Everyone’s talking about self-love at the moment and it’s something that I’m trying to work hard at so when John Lewis got in touch to see if I wanted to spend an evening with them talking about wellness I jumped at the chance.

For me, wellness is holistic, it’s not just about what you eat and it’s not just about what you do. Wellness goes into every aspect of your life. One of the most important though (for me at least) is what you put into your body. I know that eating a certain way helps stop me bloating, lets me sleep well and aids my recovery from working out and the stresses of everyday life. That way includes a lot of unprocessed food, plenty of protein and all of the fresh fruit & vegetables.

Smoothies are therefore a brilliant way of including all of the things above in my diet. During the summer I have them for breakfast a few times a week and if I’m short on time after a workout or I need to eat on the go then I’ll often have one during the day. They’re so versatile and as we learnt from Hayley, the nutritionist at the event, the body absorbs up to four times more nutrients and digests them up to twenty times faster when you drink your fruit & veggies.

Helen and I teamed up to make what turned out to be a huge amount of smoothie and it was delicious.

In our smoothie we had:

Banana

Pineapple

Cos lettuce

Spinach

Vanilla whey protein

Coconut water

Frozen berries

While I wouldn’t normally have quite so much fruit in my smoothies it was very tasty! My normal ratio would be 1 part fruit to 3 parts vegetable (plus other yummy bits like peanut butter and flaxseed) and my biggest tip for getting some extra veg into a smoothie would be to add cucumber. Although it’s not as nutrient-dense as other green veg it’s packed full of water and brings a freshness to the taste that the more leafy-greens don’t.

What’s your favourite smoothie recipe?