Up until earlier this year, I considered myself a ‘healthy’ person. I didn’t get sick very often, I ate my fair share of fruit and veg, I exercised regularly and I didn’t smoke or drink coffee.

But I seemed to always be tired and my tummy always felt bloated and blah AND I was about 10kg overweight. So what was I doing wrong?

I had this 80/20 rule where 80% of the time I would be ‘healthy’ and the other 20%, I could eat/drink what I liked (chocolate, cola, alcohol, pizza, cheese… lots of cheese, more chocolate etc). However when I look back, I think my 80/20 rule was more like a 50/50 rule. Hence why I felt the way I did.

So I started to look for ways to kick my ‘healthy’ lifestyle up a notch or two and I found that cutting out the chocolate, cola, alcohol, pizza and cheese helped a lot. But the KEY thing for me has been the increase in fresh, raw, whole foods into my diet. By that I mean fruit, salads, vegetables. Un-cooked and un-processed.

BUT… I found it tedious to prepare and to eat so I hunted even further and discovered JUICING! Of course I always knew about fruit juices. Mostly the packaged variety but occasionally I would buy a freshly juiced pineapple or orange juice when I was out.

So to take it one step further, I looked into the health benefits of each individual fruit and vegetable. Imagine my excitement when I figured out I could do all of the following:

Berry Healthy Handful of blueberries Handful of cranberries 1 cup of raspberries 1 cup of strawberries 100ml coconut water

Pineapple Surprise 1 cup of pineapple chunks 10 mint leaves 5…