After eating all the croissants and charcuterie in Europe over a total of 20 days, and drinking all the wine and all the Belgium Lambic Framboise …. I needed a break.

Do you ever over indulge and then afterwards you just feel gross and unhealthy and blah?

This was me right after we got back from Europe.

I was sooo done eating out in restaurants.

I was so done eating pastries.

Don’t get me wrong … it was amazing … and it all was so delectably delicious and I loved every second of it, but my body just needed some veggies, ya feel?

One of the ways I got back on track after all the pastries was by incorporating smoothies into my life. This may be blasphemy to some of you, … but I don’t totally love smoothies...

I mean I do love them sometimes, like when its hot outside in the summer months or I want a quick something on the go … but I way prefer to eat my food rather than blend it up.

BUT. I do think smoothies are an amazing way to get a huge punch of nutrients all in one fell swoop, plus a serving of greens, plus a serving of fruit, plus some superfoods added plus some high quality protein and fat and wow there ya go, super nutrient rich meal right there!

And it’s blended up, so the body doesn’t have to work super hard to break it down and assimilate the nutrients. It’s like job one is kind of already done for our digestive system!

I learned something fascinating about the body and digestion while we were traveling. I read this book called Clean by Dr. Alejandro Junger and seriously it was a life changer. I learned that because people are basically always eating food, the digestive tract never really has an opportunity to rest and enter repair/detox mode.

Repair/detox doesn’t happen until minimum 8 hours have passed since you last consumed food. And digestion is a very taxing process and requires a ton of energy.

Also not to mention, digestion takes a long flipping time, think 12-18 hours for people with rockstar status digestion.

If you’re someone who eats naughty foods, drinks naughty things, eats a ton of meat and processed foods, has some degree of gut dysbiosis (we all do...), does not take a high quality probiotic, and does not drink enough water, well then your digestion may take more like 24-36 hours.

When things are finally moving through our digestive tract, our livers can do their powerful detoxifying work on our bodies.

Repair/detox mode is when things like metabolic waste and old used up hormones get swept out of the body.

And then heavy metal detoxification happens.

And pharmaceutical byproducts are eliminated.

And when cell turnover and repair happens.

But … if we’re constantly eating and not allowing enough time between our last meal of yesterday and our first meal of today, then detoxification can’t really happen optimally. The ideal time between dinner and breakfast is 12 hours.

What does this have to do with smoothies?

Well, think of it this way:::

You finish dinner around 7pm or so.

You go to bed like around 10 or 11pm.

Then you don’t wake up until 6:30am the next day.

Then by the time you’ve showered, brushed your teeth, dry brushed and journaled (anyone else?), it’s 7am and now its been 12 hours since your last meal and yay that is plenty of time to allow the body to enter detox/repair mode and do its powerful cleansing work!

And when that first meal of the day after your 12 hour fast technically is a smoothie, the work of the digestive tract is significantly reduced because it’s blended up!

Nutrients are readily available to the digestive tract so the body doesn’t have to work very hard to break it down into super tiny particles that are small enough to pass through the one-cell layer thickness of the small intestine! Sweet!

Also remember your smoothie is insanely rich in micro and macro nutrients, probably full of yummy greens and low glycemic index fruits, high quality protein, high quality fat, and a superfood addition of some kind.

I’ve been starting each day with a smoothie pretty much every day for the last 2 weeks, and holy cow let me tell you what’s going on:

My skin is freaking gorgeous. I am the girl who always has like one cute/not-so-cute zit hanging out. It’s always been a dream of mine to have gorgeously glowing skin that doesn’t need foundation and concealer to feel beautiful. Maybe its the smoothies? Maybe its something else? Who cares, I’m loving this beautiful skin I’m rocking right now.

My colon is like doing the happy dance every morning and then again later in the afternoon. TWO FREAKING TIMES A DAY GUYS!!! Not to sound too old folks-ey here and being all obsessed with the BMs and all (but lets be real, I am a colon therapist!), but it makes such a difference when you’re moving out the old garbage.

Regular poops keep the beneficial gut bacteria healthy because by eliminating twice daily, you make room for more prebiotic fiber rich foods for them to munch on (yes this is what the bacteria do. They eat and poop and make babies just like us. So Planet Earth, right?!).

Also you eliminate the excess estrogen that your body excretes through stool (anyone estrogen dominant up in here? It’s a big deal and a very real thing. As a PCOS sufferer, I know when there’s too much estrogen floating around my body).

And one last thing:: autointoxication is less likely because by eliminating multiple times a day, there isn’t old metabolic waste and garbage hanging out in the colon ready to be reabsorbed.

The colon’s number one job is to absorb what’s in it. So if you’ve got days and days and meals and meals of old used up digested 98.6 degree old food just hanging out in your colon, and it’s all used up grossness, nasty disgusting feeding the harmful bacteria in your gut — well then there’s a good chance that those absorptive cells in the colon are going to suck up and reabsorb the nastiness and it’s going to get into your circulation via the blood stream and leave you feeling like you have toxic nasty sewage floating around your body. Yes, autointoxication is gross. Make sure you’re pooping enough, people.

My energy levels are high and I feel so sharp! I’m also taking a break from coffee lately too (again…all the European coffee as good as it was, it needs to go away for awhile), and it’s so reassuring to know that when I get high quality nutrition from my food and not artificially from caffeine, I have just as much if not more energy, and it's a clean, steady energy, not like a jittery, fumbly, flitting around like a hungry hummingbird kind of energy.

Smoothie time, Baby!!

Here’s the recipe I’ve been rocking lately. It’s delicious and amazing and so filling.

• 6oz almond milk

• 1 cup organic frozen kale

• 1 cup organic frozen mixed berries

• 1/2 avocado

• 1 scoop protein powder

• dash of sunflower or sesame seeds (luteal phase to period) or dash of flax or pumpkin seeds (period to ovulation) what up seed cycling!!

• dash of bee pollen

• dash of cacao powder if I’m feeling indulgent

• 1 tsp spirulina

• lots of cinnamon

• water

Blend and enjoy! You could do more almond milk if you want, but I like just enough to give it a little bit of creaminess. I add a ton of water. That way there’s more volume and its super filling, also insanely hydrating! Yay 2 birds with 1 smoothie :)

What’s in your smoothie today?! Tell me in the comments!

Happy Monday, babes!!

Xoxo,

Emily 😊