There is another brand too that has a similar concept, Odwalla, but I’ve foudn the Naked ones to have more flavors that I personally like – just a personal preference, nothing against Odwalla.

If you are a person who watched their calories, or even more so their carb intake, you may look at the back of one of these smoothies and think it’s really high in both. However, I’ve found that just a few swigs is a great tide over to dinner and lunch when you’re just starting to get hungry and need a quick natural blood sugar pick up.

I have never drank a whole one at one sitting, I’ve found them more beneficial when you keep them around for a little “snack” in between meals.  My two favorite blends are the Green Machine, which contains everything from apples, to broccoli, to spirulina for an even great energy boost.  And it tastes nothing like vegetables, and yet it’s got them in it.  That one is probably my all time favorite, plus there are tons of good nutritious ingredients in it.

The runner up for me is the mango flavor with beneficial probiotics added, for digestion and waste elimination efficiency. It helps you to be regular, since mango is filled with fiber, and also helps replenish your healthy intestinal flora that keeps things moving in that regard, if you know what I mean.

When I’m buying the smoothies, I try to really look at what’s in them, including their “boosts” and see if those vitamins and nutrients are something that I might be lacking in or not.  This way, I know I’m getting the right benefits from drinking them, in addition to the benefits I’m getting from drinking something that helps tide my appetite over for big meals.

1.) Expose yourself to sunlight as often as you can. During the day, at your job, try to get outside a few times. I firmly believe that sunshine is a natural appetite suppressant, and I totally notice a difference in my appetite when I either lounge out in the sun or if I just go out and get a bit of the bright orange orb’s light in my eyes. There’s something about a bit of warmth and sunshine that makes you crave healthier foods like fruits (especially fruits!) and veggies.

2.)  Drink a TON of water.  Add some lemon juice, fresh squeezed if you can. Lemon juice helps to purify your body, and it also even helps to keep your appetite down. If you want to kill it even more, take a teaspoon of pure organic cinnamon as well, and this evens out your blood sugar so you have less hunger spikes throughout your day.

3.) Listen to a great hypnosis CD for weight loss. These can really kick your weight loss ambitions into high drive, even without you knowing what’s happening. It’s all on a subliminal level, so you actually eat less without even understanding why necessarily. Cool concept!

4.)  Foresake some of the salt.  Try to pass on salting your food. Extra sodium just makes you retain more water, which can add up to five pounds or more of water weight.

Oh, and pile on the beer or other alcoholic beverages that are bound to be consumed and you have a recipe for unavoidable weight gain every start of the NFL season.  At least that’s how it works for me and my fiance. 

We almost always put on weight during the football season, however I’m determined to not do it this time.  It seems like that one little day of pigging out nonstop leads to a barrage of eating badly and wanting MORE MORE MORE.  More fat, more sugar and more heavy, stick to your thighs good.  Sure, it tastes great while you’re eating it, but it leads to a bigger overall appetite, a slower pace mentally and physically, and countless Mondays hung over from drinking on Sundays.  Not a good combo, my friend!

So, my strategy this time is to actually do what I always do, which is work at my “other job” for half the time on Sundays that people are here, which will inevitably keep little paws out of the cookie jar, so to speak. And by cookie jar, I mean keep it out of the endless bowls of chips, pretzels, fattening sour cream based dips, cheesy surprises, sauerkraut balls, mini pigs in a blanket, and all the other good, greasy fare that tends to go with those fun football sundays.  There’s a huge part of me that loves the whole ritual, but my body definitely does not appreciate it in the end. 

I looked at pictures of myself after football season last year, and my face looked puffy and unhealthy, and that made me really think about what I was putting into my body.  Not just on Sundays either, it’s because it’s a domino effect, and it always ends up trailing out into the whole week, or at least into Monday and Tuesday. 

That adds up to a lot of calories and a lot of careless meal choices that can’t be reversed except with a lot of discipline and dieting for the next several months.  If you’re a victim of football sunday overeating, take my advice, sit out at least one part of the day, and join the rest of the buffet in the evening, so at least you won’t be eating all day long and be able to stop the unstoppable inertia of overeating.

For example, my significant other’s company he works for  gives him so many dollars for every preventive program he goes to.  So, if he participates in a wellness program or a checkup of some sort, he gets money in a special account. Great idea and a great incentive for staying healthy!  One of the things we Americans get really wrong is the importance of making breakfast the biggest meal of the day.  Instead, we tend to load up our plates with fat and calories more so at the end of the day, and because of that, we experience weight gain and weight that is hard to take off due ot the fact that we aren’t really burning any of it off after we eat it.

Think about it, and it makes sense.  Why would you “fuel up” your body at night when all you’re going to do is go to bed in the next few hours, where that food does not get burned off and instead is much more likely to be stored as excess fat somewhere on your body?  I’ve tried to convert to this way of thinking, and I’ll admit, at first it seemed weird to me because I was used to eating more at night.  I think eating more at night was a big part of my relaxation routine though, and it was a way of rewarding myself after a long day’s work.

Now, I’m trying more to think of breakfast as being the time to indulge in a little more calorie intake.  Not only does it help me think more clearly at work and let me have a more productive morning, but it also provides me fuel right up to lunch, whereas before I would be starving by about ten o’clock in the morning for a snack because my breakfast was too small.  Oh, and a nice byproduct is weight loss and ease of weight maintenance too!

You’ve probably heard before out of the thousands of little diet tips and how to be healthier and have a better relationship with your food, that eating with distractions of any kind, possibly even reading, is actually not good because it makes you lose your focus on how your food tastes, savoring your food and enjoying it for what it is, and also losing track of how much food you are actually stuffing down your gullet as you blindly watch that last episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

When I really think about how I eat when I watch television, it is sort of true that I don’t really enjoy my food as much as if I’m in a restaurant where there are no distractions, only good conversation, and how much more I focus on and enjoy my food, but also how much faster I’m tuned into the fact that I’m full and done eating, whereas when I’m watching TV, tend to want to eat more and more and more. You get the point. It gets to the point where you correlate watching TV with eating, and therefore you subconsciously want to eat the whole time you’re enjoying a movie or a TV show.

Sitting at the dinner table with your family, husband or partner, or just by yourself, actually may seem boring, and to some people it even sounds a bit scary. They’ve had the TV or some other distraction for years when they sit down to eat, and now that is being taken away and that does create some anxiety I suppose. However, when you realize how much less you might eat and how much quicker your appetite is satisfied, and how much more you become in touch with being full and actually savoring the textures, scents and flavors of your food, you just might always want to eat that way!