When I first started to seriously upgrade my diet, one of the first steps I took was creating a daily juice habit. Juicing is a wonderfully easy way to stay well hydrated, and to incorporate more vitamins and minerals into your diet. The best part is that green juice is an infusion of delicious goodness straight to your bloodstream!

One of the first benefits I noticed when consuming daily vegetable juices was the boundless levels of energy I experienced. I also noticed the downward tick on the scale (yay!) and less overall pain and stiffness in my body. On top of all those benefits, I even got a bonus in the form of healthier, glowing skin. Major score!

The process of juicing extracts and expels the fiber from the vegetables and/or fruits. Because of this, it is important to keep an eye on sugar content when creating your own recipes.  The guideline I normally stick with is a 3:1 ratio, i.e., a minimum of three non-starchy vegetables for every one piece of sweet fruit.

The beautiful thing about juicing is that you are only limited by your own imagination. Test out different ingredients and ratios until you find the perfect combination that knocks your socks off!

I’ve named my favorite green juice recipe “Green Lemonade”, mostly because I figured my kids would be more willing to try it. Guess, what? It worked! They love it as much as I do. It’s very easy to make, and contains only a handful of ingredients which are easy to find in any supermarket.

Because freshly made juices tend to be high in carbohydrates, I prefer to drink juices earlier in the day with my breakfast. Be sure to double up on servings if you’re planning to use this juice as a meal replacement!

The recipe is below.  Enjoy!

Green Lemonade Recipe

SERVINGS: 2

INGREDIENTS: (Use organic produce whenever possible)

• 1 hothouse cucumber or 2 cucumbers
• 1 head of celery (trim off base and edges)
• 4 lacinto kale leaves
• 1 Granny smith apple
• 1 lemon, peeled

DIRECTIONS:

1. Rinse produce thoroughly.
2. Cut apple into slices small enough to run through your juicer’s feeder tube. There is no need to remove the apple seeds.
3. Run all the ingredients through your juicer.
4. Strain juice, if preferred.

NOTE: Nutritional values were manually calculated using myfitnesspal.com

Have you tried this recipe? Let me know what you think! Leave your comments below.