GreenSmoothieGirl Logo
Lose 10 Pounds in 10 Minutes. Add 10 Years to your life.
Our beautiful template for infinite variety of greens and superfoods in your smoothies—print this and eliminate the need for recipes! Get it now for free!

“I need to gain some weight!”


Robyn Openshaw - Dec 16, 2011 - This Post May Contain Affiliate Links


I have been studying a massive amount of information in the past few months about over 80,000 toxic chemicals and metals in our environment. Where they come from, what they do to us, how to avoid them, and how to get rid of them. Food (especially meat/dairy and processed foods), cosmetics, clothes, furniture and paint and carpet, water, air, dental and medical procedures, and more.

I’m doing this for a few reasons. First, I just finished an 8-page paper on the effects on your health of far infrared sauna treatment. I’ve been using mine every day, plus taking fulvic acid, to bring metals and chemicals out. I want them gone, and in my hyper-focus on toxicity lately, I find myself undertaking new, good habits to get as clean as possible. I need my energy and health so I can take my mission further, harder. I go 100 miles an hour and I don’t want to slow down!

I keep encountering more information about how chemical toxicity in our cells impedes weight loss. I can’t imagine that it doesn’t cut both ways, impeding your ability to arrive at your optimal weight, whatever direction that needs to go, up or down.

Second, I’ve developed a detox program. I joined Tera in hers last year, but I concluded that I wanted a harder-hitting, information-dense, educational cleanse that would educate you while giving you measurable results. (If you’re going to suppress calories, might as well be getting healthier at the same time that you’re getting thinner!)

Much like I did with 12 Steps to Whole Foods, I’m synthesizing all the best texts and best practices in detoxification and disease risk minimization. All boiled down into one 21-day program. It’s a food-elimination program to test your food sensitivities/allergies. It’s a kidney cleanse. It’s a colon cleanse. And it’s a liver and gall bladder flush as well. You can do it with us once, or join for life and do it twice a year. We have expert phone calls every night with fabulous content, you’ll be assigned a “detox buddy” to be accountable to, if you don’t bring your own, and you’ll know exactly what to do and eat every day. And we have a private Facebook group where you can get support from other detoxers, as well as our expert coaches! I pop in there, too, a few times a week.

The manual holds your hand, answers common questions, educates you in the briefest way about what products you’re using that are toxic and what the alternatives are. It gives you recipes to get through an effective cleanse, using food, either at a newbie’s pace, or a more advanced one for those already “initiated” who eat pretty clean and have detoxed before. You’ll know exactly why you’re doing each part of the detox.

My point is, purging fat cells (and organs) of the chemicals they’ve been storing for years is something that cannot be neglected in any effort to change your weight–up or down. Did you know that thin people can be fat inside? That’s right—a study I read about three years ago found that many people who are normal weight have organs marbled with fat, which is far more dangerous than fat held in adipose tissue under the skin, the kind we can see. People who work out regularly, who are visibly overweight, have much lower morbidity, that normal-weight people who don’t exercise and are internally “fat.”

So fat can’t necessarily be thin……but thin can be fat!

And no matter how much whole plant foods some people eat, and no matter how many chemicals they eliminate, those who have a damaged gastrointestinal tract can’t fully utilize nutrition. Another element that absolutely must be addressed is healing the gut. Because of many years of a wretched diet, you might have an inflamed digestive system in serious need of some rehab. Many underweight people fall in this category.

That rehab is done by eliminating dairy and gluten for a time and learning to eat probiotic-rich foods to build up an army of healthy microorganisms to protect and defend the lining of the stomach, intestines, and colon.

Gain weight the right way….I hate when a young mom tells me her pediatrician told her to feed her underweight baby lots of candy, ice cream, butter, and fried food. So then you’ll have a baby with more body fat who is ill and damaged in many ways, with tastes set to junk food. How is that useful? Take the time to find ways to get higher-calorie WHOLE PLANT FOODS in your diet if you are truly malnourished. The plant kingdom is VAST. With a little creativity and dedication, it can provide weight loss, weight gain, whatever you need.

Posted in: Detox, Healthy Weight, Whole Food

9 thoughts on ““I need to gain some weight!””

