Why you should freeze your skinny smoothie ingredients

July 23, 2017 Ashley 0 Comments

DIY smoothies are fantastic for weight loss. I’m all about them.

But you know what I’m not about?

The mess, inconvenience, and expense factor of buying new ingredients every two and a half days when my foliage goes flaccid in the fridge. (Wilted spinach, anyone?) That’s why I’m in love with this tip I just read about freezing your ingredients ahead of time. Particularly your greens. See, what I love about this food fitness tip, is that it actually breaks down further into two awesome options. The first? That you just squash your leaves into bags and then shove ‘em in your freezer. This alone will last you a long time. (Just don’t wait too long to enjoy them, because freezer burn is still definitely a thing.) Or, you could take in a step further – and get the bulk of your work done ahead of time. How? By blending and pureeing up the stuff, stuffing the sludge into several ice cube trays to solidify, and throwing that into your blender when you need it.

(Smoothie cubes mean less work to do in the morning before work.)

The benefits are numerous, too. For one, as mentioned above, you won’t have to worry about the stuff going bad. (The scent of expired greens wafting out’ve your not-so-fresher is enough to make you not wanna ingest any ever again – in smoothie form or not.) That’s because it’ll keep for far longer, in frozen form. Also, when it’s chilled into a solid, you’re making your food go farther. Aside from the liquid of choice you initially blend it with during prep time, you’re also adding a little more when you blend up the cubes themselves.

(Want something more nutritious than more water? Try some coconut water for helping of healthy fat.)

But what all of that won’t add – is the extra time it’d take to generate your drinkable masterpiece. You’ve already done the plant food calculations ahead of time. (“How much banana? How many berries? How much of these cold milled ground flaxseeds I had to take out a loan to afford?”) Not to mention the messy investment. It’s priceless to have that done ahead of time (when you aren’t in a rush or preoccupied with the tasks of the day that lay ahead). One big meal prep beforehand (presumably on a Sunday or something), and one big clean up is far easier than five, at 5 A.M. every weekday. And future-you thanks past-you graciously for it.

And everyday you, rummaging through the fresher for chewable snacks, is thankful as well. Why? Because you’ve no longer got behemoth bags of greens taking up your entire drawer anymore. With all your smoothie ingredients compressed into cube form, you’ve now got back tons of real estate in your fridge for neighboring groceries to take over, instead’ve getting squashed until they look as wilted as your spinach used to, pre-freezing method.

In sum, to make weight loss smoothie making go smoothly each morning, freeze your ingredients first!