Bella Adams
The summer season is getting closer and closer, but you may not yet feel in top shape. With the smoothie diet, you can treat your body to a pleasant short detox cure, including weight loss success. Here’s what you need to know about the smoothie diet.
A short smoothie diet can be a detox for the head and body.
Your thoughts aren’t constantly turning: When what and where should I eat? This can be very liberating in between meals.
In addition, the diet is easy to carry out: throw fresh fruit and vegetables in the blender, puree briefly – bang, the fresh, healthy smoothies are ready.
During the diet, your gastrointestinal tract is also relieved, your body is supplied with super many vitamins and nutrients and at the end, the scale can show a few kilos less.
However, in order to successfully implement the smoothie diet, you should keep a few points in mind.
The positive effect of smoothies
Smoothies are a healthy breakfast alternative and can also be very supportive after exercise. The advantage over juices: Since the ingredients are finely pureed, all fiber is retained.
This has the positive effect of slowing down the absorption of fructose and nutrients as well as digestion.
In other words, we stay full longer. But that also means that some smoothies can be very nutritious, high in calories, and a meal replacement, especially if banana, avocado, nuts, or nut puree are involved.
The German Federal Center for Nutrition (BZfE) sees smoothies – whether they contain fruits or vegetables – as a balanced and healthy addition.
“Of the recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables per day, smoothies can occasionally replace up to two servings,” says the BZfE.
Here, a serving size refers to 200 to 250 milliliters of content.
This is how the smoothie diet works
Just before you start: see if your high-powered blender or smoothie maker is ready to go, fresh vegetables and fruits are on hand, and, for example, some flax oil, possibly almond drink, coconut milk, coconut water, hemp seeds or protein powder is available – or what you like best.
The most effective way to follow a smoothie diet is to completely avoid solid foods for three to seven days and replace all meals, including snacks, with smoothies – you can drink up to six smoothies in total, preferably every two hours.
Keep in mind that smoothies should consist of at least 50 percent vegetables such as spinach, arugula, cucumber, celery, mint, carrots, avocado, or beet so that the fructose content is not too high. Green smoothies are best.
Wenn Ihnen das zu schwer fällt, können Sie eine oder zwei Mahlzeiten durch Smoothies ersetzen. Auch hier bewegen Sie sich ohne Heißhunger in dem gewünschten Kaloriendefizit und die Gefahr des Jo-Jo-Effekts ist geringer.
Fettreiche Zutaten wie Avocado, Kokosnusspüree, Chiasamen, Leinsamen oder Hanfsamen halten länger satt und verlangsamen die Zuckeraufnahme des Körpers.
Auch Haferflocken, Mandeldrink, Kokosmilch oder faserhaltiges Gemüse sind besonders sättigend.
Aber Vorsicht! Die oben genannten Zusätze halten zwar länger satt, erhöhen aber auch die Kalorienzahl des Smoothies.
Eiweiß sollte in mindestens zwei Ihrer Smoothies enthalten sein. Warum? Durch die Smoothie-Diät kann es passieren, dass Ihr Körper nach dem zweiten oder dritten Tag die fehlende Energie aus den Muskeln holen will.
Um dies zu verhindern: Rühren Sie pflanzliches Proteinpulver oder Whey, Hanfsamen, Leinsamen oder griechischen Sahnejoghurt in Ihre Smoothies.
Vermeiden Sie während der gesamten Smoothie-Diät Koffein, Zucker, feste Nahrung und Alkohol.
Here’s what you need to keep in mind when following the smoothie diet
- Before you start the smoothie diet, you should allow yourself one or two days of relief. This means: Avoiding coffee, sugary foods, alcohol, and nicotine. Avoid wheat products and fatty foods like pizza and fries. Instead, eat lots of vegetables, preferably also in the form of raw vegetables – the best basis for the upcoming smoothie diet.
- Avoid too much fructose during the smoothie diet
and prepare different smoothies, so that you are supplied with many different vitamins and nutrients. Match your smoothie size to your actual meal size. For example, have a larger serving for lunch and a smaller serving for breakfast. It is important to reach a calorie deficit of 300 to 500 calories at the end of the day to achieve weight loss success. - Counteract the emerging feeling of hunger by drinking plenty of fluids in between meals, especially still water, herbal teas, unsweetened fruit teas, and lemon water (cold or lukewarm). Recommendation: at least two liters a day.
- Hungry for something hearty? As a smoothie alternative, clear vegetable broth is allowed in the smoothie diet.
- Refrain from too-hard HIIT workouts or 10-kilometer jogs, that would be an additional stress for your body. Additional stress – yes, exercise can also cause stress – will increase the release of the stress hormone cortisol, which in turn can hinder your weight loss success. Our sports tip during the smoothie diet: yoga, short, pleasant weight training, cycling (not a day trip), and lots of walking. If you are a passionate runner, then go for a short run of no more than 30 minutes at a medium to slow pace.
- After the small detox cure, you should take it slowly. Go for raw food and replace one more main meal with liquid food. After that, you can move step by step to cooked vegetables, oatmeal, rice, and boiled potatoes before returning to your usual diet.
Advantages of the smoothie diet
- Healthy time out for the body: the gastrointestinal tract is relieved
- You will be supplied with many vitamins and minerals
- After two to three days you feel fitter, more energetic, and more alert.
- The smoothie diet shows you that your hunger is controlled by your head and not by your stomach.
- Saves time in the kitchen and no more thinking every day about what to cook for yourself today
- Less water retention because you don’t eat coffee, sugar, alcohol, and wheat products.
- A few pounds less on the scale – which is natural. You’ve been in a calorie deficit while on the smoothie diet
Healthy smoothie recipes
A colorful, fresh, vitamin-rich smoothie selection adds a bit of variety to the smoothie diet.
Always try to make smoothies with 50 percent vegetables. If you want something a little more filling, add avocado, banana, flax oil, or his seeds.
Our conclusion: Does the smoothie diet really make sense?
Feeding yourself exclusively on smoothies for three to seven days and without any yo-yo effect – can that work? Does it really make sense?
That’s what our nutritionist & food editor Andra Schmidt thinks of the smoothie diet:
“I don’t see the smoothie diet as a long-term weight loss strategy. It serves rather as time out – short Detox for the body and head. It does actually good to experience once for ourselves that we eat mostly from pure habit and not from actual hunger feeling.
Longer than three days at a time, I would not recommend it, however, because the body gets the energy too quickly from the muscles, because the important carbohydrates as energy donors are missing. Your previous hard training would thus be gone.
In addition, during the relief days and on the first day of the smoothie diet, you may experience severe headaches and feelings of fatigue – you should be aware of this.
But it is also quite normal: these are withdrawal symptoms since you are giving up caffeine, sugar, and wheat products from one day to the next.
I find the paragraph “This is what you need to keep in mind during the smoothie diet” very important. Follow all the points to come out positive from the smoothie diet.
After the diet, I would advise against indulging in that delicious pasta or greasy pepperoni pizza. Your stomach will go on strike – downright rebel with pain, as you’re putting your gastrointestinal tract through too much.
A yo-yo effect will not occur with a short detox cure of three days – unless you eat only fast food afterward.
Personally, I find a smoothie diet or similar detox cures, such as juice cures, insanely hard.
Better: replace one meal in your daily balanced, healthy diet with smoothies or try 5:2 Intermittent Fasting, you’ll find it will do your gastrointestinal tract, head, well-being, and body good too – hello, ideal weight.”
