5 Reasons Whole Food Shakes Are the Future of Healthy Living
As a nutrition coach, one of my main goals for you is creating or using pre-existing tools that make proper nutrition easy. For the most part, gone are the days of wondering if this vegetable or that vegetable is good for you -- the PSA has always been: If it is a vegetable, just eat it. Unfortunately, that isn’t motivating enough to eat mushrooms with your steak, tomatoes with your salads, or spinach in your omelet. Why? Well, one, because we are lazy. And two, because we are busy. Busy people don’t think they have time to buy, prepare, and consume all these different foods. And to an extent, this is true. But we also have this idea that we have to do everything at once. This overwhelming feeling of not completing the most difficult task first gets the best of us. So, in the long run we stop trying. Then, we get out of routine, get lazy, and stop completely. The secret is to find a middle ground, a solution that takes solid nutrition and easy of implementation. Lucky for you, I’m about to save you more time than it takes to properly do a backward Bear Crawl during one of my Sculpt and Tone workouts.
Blend Your Way to Lean
The invention of the blender is probably the best tool since the automobile. Blenders are great because you can make whole food really, really easy to prepare and consume, yet not lose any of the key reasons why you are eating vegetables in the first place. Here is an overview of why whole food shakes solve your proper nutrition problems:
- Portability
- Convenient Calories
- Predigested
- Nutrient Dense
- Protein Rich
Portability
Breakfast is the most rushed meal of the day. In fact, most of us don’t even eat breakfast, which is not bad if we are doing a purposeful fast.This creates an environment that forces us into making bad nutritional choices throughout the day, as well as a higher chance of over consuming junk food calories at night. Whole food shakes solves that problem. The beauty of shakes are indeed in the portability they provide. You can even set up all the ingredients ahead of time, add water or milk in the morning, blend, and be on your way. Or better yet, make the night before and store in the fridge over night. To make it even more convenient, blender companies like Nutribullet are making the blender and the cup one. Healthy, portable food has never been easier.
Nutritious Calories Have Never Been More Convenient
This is likely a no-brainer for most of us. Convenience is why we eat away from home. Cooking is the part most of us don’t enjoy, or if we do enjoy it, the part we don’t have the time for. As someone who loves to cook, I’ll be the first to say that preparation of food does take time to do, something we don’t think we have. I’m going to guess you feel the same way, which is why whole food shakes save us all. Sure, you could just grab a protein bar or some other packaged food claiming to be healthy. But we all know how that goes, they aren’t as good for our health as they say they are, and have little to no true deep nutritional value.
Predigested
This benefit flies under the radar unless you are someone who works in the business of getting people healthier. That being said, on the whole, most of us don’t digest our food well. Why? Because most of us eat too fast, don’t chew our food enough, and are dehydrated among many other reasons. If our food isn’t broken down properly, we don’t absorb the calories, nutrients, vitamins, or minerals we need to function optimally. If we aren’t properly hydrated, it is harder on our digestive system to absorb and transport vitamins, minerals, and key nutrients throughout our body. If that isn’t enough, most of us have compromised stomach acid (most notably due to stress), making the breakdown of food even less efficient. This is why liquid nutrition can be so beneficial, and often why people have more energy consuming a diet higher in whole food liquid nutrition than solid whole food nutrition.
Nutrient Dense
Provided you are making your own whole food shakes and not buying some company’s version of the same thing, you are going to get more nutrients in your diet with whole food shakes. Why? Going back to predigested calories, the availability of your calories are much higher in a whole food liquid shake than even a solid whole food meal. This isn’t to say that liquid meals are better for you than whole food meals. But in times where you are short on time and want a well-rounded nutrient dense meal, whole food shakes are a game changer.
Protein Rich
Whether you are a vegan, vegetarian, or animal eater, you can find a protein powder that will work for you. Everyone will need a different amount per shake depending on bodyweight, metabolism type, and goals, but it is safe to say that every whole food shake should have protein. If you are unsure how much protein you should have in a shake, check the meal sheet you have been given in one of our 6 Week Programs. If you don’t have one, come by our gym to find out more about how much protein you should have in your whole food shakes.
What’s The Difference Between Whole Food Shakes and Juicing?
Juicing has been around for awhile. And while the concept of juicing makes all the sense in the world from a convenience standpoint, there still remains one major flaw: a loss of fiber.
While science still doesn’t know exactly what makes a carrot so great, it is safe to say that the fiber in the carrot is just as important as the carotein that claims to help with eyesight. An isolation of any one nutrient or component of food is never the solution. Rather, the solution lies in the completeness of food as a whole. This is why it turns out juicing isn’t so great, especially when it comes to fruits. The loss of fiber from juicing is like a boat that has a punctured hull: it is going to take water in fast. And when it comes to absorption, faster is not always better. The one exception would be after exercise when your body needs calories fast to recover more efficiently. This is why our whole food shakes are more well-rounded than store bought shakes. The completeness of whole foods and the convenience and portability of shakes is a perfect combination for a solid nutritious meal.
Shane Hubbard CPT, PN1
