The Day Smoothie Smiles Was Born

Hey there my Friend!

I still laugh about it today!

You know how much I love smoothies! Well, there was a time when my smoothies were… let's call them “creative.”

I was a low carb devotee, but I still loved using smoothies to get in a mass amount of nutrients. Blending all the “healthy” things I could think of into one drink was my go-to.

One day, a couple friends and I went on an epic 6-mile walk. It was a beautiful late Spring morning and we were enjoying the slightly crisp air and the friendly chat. For six miles we talked, laughed, and planned all the ways we were going to rule the world.

Just kidding - we just wanted to rule our own children.

I was no stranger to walking. I had been walking several miles several times a week since middle school. And when I wasn't walking, I was running several miles several times a week for the 15 years prior.

But on this particular day, somewhere in the last quarter mile of our epic walk, I felt a sudden, intense, and nearly debilitating drop in energy level - like I simply couldn't go on.

This is called a “bonk”, and is well known in the intense workout world - like on marathons. But having one at the end of a not-super-terribly-long walk just reinforced my belief that something was legit wrong with my body. (Of course I blamed myself, which is sad).

I spent the rest of the walk trying to hide from my friends my complete lack of energy and slight stumbles with every step I took, but they noticed that I had suddenly become very quiet. My legs felt like lead and all I could think about at that point was food. I couldn't wait to get back home and make myself a killer smoothie. And of course I invited my two friends to join me.

I led my friends into my living room, told them to make themselves comfortable on my couch while I whipped up the healthiest smoothie they had ever known.

This particular smoothie consisted of coconut milk (because regular milk had gasp too much sugar), kale, spinach, blueberries, cinnamon, MTC oil, vanilla protein powder, and who knows what else. I made sure to withhold the barley grass juice powder, however, as I figured that would be taking it a little too far for my mega-smoothie-virgin friends.

Oh girl - if that smoothie sounds crazy gross to you, you would not be wrong. However, this was right in line with the kind of smoothies I made on the regular, and actually, this particular smoothie was definitely on the tame and more tasty side for me. I quite enjoyed this one. For many years had I drunk smoothies full of grit, chunks, bitterness, and I would just gulp down my creations because “it was good for me”.

That was my norm.

On this special day, I poured the thick, deep-blue-with-hints-of-green concoction into 3 glasses and presented my low-carb masterpiece to my friends.

One friend drank it and seemed to tolerate it just fine, but the other? Let's just say the chunks of kale and blueberries didn't win her over.

At one point, I looked over and saw her grimacing. When I asked how she was enjoying the smoothie, she just smiled.

And at that very moment, "Smoothie Smiles" was born.

Lodged in her tinted blue teeth were tiny chunks of spinach and kale. Somehow it just felt extremely fitting that the one that felt truly disgusted by the healthy offering was the one that had it plastered all over her mouth. All I could do was laugh, and both friends, though one was unsuspecting, joined in.

To this day I bust up laughing just thinking about it. Her grimace, her smile, the green flecks in her blue mouth - it was just too much. And I will never forget it.

My friend's smoothie smile reinforced several lessons I have used in my life.

One, is laugh often, and find the joy through the pain, rain, and insane.

And of course, there's a lesson in nutrition to be learned here. There was nothing inherently wrong with most of the ingredients in that smoothie, but for much of my life, I felt it necessary to shove down anything I deemed “healthy” no matter how it tasted.

I live a much more appetizing life these days.

For one, my smoothies today are not only NOT low carb (they're actually a pretty ideal mix of macros, though they seem way carb heavy to some), they're also delicious! And still hugely nutritious, by the way (arguably more so).

I'm no longer afraid of cow's milk, and instead of having a cabinet full of powders and potions to throw in, they're super simple. Milk, fruit, a small scoop of protein powder if I want, and that's it. No kale chunks required.

Food doesn't have to be complicated or miserable to be good for you.

You should absolutely enjoy the food you put in your body. You can make food simple (the older I get, the more I dislike cooking… and I never really liked it to begin with, so there's that), and nutritious at the same time. You don't need to buy all the potions, powders and weird ingredients in order to be healthy (oh - I was the QUEEN of potions, powders, and pills - just ask my husband and the 3 cabinets I kept them all in).

