Jeff Csatari - The 7-Day Smoothie Diet: Lose up to a pound a day—and sip your way to a flat belly!

This book proposes a program of diet and exercise recommendations for the reader to follow. However, you should consult a qualified medical professional (and, if you are pregnant, your ob-gyn) before starting this or any other diet or fitness program. Please seek your doctors advice before making any decisions that affect your health or extreme changes in your diet, particularly if you suffer from any medical condition or have any symptom that may require treatment. As with any diet or exercise program, if at any time you experience discomfort, stop immediately and consult your physician.

Mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities in this book does not imply endorsement by the author or publisher, nor does mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities imply that they endorse this book, its author, or the publisher.

Copyright 2018 by Galvanized Brands, LLC

All rights reserved.

Distributed by Simon & Schuster.

ISBN 978-1-940358-20-8

Ebook ISBN 978-1-940-358-21-5

Design by Andy Turnbull.

Check out the 7-Day Smoothie Diet at a glance and discover the healthy-body benefits of superfood smoothies. By Jeff Csatari

The four rules that will spearhead your weight loss.

A filling breakfast smoothie and tasty afternoon shake snack will keep your metabolism revving and hunger away.

How to choose the best protein and blender for your 7-Day Smoothie Diet.

How to make the delicious belly-filling breakfast smoothies and satisfying afternoon smoothies for your seven-day program.

What to eat for lunch and dinner to automatically reduce empty calories and lose weight while still eating tasty, satisfying foods.

Brilliant tricks and techniques for sidestepping binge eating caused by emotional stress, boredom, and intense hedonic cravings.

Boost metabolism and burn more fat with mini bursts of physical activity throughout your day.

An outline of your daily action plan for the next seven days, complete with suggested smoothies and meals.

How to prepare the gourmet-quality lunches and dinners youll be eating during your 7-Day Smoothie Diet.

Dozens of innovative shakes to sip into after you finish your 7-Day Smoothie Diet.

Simple answers to help you achieve rapid results.

A treasure trove of helpful suggestions for 7-Day Smoothie Diet success.

The best foods to eat to ensure you live a long, healthy, and active life.

L ET ME LET YOU IN on a little secret that you may find strange coming from the editor of a smoothies book:

I hate smoothies. Well, at least I did at one time.

To be honest, its not so much the smoothie drinking I dislike as it is the smoothie cleanup: the scrubbing of the blender and wiping up of the kitchen counter afterward.

Making smoothies can leave a kitchen looking like three preteen girls spent the afternoon engaged in that curious recent phenomenon known as making slime. I didnt care to go through all that hassle for a liquid meal that resembled those squishy concoctions my daughter Sophia stores in every last plastic food container we own. Theres not a thimbleful of white glue left in our house, but we have many, many containers of pink unicorn slime, if youre interested.

Smoothies. Whats the big deal? I prefer chewing my food to sipping it. I love to sink my teeth into a juicy steak or dive into a pizza with the works. I love the crunch of a fresh garden salad drizzled with extra virgin olive oil. Interesting flavors and textures send my taste buds dancing. You too?

Enjoying food is part of enjoying life. And who wants it liquefied? But I was missing the whole point of smoothies: A well-made smoothie is fast, filling, high nutrition in a cup. Or bowl. Drinking a smoothie can upgrade your diet and help you lose weight fast.

One day I was late for a magazine photo shoot. I had to rush out the door without breakfast. By the time I got to the studio, I was so ravenous I could have eaten, well, pink unicorn slime.

I saw one of the photo assistants chowing down on a bowl of something that looked delicious.

Whats that? I asked.

Smoothie bowl. Want one?

He poured the creamy purple contents from a blender into an empty bowl and spooned banana slices, fresh blueberries, toasted coconut, chia seeds, and chopped walnuts on top. Theres granola in that box if you want it, he said.

Im good. This looks fantastic.

And it tasted even better. It was sweet, delicious, and thick. So thick I could stand my spoon upright in it. It felt like a bowl of health. And it was filling. We worked right through lunchtime and I didnt feel a hunger pang until three p.m.

That smoothie bowl, something he called the Berry Banana Walnut Bowl, was a real meal. I later learned that it also had spinach in it. Bonus! I started changing my poor opinion of smoothies.

Lately, Ive been trying to eat more protein and greens and far fewer carbohydrates, especially the fast-burning, blood-sugar-boosting kind you get in cereal, bagels, pizza, spaghetti, and breadyou know, the food thats easiest to find and consume, the food that tends to be in any house where you find kids.

Protein is important for folks like me. As we age, protein becomes even more critical to support muscle growth. With each passing year in midlife, our skeletons lose muscle mass and our metabolisms slow down. If we dont keep our bodies strong with physical weight-bearing activity, if we dont eat enough protein but do continue to consume the same number of calories as we did when we were young, that lost muscle is replaced by fat. This is typically how midlife belly bulge creeps in. But even if youre naturally thin, your muscle can be replaced by fat and you become whats known as skinny fat, which is almost as unhealthy as being fat fat.

Whenever I feel as if Im becoming less mindful of what Im putting in my body, I have a system for nudging myself back on the road to healthier eating. I keep a food log for a few days. I write down everything I eat or drink in a notebook. Yeah, I know there are apps to help you do this, but the physical act of writing 6 Oreo cookies, 320 CALORIES! What were you thinkin, you dummy! in ink is more effective for me. Been doing this for years. The notebook gives me a pretty telling picture of my regular menu. Its often the wakeup call that helps me realize that I need to stop mindlessly gobbling and start mindfully planning my meals and snacks.

My latest food diary clearly showed that I had drifted off track. I wasnt eating enough vegetables, especially leafy greens, and my diet was too rich in starchy carbs, too weak in lean proteins. Whats more, I saw clearly in black and white that, for speed and convenience, most of my breakfasts were coming from a cereal box. Now, I know better. I wrote a book called The 14-Day No Sugar Diet . But Im human, and humans need reminders. My food log showed that I was mixing my high-fiber muesli with Honey Bunches of Oats. Sugar city. Doesnt stick to the ribs. Actually my breakfasts made me more hungry. I found myself buying three-dollar energy bars to quell hunger pangs just before lunchtime. Hey, have you noticed how much sugar they put in most energy bars these days? Its a ton of energy.

While editing this book, I invested in a Vitamix blender and committed to drinking a breakfast smoothie every morning before work for one week, as recommended in the books plan. It was a cool experiment with immediate benefits. For one, the smoothies replaced those sugary cereals I was eating. No, they werent as sweet as Honey Bunches of Oats, but they were rich and filling. I wasnt hungry at 10:30 in the morning. The recipes were fun to make, and they inspired me to start concocting my own by trial and error: kale, avocado, and Cocoa Puffs? Mistake. Oats, banana, almond milk? Yum!