What people are saying
Feel Incredible
I have learned so much from the 12 Steps to Whole Foods program! I have learned to go back to the basics, what God intended us to eat. So many people ask me, “Well what do you eat then?” There is an abundance of food to eat! It is aggravating because so many people are so ignorant about good nutrition. I am more aware of all the advertisements promoting good nutrition in certain products just to make a sale, when they are really so far from good nutrition.
I tell so many people about the 12 Step program! It is very obvious that I do not eat the ways of the world. I stand out like a sore thumb when I don’t eat the food at a party and I bring my own snacks.
I have given countless number people the links and a CD full of information. I have inspired many people to start making green smoothies, four of whom have bought a BlendTec. They too have experienced the benefits with just the smoothies.
I was at dinner a few months ago and one of them was a pharmacist. He was giving me a hard time about why I eat the way I do. He asked, “Why do you eat like that?” I said, “To put you out of business one day.” He said, “Well, what about when you get diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol?” I told him I wouldn’t get those diseases because of the way I eat and the things I do. People don’t get how important food is, not just live but to live a healthy, full life and stay out of the doctor’s office. I have not gotten sick since being on the program. I am a runner and feel better than I did before.
I have a degree in Exercise Science and have taken many nutrition classes. A whole food program makes the most sense, since it is what our bodies were designed to have. I have a friend that is getting her masters in nutrition and snubs me for the way I eat because of her education in nutrition. She thinks it is bogus, but then wonders why she can’t lose 20 pounds. This program has no comparison to other nutrition. This one makes sense and it is easy, very easy!
I wish I could give a book to all my friends and family and have them change their lives. Or even just have them start drinking green smoothies!
I absolutely LOVE the recipes in 12 Steps to Whole Foods! I make my shopping list from the book. I printed off all of the pages and made it into a book so I can keep it in the kitchen. My three year old loves the food in there as well. The salads are my favorite! Well, and the treats too.
I feel incredible since I have been on the program. I enjoy the fresh food. It is easier than most people think. I love being in the kitchen and then eating the good, wonderful food! My friends and family have been my guinea pigs. I haven’t had too many complaints.
The benefits are countless. The extra time in the kitchen and the extra money spent is more than worth it. It is like putting money into savings because I won’t spend it on my bad health in the future. I look forward to the day where I can have a garden and just walk outside to pick ingredients for dinner.
I will continue on the journey for myself and telling others about the program. It is time to reverse the way we eat. It will only help us. Thank you!
— Meghan Meredith
The GSG Detox Was the Best Choice I Could Have Made!
Doing the GSG Detox was an experience that has changed the way I feel about and look at food. Before this program I ate kind of healthy but only about 50-60 percent of the time. I had a sweet tooth and would buy myself treats and used food as a crutch to make me feel better.
I had Robyn’s 12 Steps to Whole Foods course for over a year and would look at the pictures and think, “I want to make that” or “I need to start doing that,” but never did.
When the Detox was offered, I knew I was ready. I had been feeling so miserable as my bad food choices were giving me joint pain, back aches, and feeling bloated, fat, tired, and depressed. I knew I needed the full-support program. It was the best choice I could have made!
The forum made a great support system, and so did the daily emails and calls from doctors who taught me so much. I loved the foods and never felt deprived or hungry. After two days, my energy started to come back and I began feeling like I used to feel five years ago.
The very first day the detox started, on August 1, my husband was admitted to the hospital with some critical kidney issues. Even going through the stress of his surgery, and then dialysis, I was determined to stay on track with the detox. I honestly feel it gave me the extra energy and clear thinking to get through this difficult time in my life.
I now look at food not as a reward but as a gift of energy and health I give my body. At each meal, I have the choice to eat food that will make me feel good or bring me down and make me feel tired and depressed.
My skin and eyes are clear and my clothes are getting baggy. Eating the way Robyn has taught me in this program has motivated me to finally read that 12 Step manual—it’s full of wonderful information and recipes! As I get close to my 71st birthday, I am so thankful for my good health and have decided that this is my new life. This is the way I will now care for and treat myself.
Thank you, Robyn, for sharing your knowledge of health and helping me change!
*results may vary
— Barbara J., Jacksonville, Florida
My day is not complete without a smoothie!
My day is not complete without a smoothie! If I go without one, I feel bad physically and mentally. My children love them, too, and want them every day so they can have energy and strong muscles.
— Jenny L.