So here's my question to you: Are you eating foods you enjoy? Or do you grimace while you're shoving broccoli in because you know it's good for you? (For the record, I friggin love broccoli, and also for the record, please let me see your broccoli grimace because I hope there's green stuck between your teeth).

And PS: if you say: “Why yes, Camille, I eat McD's on the regular because I love it”, then friend, I love you, but we need to have a chat, cause I'm not sure McD's counts as real food, so lemme help you out with that one.

One of the biggest questions I get is something along the lines of “how do you make the transition from low-carb to normal-carb”, because a lot of people feel like carbs are the problem and they gain weight if they just look at carbs.

And my answer to that last part is, yep - you might.

If you have been low carb for a while, OR if you have metabolic dysfunction (like if you're dealing with insulin resistance of any kind, like PCOS or type-2 diabetes), you have two options, as far as I'm concerned.

Option 1: GLP-1 medications. These are a fast track tool for healing your metabolism and enabling your cells to be “fixed” from the inside out. These meds literally help rid your cells of the fat they're trying to utilize for energy, and allow them to start utilizing carbs appropriately again. The body prefers carbs (glucose), but oftentimes these days, something has gone terribly wrong and there's now dysfunction with this process inside the cell, and we need to fix that. GLP-1s can be an absolute miracle to help you do this extremely quickly.

With GLP-1 medications on board, you can (and absolutely should) increase your carb intake quickly and aggressively. This will help the meds work better, and help you feel better while you're on them. Many women are getting this wrong, and honestly, I worry about their long-term success. Remaining low carb while using GLP-1 medications is not only forcing the meds to work by only covering up the symptoms, but you're literally pushing back on the whole healing process. Will you still lose weight? Probably. Will you reverse your insulin resistance long-term? Nope.

Option 2: If you're unable to obtain GLP-1 medications, you absolutely can bring your cells back to utilizing glucose properly on your own with time and patience. And I mean lots of time and patience. The process here is to slowly increase carbs while decreasing fat intake. You want to force your cells to transition to burning carbs for fuel as they're designed to do most of the time.

If you've been low carb, yes, you will absolutely gain water weight by increasing carbs initially. After all, they're literally called carboHYDRATES because they help keep your cells hydrated. But if you are dealing with insulin resistance, meaning your body is not able to utilize carbs (glucose) properly, and you suddenly increase your carb intake, your body won't be able to use them well and the glucose will remain in your blood, and may lead to weight gain.

It's like a backed up drain that you are just trying to force more water through without unclogging it first.

We gotta unclog the drain. GLP-1 meds do this lightning fast, but you can do it on your own as well, it's just much harder.

Many people think that insulin resistance is an issue with insulin, but insulin is actually the solution here. Did you know that GLP-1 meds literally raise your insulin? How does that work if insulin is the make-you-fat-bad-guy? It's not.

And I will tell you this: the ONLY way to transition your cells back to long-term metabolically flexible functionality (where you utilize glucose most of the time and fat some of the time… which is how God designed it), is by eating carbs.

Unless you want to live the rest of your life without carbs. And hey friend, if that's you, and eating that way feels good, and you have energy, and your hormones are all in order, and you're happy with your body, then keep on keeping on (and jump ship now, because I'm not your girl).

But my guess is you're here because you've tried all the things in the past and it hasn't worked and you just want your body to act like a normal person.

Friend, I'm here for you.

But if you're sitting back right now thinking “Sister. Prove it.”, well, I invite you to check out GLP-1 Done Right, where I do exactly that.

And if you want an actual tasty smoothie recipe with no chance of green teeth monsters, here's my go-to:

-1 cup milk (I recommend 2%)

-1 fresh banana

-frozen strawberries (maybe ½ to 1 C)

-frozen mango (again ½ to 1C)

-half to full scoop of vanilla protein powder = to about 20g protein (try to use one that's not full of icky ingredients)

-a scoop of collagen powder if ya wanna (see my website for my favorite)

-And as much water as you need to make sure it blends well - depends on how much frozen fruit you've got in there, but I usually cover the fruit with water. Or if you really want to go wild, add some orange juice in there too. Mmmm!

Hugs and (chunky green) Smoothie Smiles!

Coach Camille PN, SSR