When I was first diagnosed, I had a hard time eating. My appetite was low due to all of the medicines, stress and overall life challenges. I worried about my diet as I didn’t want anything to inflame my liver further. My doctor said that diet wouldn’t change the disease, but it definitely could help my overall health. Well, I had constant scary thoughts that the food that I used to eat could cause inflammation possibly worsening my weekly blood tests. For autoimmune diseases, the AIP diet, anti-inflammatory diet, is the one that I saw recommended the most. My doctor agreed that it is a super healthy diet but extremely hard to follow day to day. So 7 months later, I have adopted some parts of it with some other healthy eating tips along the way. I thought I would share some recipes along my journey as I continue to cook through my life with a wild immune system. I will note if the recipes are for the family and not on my diet as one of sons loves to cook. His recipes are fun, super yummy and must be shared.
Bitsy’s Berry Spinach Smoothie
First – collect your fruit and spinach. I tend to use fresh spinach but you can use the frozen one as well I love some banana, apple (with skin), berries, and frozen mango or pineapple. I have even added in frozen avocado as well.
** One note – fruits have a lot of sugars – natural sugars yes but still sugars. With AIH, many of us live on steroids with our autoimmune meds. Your sugar intake might be something that you have to monitor so be aware if you are making this smoothie. I found that it helped me and my sugar did not spike or crash.
1/2 banana 
1 cup of spinach 
1/2 cut apple 
1 1/2 cups of mixed berries 
Handful of blackberries 
1/2 cup of mango or pineapple
Then, I add some fresh squeezed orange juice to the blender. I add enough orange juice so that the mixture blends into a smooth liquid. I like my smoothie room temperature and runny so that I can drink it easy. I found that when I couldn’t eat that the more “liquidy” my smoothie was; the easier it was to get down.
Start with 1/2 to 1 cup 
Should look like this.
As you can see above, I do not use a lot of liquid as my smoothie are mostly made from fresh fruits. If you use more frozen fruits, you might need to add some water or more orange juice so that it will blend easily.
I love having a Go-To Smoothie when you have to get berries and other essentials vitamins into your diet. For some reason, I was able to drink this each day in the beginning of my journey and it helped give me a little strength. There are lots of recipes out there so try one out and make it your own. There are days I add honey, protein powders, yogurt, or even mint with lemon depending on the needs of my body that week.
Here’s to a great 2nd week on my blog and our time exploring together. A life journey is better with people walking along with you. Thank you to the all who are reading.
Bitsy's Backyard 