Are Smoothies the way to go?

[EvianBaby]

I've started putting on a bit of weight again which I want to put a stop to (it might help if I stopped buying packets of double choc chip brownies) but I also need to up my intake of fruit/veg which is almost non existant at the moment.

Someone suggested I should have smoothies as one of the reasons I don't eat much fruit is that I can't bare the texture. I can't even eat a yogurt with bits in it so it would have to be completely smooth, like a milkshake. But, I've also been told that drinking smoothies isn't that good for you as you are consuming a lot more fruit (and therefore alot more sugar) than you would simply by eating the fruit as a whole, just because you would struggle to eat that much solid fruit but can take more if it's in liquid form. (hope that makes sense).

So, firstly can you make smoothies really really really smooth and are they actually a good idea for trying to lose weight?

[rowanwitch]

smoothies will often have a little bit of texture if you strain them through a fairly coarse sieve you'd get rid of the bigger bits but yiu will also be reducing the amount of fibre you get. If you eat lots of vegetables you don't need fruit so much and a glass of unsweetened juice can be one of your five a day

[EvianBaby]

I have the same problem eating veg (and other stuff) as I do fruit so my consumption of that is almost nil too. But I hadn't thought about just normal juice.

[rowanwitch]

It's better than nothing you can get veg juices too. you might also want to consider getting some help with your reaction to eating them sounds like NLP might help as it sounds psychological. Were you forced to eat them whne you were a child?

[EvianBaby]

Sometimes I think, or they'd make you sit at the table until you finished but they did sort of give up after a while. I had to take alot of suppliments as a kid and was always ill. But my 6 siblings never had an issue and actually all seem to enjoy it all. I have improved a little as I've got older but it took me until I was 26 to even attempt to eat a prawn. Lol.

[Old_Geezer]

I guess you do what you have to do. But I'm not feeling particularly enthusiastic about the suggestion. You refer initially to weight gain, well I believe smoothies often have more calories due to other stuff chucked in (such as sugar) than simply eating the fruit itself. But if you make them in your own blender/liquidizer I guess you can avoid that. and doing it yourself would avoid the extra expense.

How smooth you can make them I'd suspect would depend on your liquidizer.

Obviously if you can overcome your aversion to the texture of the fruit it would help, although I know there are things I won't eat by choice due to the same reason. I'm surprised the texture is abhorrent to you for all fruit & veg though. What even the tinned (in juice) stuff ? Sans skin and chopped it is a very different texture to the original plantstuff.

[EvianBaby]

It's not just fruit and veg I have a problem with, I do have an aversion to all sorts of food. My staple diet consists of about 6 different things on a regeular basis.

There are some I don't mind, such as carrots or apples and there are some that I adore the flavour of like strawberries and mushrooms but to put one in my mouth makes me want to vomit. I agree with Rowan that it's all just in my head and I'd certainly like to get it out of there. I've tried various different methods of eating things and have found that if I can dice something to such a size that you almost can't see it then I'm ok but that only works with a small quantity of things. Once you lots of things and start chucking them into the same pot then that takes on it's own new texture and I end up seperating it all. I realise I'm probably a little mental. :)

[woofgang]

what textures can you bear? Its possible to make vegetables into various textures depending on what you can eat. For instance of you like brownies, make your own and add fruit or vegetable pulp which you will neither taste not feel once the brownie is cooked.
Maybe a juicer would be better than a smoothie maker, especially if you want weight control. You can sieve the juice so its as texture free as any juice drink and the pulp can be put into cakes, soups and so on, the texture is so fine that it vanishes. If you like pasta and smooth sauce, the veg pulp goes into the sauces and you can use the veg juice to moisten the sauce so you get the whole thing.

[EvianBaby]

Woofgang, that's a brilliant idea. There's no real logic to what I like and don't like but I could make your idea work for various different things. I love pasta and sauces so that could work really well for me.

[rowanwitch]

The pulp from juicing carrots goes rather well into pasta sauces but better still into carrot cake unfortunatley

[EvianBaby]

I've never eaten carrot cake. Might try and make some this weekend :)

[boxtops]

Evian, I can't see your argument about extra sugar - if you are making smoothies or juice just from fruit or veg, you're not adding extra sugar, only what is in the fruit already. You'd need to limit your intake though - otherwise you might be on the loo all day - as with 5 a day fruit and veg. One Innocent smoothie is 2 portions of fruit.

[boxtops]

carrot cake's lovely but you do get tempted to eat more than you should :-) Beetroot cake's good, too.

[tamborine]

seems you need a diet. Take vit c & hard boiled eggs, water to fill stomach for 1week should reduce weight

[boxtops]

ooh tambo, all those eggs....

[EvianBaby]

I might not have explained it very well, I'll try a bit better.

If you eat the fruit as a whole, you can only eat so much (lets say 5 apples) before you feel full up and stop eating. If you blend it all into a juice you can consume more (say 10 apples worth) so by having it in smoothie form you also upping your intake of the natural sugar in the fruit.

Does that make sense? It's just what somebody else who does Slimming World explained to me. (apprantly you're not allowed smoothies on the SW diet for that reason)

[woofgang]

I think that's only part of the explanation. If you drink a smoothie, you are likely to drink it instead of a drink which would probably be less or nil calories, eg water, unsweetened tea or coffee and so on. You will then have your "eating space" to eat something as well so for simplicity's sake instead of eating an apple and an orange and drinking a glass of water, you would drink an apple and an orange and eat another apple and orange, and without meaning to, you have doubled your calorie intake.

[Smowball]

The SW explanation never made sense to me - all fruit was free, but if you juiced the same amount of fruit it wasnt!

But anyway, smoothies have got to be better than all those brownies : )

[EvianBaby]

The way I understand is the fruit fills you up so you don't eat more food on top of it but the juice doesn't fill you up so you have that and then eat something else too, so you end up taking on alot more calories (or whatever).

I will try and refrain from more cookies, they're just soooooo good. :)

[ethandron]

Many moons ago, the F plan diet said that if you're thirsty then rather than drink a glass of apple juice it's better to eat an apple and have a drink of water. There are more 'spoons' of the natural fruit sugar in a glass of apple juice than there are in an apple and a glass of water.