Coconut Matcha Green Smoothie

June 3, 2016 by Georgie @ The Long Run

This healthy Coconut Matcha Green Smoothie tastes like green tea ice cream you can drink for breakfast. With greens, protein and a natural lift of caffeine from the matcha it’s the perfect breakfast smoothie.

In her fascinating book “Better Than Before”, which I’ve totally gushed about before on the blog, the author Gretchen Rubin talks about how knowing yourself can help you form better habits. She goes through, what she calls, the strategy of distinctions. It’s basically is like a game of this or that. For example, are you a early bird or a night owl? Sprinter or marathoner? Abstainer or moderator?

One of these questions that had me thinking a lot was do you prefer variety or familiarity?

I want to say that I love variety and changing things up. And sometimes I really do, evidenced by the fact that I’ve moved six times in the last four years. I love to travel and experience new places, faces, flavors and all that jazz.

Buuuut I also have a serious streak of loving the same damn thing, as evidenced by the fact I pretty much drink the same smoothie and eat the same salad everyday without getting sick of it. It’s easy, it’s healthy, there’s veggies and protein and flavor and all the good stuff without being boring. And miraculously I don’t get sick of any of it.

But again, being my own devil’s advocate there’s so much to be said for shaking things up even if it is to figure out that you really do love what you love.

Shaking it up, and doing the whole “absence makes the heart grow fonder” thing was my main motivation for giving up coffee for two weeks.

I KNOW, RIGHT?!

This is coming from a girl who works in a flipping coffee shop and pretty much bathes in the stuff. Giving it up was hard. Both mentally and physically. I felt like I was in a thick fog of sluggishness and my brain wasn’t firing like it normally does. The first couple days I had a headache and wasn’t my most chipper of selves.

After the withdrawals wore off I was pretty fine. I certainly missed the ritual of making my french press in the morning and as I emptied the dishwasher I would get pangs of longing as I put away my favorite mugs.

However, this was great experiment because now coffee feels special again rather than just a thing I need to chug every day. I’m good with one cup instead of four.

This experiment also brought another wonderful thing into heavier rotation: matcha. (to learn a little more about matcha you can check out this post)

Matcha still has caffeine but much less than coffee and it’s a more even lift than a jolt. I love it in lattes but recently I started adding it to smoothies and omgosh guys, I don’t know what took me so long.

This coconut matcha green smoothie legit tastes like a green tea ice cream milkshake but it’s totally dairy free. It’s the perfect smoothie for breakfast because it gives you that lift without a cup of coffee, so you can save your joe for 2pm when your body naturally dips in energy.

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