, take this horse pill, have food delivered to you by this creepy delivery man who never shaves or showers.  As mcuh as their lack of science and shiny newness attracts, I never follow them. (Except for that one time when my roomie and I ordered Nutrisystem meals.  Never again!)  So when my coworker kept tagging #GGS to a picture of toxic slime in a glass repeatedly on Instagram, I was equally intrigued and alarmed.

That is when I found Kimberley Snyder's blog.  First of all, do not look at any pictures of her until you read the stuff because then you will be both supremely jealous and feel ugly and fat.  Secondly, homegirl is fanatically into using "!" no matter what the sentence is saying.  Usually this bothers me, but for some reason when you're reading it, it makes you a little more excited about the possibilty of eating kale.  Third, I found the source of the #GGS; it's not a goverment code name for the spaghetti monster or radioactive sludge.  In fact, it's the recipe for a green smoothie loaded with lettuce, greens, and fruit.  So I guess it's the opposite of radioactive sludge?

After spending hours on her blog and reading one of the books she wrote, I got suckered into trying a  plant-based diet.  I am not going to go into the details of the rest of her eating philosophy--because it is slightly confusing, scary, and reminds me of my best friend from high school that now is a hippie living in New Zealand-- but the Glowing Green Smoothie is basically the hot friend you bring with you to the club to make your whole group seem more desirable.  (I don't believe in the ugly monkey theory.)  It's trendy, Mindy Kaling drinks it, it has vegetables in it, and I constantly feel more enlightened than all of the people in my classes who had Poptarts for breakfast .  Here are my pointers to those of you who immediately googled Kimberley Snyder, had a panic attack because you think you are slowly killing yourself by eating dairy products and then had another one at the thought of never eating cheese again, and decided to start with the smoothie:

1.  You need a fancy blender.  Trust me, do not even try to make it in a regular blender.  It will make you ugly cry.  I have a BlendTec because that's what Jamba Juice uses and it's about $200 cheaper than a Vitamix.  However, Vitamix blenders have more street cred.  The decision is yours.

2.  I left out the spinach the first time and loaded up on romaine, but the spinach is what makes it taste so delicious.  So don't skimp on it.  I've tried making it with baby kale, arugula, and bok choy before because according to the internet, you are not supposed to eat too much spinach.  The results were alright, but the spinach ones are the best.

3.  I hate celery.  I used cucumber instead.  That is all.

4.  Pears are delicious.  I tried subsituting them for mango, papaya, double apple, and strawberries, but pears make the blender go round, if you catch my drift.

5.  The recipe makes about 3-4 servings.  So I usually force feed the rest of the smoothie to anyone within fifty feet of me in the morning.  Today, it was my neighbors.

6.  I still can't over the fact that this is my breakfast because I love breakfast so much.  It's been two weeks of it, and today is the first day where I didn't want to swallow a plate of pancakes whole.

I still need ungodly amounts of caffeine to get through my day, but in all seriousness, my skin glows now...Now I really wonder if it is radioactive sludge.  Also, I no longer have weird back fat that makes me look like a cross between the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Madea.  I do not take pictures of the smoothie and post it all over the internet, but I do work it into conversations to make myself look like a health guru.