The green smoothie has lived up to the expectations I had
I tried the green smoothie after juicing for several years. Juicing was expensive and demanded a lot of time and work extracting the juice from the fiber and cleaning the juicer. Blended raw foods made a lot of sense and I did not need to be converted on the idea.
When I began drinking the green smoothie I weighed 285 lbs. One year later I weigh 240 lbs. Daily workouts have contributed as much to my weight loss as any other factor. However, the benefits of the green smoothie as I experienced them are as follows:
1. Drinking the green smoothie changed my bowel movement habits, which are now frequent (2-3 times a day) and regular.
2. The green smoothie is my pre-workout, first thing in the morning food. I have been surprised at the energy it sustains throughout my workout.
3. The green smoothie fills me up without slowing me down. It satisfies my hunger and cravings till early in the afternoon. It has curbed my overall appetite thus decreasing the overall calories I consume in a day.
4. I find that the green smoothie helps my digestion, especially with the foods that do not digest well. I eat a lot of lean meat and I feel the organic raw food in my gut facilitates digestion and elimination of meat.
5. Beginning my day with green smoothie drinks and working out provides me the momentum, nutrition, and motivation to eat a strict lean diet throughout the rest of the day.
The green smoothie has lived up to the expectations I had. Several of the above benefits caught me totally by surprise. I have been drinking green smoothies every morning for the past year. They have served me well. Now that I have lost the weight I needed, I have significantly increased my strength and energy. My new goals are not to lose any more weight but to increase my overall lean muscle mass. My idea is to begin drinking green smoothies twice a day rather than just once in the morning.
*results may vary
— Gregg L.
Energized and 16 lbs Lost!
I started this diet as a team effort with my sister-in-law. I was excited about trying something new. I really didn’t feel that losing weight was my priority, but in doing so I really look better and feel better and lost 16 pounds! I have been a runner for years. I have run marathons and half marathons. Plantar fasciitis and a knee-overuse injury have stopped me from running more than once a week for the past year. I have noticed that my knees and feet really don’t bother like they used to. I am energized that my body can heal from this. I was looking for something that I could do.
*results may vary
— Amy M., Vidor, Texas
Cholesterol Dropped 50 Points! Discovered a Food Sensitivity and Dropped 12 lbs!
During the Detox I lost 12 pounds and my “tummy!” I stopped having gas and feeling bloated and discovered a major food sensitivity causing it! My cholesterol dropped from 204 to 154 and is now in the normal range! My doctor is amazed!
I discovered I have sensitivity to gluten—with that knowledge, my sinus headaches and phlegm in the back of my throat in the morning are gone! I have more energy, my color and skin look healthy, and I feel great.
I am not going to tell you the program was easy because it wasn’t. You have to be determined, but following the suggestions in the book really helped, especially BEING PREPARED. Shopping and preparing in advance and having several days of food prepared made ALL THE DIFFERENCE. I took my food with me when I could.
If I was in a situation where we were eating out, I just told the waiter I needed their help as I was on a “special eating program” and what individual items from their menu I could eat and they were always more than cooperative in making me a “meal.”
I learned a lot about how to prepare and plan a healthy eating program and I will continue to feed my body a healthy diet to achieve these marvelous benefits for the rest of my life. THANK YOU Green Smoothie Girl!!!
*results may vary
— Cheryl F., Corona del Mar, California
Not Going Back to How I Used to Eat Before!
I was a little apprehensive when I received the manual and read through all the foods and the limited food. I told myself it is ONLY 26 days and you have been eating poorly without thought for years. I used to be a vegetarian before I met my husband 12 years ago. Many date nights of letting him pick and following his meat-eating diet, I was miserable. I started following Green Smoothie Girl about a year ago. I have been slowly changing my diet and I wanted a JUMP START.
At the end of the detox I have lost 22 lbs. I will continue on this journey and have bought the 12 Steps book to inform me on more changes. I grew up eating the way Robyn promotes and never had any joint pain or issues sleeping. When I started down the junk-eating route I noticed my sleep was restless and my joints always hurt. I AM NOT GOING BACK! I feel so much lighter, even with just 22 lbs. gone. I have no desire to eat meat or sugar, my main addictions.
To anyone out there thinking they cannot do this, YOU CAN! Thank you again, Robyn, for giving me the KICK IN THE BUTT that I needed.
