six slimming smoothies

Here for the six slimming smoothies? Of course you are. But first…

It’s too hot. It’s too hot for a long post so damn it, I’m going to post the recipe for the six smoothies and go lie down in our air-conditioned bedroom, wailing and calling for Paul to turn me away from the sun.

I hate the hot weather. I really do. I can’t be done with it. I’m sweating like Josef Fritzl on Through the Keyhole / a nun picking cucumbers / a cat burying a shit on a concrete floor. Yes, that’s tasteful enough to put in. You should have heard the three I didn’t put in. I’ve always been envious of those folk who can seemingly bask in sunlight and thoroughly enjoy it. You have no idea how much I want to take my shirt off and eat ice-cream in the centre of town, but I genuinely think it would cause a riot. Whilst I’m not a huge fan of the type of bloke who goes topless the very second the ice warning dings off in his car, it must be a nice feeling. Perhaps I should get a copperplate-writing tattoo on my neck and turn my shoulders red. It ruins every aspect of anything enjoyable – good hearty stews get pushed to one side and replaced with salad, more salad, salad with a bit of salad on the side and salad-salad. I can’t face toiling in the kitchen for hours – even by proxy, given Paul is the one who does the cooking – so meals tend to get repetitive. Sex becomes a chore with everything sticking to each other like pulling warm bacon rashers apart. The roads become full of stupidly big cars trundling along at 25 miles an hour with a big plastic shitheap being towed behind them. I know it’s terribly fashionable to hate on caravans but look, they’re bloody ugly things and almost (unless YOU’RE a driver, you’re fine) always pulled by the type of people you know read the Daily Express, furiously circling the word immigrants in thick red pen with spittle on their lips. The men who are more nose-hair than bellend.

Pub gardens become full of braying donkeys taaaalking like thaaas and coughing at people for having the temerity to light up a fag. Beaches become awash with badly parked Dacia Dusters, dog poo and poorly buried Poundland BBQs with a half-life longer than Tellerium-128 just waiting to slice your foot open. You can’t open the windows because all of the neighbours are cutting their grass to the exact millimetre meaning the air is so thick with pollen I’ve only got to sniff daintily at it to make everything inside my face swell-up and turn me into John Merrick’s fun-house reflection. Birds singing from 3am in the morning until 2.58am the next day means only one thing – endless half-chewed birds being dragged through the cat-flap and deposited somewhere where I’m absolutely guaranteed to stand during the night when I get up for a piss. You’ve never known revulsion until you’ve felt half a sparrow crunch under your toes in a twilit bathroom.

But you know what really fills me with unbridled fury? When people say ‘OH BUT YOU’LL MISS THE HEAT WHEN WINTER COMES’. No! No I absolutely fucking won’t. I have never turned around in December and said ‘well yes Marie, this Christmas vista is quite charming but it could only be improved with the top of my head being sweaty, extensive chub-rub on my legs and sinuses like cocktail sticks’. I bloody love the winter! If I’m cold, I can put a jacket on. Well no, I’m Geordie, so I might deign to put a thin t-shirt on if the ends of my fingers turn black. There’s nothing you can do when you’re too hot except gripe, moan and whinge about it, even when you say you’re not going to do a long post. But god it felt good getting all that off my chest.

Let’s get to the six slimming smoothies, shall we?

BEFORE WE BEGIN – and partly because I’m feeling all bolshie from my moan about the heat – it’s up to YOU whether you decide to syn these smoothies. I don’t. Slimming World’s argument is that you should syn fruit if it is blended but there are no syns if you eat it raw. Ostensibly this is due to ‘changing the filling factor of the food’ or creating a situation where you might over-eat calories. Fine. That rule applies if you want to make orange juice – you couldn’t sit and eat eight oranges but you could easily neck the juice of eight oranges in one go. I keep reading from people in SW groups who say that blending releases the natural sugars, as though the strawberry is a spirit level bubble filled with syrup. Pfft. Perhaps that’s true. I don’t know. All I know is this: none of these smoothies use any more fruit than you could cheerfully and comfortably eat in a fruit salad. If it makes you feel better, don’t blend the fruit in a Nutribullet or similar, push it all in your mouth with your sausage-fingers and frantically chew it up before spitting it into a glass. Technically, according to SW, that makes it syn-free. PFFFFT. I’ve covered my thoughts on this tweaking nonsense before, too.

Anyway, because I’m a kind, loving blogger, I’ll give you the syns option IF you think you need them. These smoothies are lovely for a quick breakfast and full of health and wonder. Plus, they make a pretty range of colours! Let’s get started.

six slimming smoothies

All of these smoothies have the same basic ingredients – half a small banana (2 syns), a few tablespoons of fat-free yoghurt and some ice. They make a delicious, thick smoothie. If you want it a little runnier, add almond milk (100ml is 1 syn, usually) or milk from your allowance. Adjust to taste. I’ve been very generous with the amount of fruit too below, so chances are the smoothies will come out lower syns anyway. Plus, you know, it’s fruit. There’s absolutely no bollocksy way that a HiFi bar is a better option at 6 syns. Bah! Remember: it is YOUR choice to make, not mine! Why not have the odd smoothie and see if it troubles your weight loss?

We blend all of our smoothies in a Nutribullet – they have a range on Amazon you can find right here!

So, left to right, the six slimming smoothies are:

strawberry, cherry and raspberry – a handful of strawberries – (50g is 0.75 syn), a handful of raspberries (50g is 0.5 syn) and a handful of cherries (50g is 1.5 syns) = syn total including the banana is about 4.5 syns

peach, carrot and apricot – one apricot (50g is 0.75 syns), one peach (50g is also 0.75 syns) and one carrot (free) = syn value overall including the banana is 3.5 syns

mango and pineapple – 50g of mango is 1.5 syns, 50g of pineapple is 1 syn = syn value overall including the banana is 4.5 syns

spinach, mint and choc chips – 25g of dark chocolate chips (we used Dr Oetker which are 6 syns, so 1.5 syns a serving), 80g of uncooked spinach, 40g of mint leaves = syn total overall including banana  is 3.5 syns

blueberry – pretty obvious, chuck in a whack of blueberries (75g blended is 1 syn) = syn value including the banana is 3 syns

beetroot and blackberry – 0.5 syn for 50g of blackberries and I threw a tiny wee pre-cooked beetroot in there. Tell you what mind, don’t be alarmed when you go to the netty later and it looks as though you’re bleeding. You’re not. Promise. Syn value including the bloody banana is 2.5 syns.

Enjoy! I reckon these are a much easier way of getting fruit in at breakfast.

If you want more breakfast ideas, click on the icon below.

breakfastsmall

Now, if you will excuse me, I’m off to try and peel myself away from this leather chair without it sounding like a rhino queefing.

J