OK, folks. I know I’m going to seem a little strange for this post — especially if you’re new to healthy eating — but I’m going to admit this anyway. I’ve just become a juicing addict.

I have a hard time sometimes getting in as many greens as I should. I add baby spinach to fruit smoothies to increase their nutrient content, eat big salads quite often and I add spinach and kale to soups and stews all the time, but my body’s really sensitive and needs more greens than I can apparently give it. So I recently got back into juicing.

As in kale. As in almost neon, soylent green kale juice mixed with a little fresh apple juice. I’ll post a picture soon if I can manage it (either my husband or my son has stashed the cable for my camera somewhere “safe”), but it’s really, really, really green stuff.

I mention this because juicing kale and other healthy greens can be a great way of boosting the nutrition in your diet without adding calories.

I decided to juice again because while my health is tremendously improved from its former state, and frankly I run circles around most other people in terms of my immunity to common viruses, for some reason this year, I’ve been sneezy and itchy more than I’d like to be (a mere 3% – or perhaps 2.8% ;) of what I used to deal with, so I’m not complaining, nor is this a sign that my way of eating doesn’t work, thankyouverymuch!). :) So I’m just doing my part to boost my nutrition even further with my juice, which smells like grass juice and tastes … not unpleasant, and a little bit like, well, grass juice!

What I’ve done is just a half bunch of organic kale and half an apple, which amounts to about 6 ounces of juice altogether, about half of which is from the kale. (The whole apple would make it more palatable, I’m sure, but too much spikes my blood sugar.)

In a few weeks once I’ve been doing this long enough to see what happens, I’ll let you know how this new practice has helped me. The last time I did this consistently for a while, my concentration improved, I felt better all over (and going from feeling great to feeling even greater rocks!), and my skin was the clearest it’s ever been. I can’t believe now that I let myself get out of the practice of doing this, come to think of it!

In the meantime, in case I’ve inspired you to want to juice, I can tell you that the juicer I have does a great job. It’s the Breville Juice Fountain Plus Juicer.

It’s considered the best for its price range (I spent a long time researching this prior to buying mine), though there’s a higher-end model that has a few additional features. Thus far, I haven’t missed anything I don’t have, though. :)

However, the very best juicer for juicing greens is supposed to be the Green Star models; however, that’s a completely different ballpark in terms of pricing (see their site here), which is why the Breville model is recommended.

Hope everyone has lean green dreams tonight of lovely kale juice! :) (Apparently the juice is going to my head. I’m getting punchy from kale!)