*results may vary
— Eva F., Longwood, FL
Definitely Doing the Detox Again! 12 lbs Lost
I really enjoyed the detox program and I will definitely do it again in January! My main reason for doing it was to jump start some weight loss.
I had been eating terribly and needed accountability to make myself make some healthy changes. The money I spent made me not quit! I have the Green Smoothies book and already knew about Robyn’s philosophy of eating plant-based and raw food, so I had an idea of what I was in for.
My family thought I was nuts and so did my friends. Because I stopped my lifelong Diet Coke habit, days 2-5 were miserable for me: headache, achy, tired, and nauseated, as caffeine and chemicals left my body. After that, I felt much better. I did feel hungry during the 26 days, but that is a good thing—I rarely let myself get hungry before the program!
I lost 12 pounds overall and I lost inches in good places—lower belly mostly. My face looks better!
I appreciated the forum and all of the questions and answers on there. It was nice that there were so many of us going through the detox at the same time and hearing everyone’s ups and downs. I appreciated the videos every day and there are a few I’d like to go back and watch or listen to again. I’m skin brushing every day and oil pulling. I never ever thought I’d do a coffee enema, but you convinced me and I did—I even like those and might do level 2 next time!
Thanks again for everything, and I’ll be back in January. My next purchase will hopefully be your 12 Step course. I’m saving for that now!
*results may vary
— Kristen E., Cumming, Georgia
So Impressed with the Detox Program from Content to Calls to the Forum to the Diet
I am down a total of 12 pounds as of today, weighing in at 115. I am a 5’4″, 41-year-old mom of two. After several years of high-stress jobs, I had gone up to 137 pounds and was buying size 10 clothes because I could no longer fit in any size 6s or 8s that I owned. I have spent the past several years trying to lose the fat through off-and-on exercise and off-and-on attempts to find healthy nutrition. I had managed to get down to 127, but had plateaued.
I am so impressed with the detox program, from the content in the manual, to the calls, to the support of the forum, to the diet. I can’t wait to learn more about leading a healthy life after the detox and I am excited to share this with others. This program has really resonated with me for where I am at in my life. I am looking forward to learning so much more from you!
I would like to reiterate the appreciation others have already posted and say a big thank you for leading the way to a healthy lifestyle revolution.
*results may vary
— Kym
Green smoothies have saved my life!
I have spent all my adulthood overweight and miserable. My weight went from 135 to 280 during that time. Most of the time I had skewed ideas that I was either too fat (when I weighed 135) and not that fat (when I weighed 280). My perception was always off. But I did know that I just didn’t feel good.
I have been on Weight Watchers, the soup diet, hard boiled egg diet, Chinese tea, and every diet that came in magazines. I finally found that Atkins worked for me–three times! Funny that I would go off after several months and the weight would come back on, with its 30.-lb. friend! I realized that if I kept dieting that way I would completely ruin my health. I was so afraid to start another diet, so I decided to never diet again and just accept myself as I was.
I remarried at 210 lbs. and within 3 years had put on 70 lbs. with careless eating, primarily fast food. Then my DH was diagnosed with cancer (digestive related) and I found GreenSmoothieGirl.com. It was an answer to prayer because this is a LIFESTYLE–not a diet. In the last 9 mos. I have lost 40 lbs., my skin glows, I am nearly off the medications I was taking for high blood pressure, arthritic aches and pains, and mucus. My wrinkles also are going away!
I will NEVER diet again because I can eat everything I want and truly enjoy it (even chocolate). I am never hungry because I have God’s fast food with me all the time (fruits). I have found that the more raw I eat, the faster I lose weight. I am no longer fanatical about it and believe that my body will end up the weight I am supposed to be, not the way society says it should be. I just wish I had been able to learn this earlier in life.
Sorry about the long blog, but I feel that finding GreenSmoothieGirl.com and Robyn’s blog has saved my life! Thanks, Robyn and every one else!
*results may vary
— Karen L.
Noticeable improvements!
My wife and I noticeably improved skin tone and clearer complexion and had people notice and make comments. We noted some indigestion during the day as we added both fruit and vegetables to our smoothies which digest differently, but was minor. We also weren’t very hungry for 4-5 hours after drinking the green smoothie.
— Scott
Neither of My School Kids Have Had a Sick Day!
I started 12 Steps during the busiest time of my life, when my fourth baby was 6 weeks old. My other little ones were 2, 5, and 6. It was three days before school started and everyone was sick with a cold but me. I was sick with an inflamed gallbladder and scheduled for surgery at age 33! We had been sick more than 50% of the last 365 days.
