eat, lift, love yourself: Delicious Green Smoothie Recipe

You know that feeling you get after a great workout, when your muscles are shaking, your head is a little foggy and you can barely muster enough energy to walk out to your car? It's an awesome feeling because you realize that you worked yourself hard, but you can't spend the rest of your day like that! What I need after a powerful workout is a green smoothie to get me energized for my day. It's packed to the brim with nutrients, and has at least one serving each of almost all your daily food groups. I drink my green smoothies immediately after my workout and it perks me right up! Often I will make a double batch (one for now, one for tomorrow), which saves time. I keep tomorrow's serving in the fridge and it can keep for up to three days. But I've found that even after three days, the taste is off, so I limit my servings to 2.

Annie's Green Smoothie

Ingredients

Fruit of choice (Fresh or frozen)
½ cup Nonfat milk
4 heaping tbsp. Greek Yogurt (I've used plain and vanilla-both work fine)
1-2 cups Raw Spinach
2 Scoops Protein Powder
2-3 Stevia packets, depending on sweetness preference
1-2 cups ice
½ cup Water

Mix in this order for the easiest possible blend:

Ice
Fruit
½ the Spinach
Half the Water and Milk

Liquefy for about 15-20 seconds. If the top part refuses to blend, add more water or push spinach in with a spoon. Next, add the remaining ingredients and blend for an additional 30 seconds, scraping sides as needed. Pour into 2 separate glasses, and put the second one in the fridge. Enjoy!

This smoothie boasts about 40 grams of protein! Perfect for recovering muscles.

Notes

As you can tell, most of these measurements are approximate and can be varied according to taste. I've found that the above recipe works best for me, but the ingredients are pretty flexible. For instance, spinach can be substituted for kale or another green, though I've found that kale is hard to blend fully and that tiny pieces can be floating around in your smoothie even after lots of blending.

Water is a key ingredient; without it, all these nutrient-dense foods would not be able to blend together. Feel free to add as much as you need; you can also add ice if your smoothie is too runny.

Stevia is THE secret ingredient. Without it, you would be forcing this smoothie down while plugging your nose. The Greek yogurt is not tasty, and spinach has very little taste, so the only sweet part of the smoothie is the fruit, but there's not enough of it to change the taste of the whole smoothie. Stevia is my favorite sweetener because it has less than 4 calories per packet and you don't need very much of it to taste the sweetness. In fact, it helps to make the sweet taste of the fruit more prominent.

The fruit is probably the most versatile part of the smoothie, and you can change it varying by your taste. Some ideas for combinations:

Pineapple and Mango

Mixed Berries

Strawberry and Banana

Grape (by itself is delicious)

The crazy thing about this smoothie is that it tastes SO good! You would never guess that it has spinach and protein powder in it. This is why I use unflavored whey protein, because then the taste of the protein powder doesn't mix with the natural taste of the fruit. Feel free to use flavored, if you like, but it quickly changes the taste, so be careful.

Lastly, this smoothie doesn't have to be just a recovery shake. You can also drink it as a nutritional snack if you're trying to lose weight.

Here are the products I use: