That time I spent a crazy amount on a kitchen appliance

Well, I've recovered from the snake attack (more me attack snake than snake attacking me). I even showed off my pictures to the guys at work and they were all super impressed that I confronted snake and told it who's house it was (if by impressed you mean, most cringed away from the picture). There's a lot of snake haters out there. 

In other big news: last week....I dropped some bills (dollar bills y'all) on a blender. My brother had done a juice fast recently and I'm not sure what I was more impressed with; the information he gave me on the juicing, or that he actually went 5 days without Pizza Luce and 5 Guys. 

I talked to Kyle about it, and Kyle talked to his health-minded buddy in Arizona, and came to the conclusion that juicing was not for us.

1) The clean-up. Ick. You have to use bags to catch all the stuff that doesn't get juiced. You can only juice 1 or 2 cups before you have to clean the whole thing out. 

2) You lose a lot of nutrients from the food when you just use the juice of a fruit or veggie.

3) You need a lot of produce to make 1 glass.

So we decided juicing wasn't for us. We were getting a blender.

After some research we decided on a Blendtec. Now, let me tell you, it's an investment for sure. Kyle always says you can't never invest too much in your health. So I marched into Bed, Bath, and Beyond with my 20% off blue post card, grabbed the one and only Blendtec 575 off the shelf (the designer edition is a good $200 more....yikes) and headed to the register. Along the way I got head nods of encouragement from BB&B employees (wow they have a lot of people working at that store, random thought, sorry), one stopped me and said, "OOOOOOOO, you're just gonna love it!". Confidence restored, I made my purchase.

Next stop was Sam's Club, where I bought a ton of fruit and veggies. This time when I got to the register my total was under $35, for A LOT of food. Perfect.

Ignore the corn. That just looked too good to pass up.

We've been experimenting a lot with green smoothies. We have one for breakfast everyday, then I take the leftover for a morning snack or lunch. Since I eat in my car everyday this makes things easy and I'm less likely to stop at Starbucks for a iced coffee and hummus chicken box.

Each of these is 2 servings. They keep in a mason jar for about a day.

Then we have a green smoothie along with dinner, which lately has been grilled chicken for me and grilled brats (or leftover pizza) for Kyle. Hey, baby steps.

The first few days I felt like I had better energy, my random acne breakouts went away, I was rarely hungry, but I was gaining weight. I think maybe I was using too much fruit? Or else maybe my body was just getting used to such radical changes. I never eat fruit, except for some frozen raspberries on my oatmeal. I can honestly say I've never had kale before, and I don't even know the last time I adveraged 2-3 cups of spinach a day. A sample smoothie for us is:

1/2 cup almond milk

2 full carrots

1 banana

1 granny smith apple

2 cups spinach

ice

They're pretty much different all the time. Kyle adds protein powder to his.
We've also used kale, oranges, lemons, strawberries, mango, cucumber, and celery (celery gives it a weird texture though).

Today is one week since we started blending, and my weight has come down to where I started at. We'll see how it goes from here. Regardless, I feel way better, it's easier to figure out my lunches, and in the long run it'll be more cost effective. Weight loss would definitely be a bonus.

Also, side note...my friend is coming in town this weekend and I have every intention of seeing how well this puppy can spit out watermelon margeritas and mango daquiris. 

I might have just figured out why this blender might not aid in weight loss for me. 

I'm linking up with Katie for her new Healthy Habit's series. Head on over there to see what people are doing to get healthy and happy!