“Enough is enough!” I thought, “I know what I should be eating, I’ve been studying this since I was pregnant with my first, but I can’t figure out how to apply what I know. It overwhelms me. I want my family to be healthy, especially my son who is sick the most. Maybe Robyn’s program can teach me something I don’t already know. I trust Robyn’s nutritional philosophy more than any other author out there.” (Sorry I was skeptical at first, but the beauty of 12 Steps I now see, is putting the transition into a do-able order and adding one thing at a time.)
We started 12 Steps on the first day of school. An awesome time to start because fruit and veggies are abundant in the garden and cheap at the store, and the beginning of the school year is a time of transition anyway! I had paid for school lunch, but we started 12 Steps just in time. None of my kids will ever have school lunch (they serve corn dogs every single day; I hurt for the other kids).
The first week curriculum for first grade was “health and nutrition.” At dinner I remarked on the coincidence that I was taking a health and nutrition class too. My kids already know to expect fallacious nutritional information from school, so we compared notes on what we were learning each night at dinner. My kids loved that I was going “back to school” too.
I call “12 Steps” my online class and I always say “my teacher says . . .” Rather than being on a crazy diet, in my family’s eyes, I am taking a university-level, highly prestigious, nutrition course and I will “graduate” in a year (you never really graduate, though, do you?). In my eyes, it’s even better than that. Each month as my kids start new units of study, they are excited to hear about my new unit of study.
During the first month, my goal was to drink 8+ glasses of water a day instead of 3 or 4. I had been perpetually dehydrated since I got pregnant, and nursing was making it worse. That was a hard goal because I was so insanely busy I didn’t even have time to get a drink until 10 in the morning some days.
More than once, due to kid distractions, a green smoothie took three days to make. Water in the blender the first day, wash produce the next, chop stuff up and blend it the third. Getting hydrated was wonderful and I had green drinks on days when I couldn’t get a smoothie made.  A ginormous burden of guilt (that I didn’t even know I had) lifted off my shoulders about my family’s nutrition. That gave me an emotional boost. The water made me feel physically so much better. I cancelled my gallbladder removal surgery and I don’t recall when it happened, but all of a sudden I had an extra 30 minutes to make green smoothie every day (it takes longer holding a baby or toddler or both while you do it).
Organic ready-to-eat salads just happened to be on sale for $.99 a box when we hit month two. That would convince anyone to love salad, no work and so tasty. When the sale ended two weeks later, I found again that I magically had the extra time to wash piles of romaine, spinach, and other lettuces. Another huge burden lifted off my shoulders, because I didn’t have to think of what to have for dinner anymore, it was always salad. We had main dishes too, but they were way simpler, just side dishes really. Salad was fun. My kids love picking out toppings for the salad and my picky eater has a passion for making her salad pretty. She also loves that dinner every night is a salad bar. Dinner battles at our house almost disappeared. As the quality of our meals went up, there was less to complain about.
The third month was my birthday. I got a beet cake, a salad spinner, and the “okay” to order almonds in the GreenSmoothieGirl.com annual group buy. I have been substituting almonds, apples, and raisins for chips and pretzels (just a few per snack) since we started 12 Steps. I reverse engineered our favorite store salad dressings using high quality ingredients. It was fun.
Where did I get the time to sit around reverse engineering salad dressing recipes? It is a mystery to me. I am getting salad making down to a science. I love buying it. I love being the lady who fills her cart up with lettuce and practically nothing else every few days at the grocery store.
Instead of fruit snacks, my toddler hugs the bags of romaine and skips the complimentary Laffy Taffy at the check-out. (Toddlers transition so much faster than the rest of us). I took salad to the family potluck, and impressed my relatives when 2 of my 3 kids took big servings of it before eating anything else.
My husband won’t touch green smoothies, but he has enjoyed the improvement in the family menu and the unanticipated weight loss from having salads for dinner every day.
Wow, now we are into November and neither of my school kids have had a sick day! My toddler has been sick every other week like usual (and my husband too). Even the daily green smoothie can’t save her at age 2, I guess. With one kid and one parent sick a lot though, it is miraculous that no one else is getting it, as they got everything last year. And my son went off asthma medicine without a hitch. In the past, running out of medicine meant he would be sick in the next day or two, but so far so good! Thanks!
*results may vary
— Regina Slaugh
