Smoothies were Fiona Dean’s first taste of clean eating when she initially entered the field. She remembers “it felt like the least terrifying place to start.”
“You just toss stuff into a blender and walk away.” But gradually she came to see that a smoothie might be more than just a quick breakfast—it could be a basic, nutrient-dense instrument to completely change her attitude to eating.
Fiona’s smoothies at first were a mess of fruit, milk, and a sloshful of oats. Though she soon started to investigate how each component improved her general health, they were pleasant and fulfilling. She made a simple smoothie functional by varying the proportion between fruit, veggies, good fats, and proteins.
More significantly, smoothies brought her constancy. “You want nothing complicated for breakfast when life gets busy,” she explains. “Smoothies keep things basic. I feel good after drinking them; I know what is entering my body.
For novices, Fiona advises emphasizing your feelings rather than trends. Eating clean is about paying attention, not about limits. She started seeing changes a few weeks of experimentation. Her skin cleaned, her energy increased, and her taste for processed food vanished.
But Fiona found great resonance in the way the smoothie-making process anchored her. “That has a meditative quality,” she says. “Washing the spinach, peeling the banana, listening to the blender —it starts my day on the right note.”
Fiona exhorts everyone just starting out to be curious rather than perfectionistic. If you lack sophisticated powders or superfoods, she advises not to panic. A decent smoothie is roughly balanced, not branded.