Leave a Comment
  1. Melissa says:

    My son and daughter both have struggled to gain weight to meet standards on the weight charts. Needless to say neither of them have been to the Dr in the last year because I don’t like getting a lecture about more dairy and fat in their diets. I did increase the amount of green smoothies that they are required to drink this summer and for the first time in a year, they both gained weight. My son gained 4.5 pounds and my daughter has gained 2.4 pounds. The ONLY difference is the amount of green smoothies in their diet. They both run and are active and have tons of energy and I really don’t care if they are “under weight” by those charts standards. Those charts are based off of chunky people’s standards. I was prescribed Boost for my daughter for weight promotion. Didn’t feed it to her because it is full of chemicals and high fructose corn syrup!!!! No thanks. On a side note I am one of those chunky (I prefer curvy) people and would love to detox with you Robyn. 30 plus years of eating crud and baby I need to detox better then I am. 🙂

    1. Robyn Openshaw says:

      Melissa, I’m curvy too and make no apologies for it! Right on. We’ll do a really great detox twice a year, can’t wait till i have it ready.

  2. Britni says:

    Robyn,

    You have truly helped us! I met you when you came to Austin (I got my mom-who won the blendtec and younger sisters there) and I am so thankful that a friend pointed your website out to me a few years ago!! Thank you for the info, I have passed this on to my husband and we will begin adding more calorie dense snacks & meals to his regime. I just made your raw/live granola recipe from chapter 10 and it is amazing!! I am currently training to complete my first marathon and I LOVE the way it fuels my body!!! Keep up your mission. I can’t wait to see the info you’re putting together about cleansing!

    Live well,

    Britni

    1. Robyn Openshaw says:

      Britni, so glad we got to meet up in Austin and that you’re doing such good things. That granola is so fabulous, I need to edit my blog to include it!

  3. Gloria says:

    I looked around to see if there was a way to contact you privately, but couldn’t find one. So, I guess I must publicly say the 21-day cleanse you talk about seems a little daunting to me. I am already feeling overwhelmed at changing my lifestyle. I’m reassuring myself that every baby step I take is good and that I can do more.

    Maybe, since you have to moderate this you could read it and not accept it, but address the feeling I’m having. Maybe I’m not the only one.

    I’m slowly getting the equipment I need, but have yet to get an Excalibur dehydrator. That is next on the list. Then there’s the Lotus, and a salad spinner would be great, etc.

    Please forgive me for feeling that my nose is just barely above water right now.

    1. Robyn Openshaw says:

      Gloria, your mind, body and spirit tell you what you need and want. If you can’t do it, dont task yourself with it. Do as much as you want and feel to do! And know that each step you DO take has the potential to take you to the next level of health and energy. Just look 1 to 3 steps ahead. Not 20 steps. 🙂

  4. Anonymous says:

    I am very interested to see what you come up with!

    I have a question, how long will a smoothie last after being made. Is 24 hours a stretch? Thanks

  5. Meg says:

    Thanks Melissa for your comments about helping your children gain weight. My one-year-old son is 75% for height and 46% for weight and his Dr said he needed more food and two servings of protein a day and milk with every meal!! So I asked for high quality plant based protein and she wasn’t able to really provide anything other than beans, which tend to make my little guy miserable with gassies. And she said that plant based protein is an ineffective source because we only absorb half of the protein in it? It seemed an odd concept to me, too. He hasn’t had the “baby milk shake” that I feel formula is and he hasn’t ever had any baby food from a jar. He doesn’t really like meat but will eat half a spaghetti squash in one sitting. He has a huge appetite, just not for bad stuff. I’m glad for that, I just don’t know how to get him to put on some pounds so he can continue to grow to his full potential. The Dr said that his adult height will be dependent on the nutrition he gets in this next year!!!! I’m kinda in a panic! Do I just start feeding him straight coconut oil?!

    1. Robyn Openshaw says:

      Meg, she couldn’t be more wrong about “absorbing” half of plant proteins. She needs to get current on the research about meat versus plant proteins. Lots of coconut oil will be good for him, also nuts/seeds, avocadoes, and as long as he doesn’t have a digestive disorder and the food he eats is high-nutrition food, I wouldn’t lose sleep over the height-weight charts. They are based on averages. I’m not sure why that’s helpful, and it’s troubling to me that young mothers are so committed to those weight charts, with the encouragement of the pediatricians I guess.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


Skip to content