I am sooo very excited about a new health promotion that I’m participating in for the next 30 days! The green smoothie challenge (click picture above for the link) is a call to add to and also eliminate from your diet. The basic outline is from today until September 17th to ::

• drink at least 16 oz. of a green smoothie everyday (a mix of fruits and a green leafy veggie such as spinach, romaine, swiss chard, etc)
• add a green salad to lunch or dinner daily
• stop drinking all soda (not a problem, I don’t drink it anyway)
• stop eating white sugar (having gestational diabetes the last 10 wks of pregnancy gives me a head start on this habit)
• do some sort of activity daily (exercise, walk around the block, etc. I’ll take this very slowly since it’s only been two weeks postpartum, rest is more important right now)

Paying closer attention to what I ate over the end of the pregnancy really had me thinking about new habits I’ve adopted and would like to keep as part of an ongoing need to care for myself. I’ve visited Happy Foody before, but hadn’t been to the site in quite some time and wanted to look up smoothie ideas & recipes. Imagine my surprise last week when I saw that the ‘green challenge’ started today! How perfect.

So for only the second time in two weeks, I got in the car, left the house…and loaded up on some fresh fruits and salad fixings for the week. My excitement is contagious to at least two other family members who joined me today for my first smoothie of fresh pineapple, blueberries, kiwi, an orange, and romaine lettuce :: it was delicious and really just tasted like pineapple. These kids love smoothies!

Taking care of myself, or more specifically my overall health, is part of a bigger picture of some thoughts that have been tumbling through my mind this summer :: hope to write more about that soon.

Think of joining the challenge!