What people are saying
We love green smoothies at our house.
We love green smoothies at our house. I am a homeschooling mom of four children. Three of my children drink smoothies because they love them, and one child drinks her smoothies because it’s a good health choice. I try to vary the ingredients here and there so that they don’t get bored with them. We drink them first thing in the morning. I also have been known to feed them to neighbor children who then will ask to have more! Also, they are pretty tasty as popsicles: I am sure they lose some nutrition being frozen, but the kids love them!
— Melanie H.
Changed my diet and the way I think about food
You may struggle a couple of times, but just know you WILL feel amazing after you follow the detox to the end. I’m now hitting all new fitness goals and lost 25 permanent, non-water pounds and counting. Totally changed my diet and the way I think about food.
— Josh Willet, Kansas
Green smoothies have changed my life
Green smoothies have changed my life. Not only have I converted my family members, but also the people I work with. My 15 month old son loves the green smoothies and always asks for more. I feel better, look better, and love that I was able to spread the word about green smoothie goodness!
— Jamie Stavinaha
Cellulite Gone! 7 lbs. Lost!
I am a 55-year-old female who began the detox at the weight of 126 lbs. I have been vegetarian for a few years and eat a pretty clean diet. I don’t drink alcohol, the only caffeine I drink is in green tea, and I don’t eat sugar.
However, over my lifetime I have been exposed to environmental toxins as well as pharmaceutical concoctions involving dentistry and Graves’ disease. I had been recommended by a shamanic healer about a year ago to cleanse every organ in my body. I did a series of colonics along with a parasite cleanse but I stopped there. Most cleanse programs on the market detox independent organs and most of them seem to be a kit.
They hardly recommend to even alter your diet. These detoxes never seemed right to me so I was at that crossroads of what to do. I stumbled across GSG and looked into the protocol. It seemed perfect for me.
The timing was right and then I got the brainstorm to enlist my 21-year-old college daughter to join me. I always worry about the genetics of her generation being weaker due to all the FDA-approved food, cleaning supplies and personal products they are exposed to. Plus, I felt it would be a great bonding experience for the two of us. She jumped on board with me immediately.
We spoke every day: she lives in New Orleans and I live in Jackson, MS, and we text messaged each other support when we felt weak. We listened to the group phone calls. We both would share what insight we gained either from the GSG daily emails, the forums or the online talks and chats. We shared with each other our experiences with the recipes.
She came home for a visit prior to Phase Two and we both cooked the recipes for each of us and went to the grocery store together. She would email me the grocery list for each phase to make it easier for me. Prior to the GSG Detox, my daughter was always tired. The first day on the program she could not believe her energy level and how she would jump out of bed and get things done.
I felt a surge in not only energy, but also in inner joy. Don’t get me wrong: I struggled with the first day, just being hungry in the middle of the night, the second day of the watermelon cleanse, and then the after-effects of the olive oil and lemon juice liver detox day.
But it was all worth every second. I love how my clothes fit me; I feel more peaceful. Oh yeah, and this is huge: since I was 5 years old, I remember having cellulite on my thighs. I remember sitting on the front porch swing of our home and looking down at my legs wondering what those puckers were in my skin. About 10 days into the GSG program, I was blow drying my hair, with my head bent over and looked at my legs. Now, I practice yoga 6 days a week so I am in that position a lot and I know how my legs look. Well, that morning they looked different, in a good way—they weren’t as saggy. I pushed the skin together to see if the cellulite was still there. It wasn’t. I pushed my skin together over all the parts of my body that had cellulite previously, and it was gone! The cellulite never really bothered me that much but I sure do like it not being there. I can only attribute it to being the fact that the toxins that were stored in my fat cells were pushed out!
I have recommended the GSG Detox to anyone who will listen to me. I am actually sad that today is the last day. I am excited to incorporate the recipes that we used in the detox program into my everyday life and I ordered the GSG Menu Planner to keep me on the straight and narrow! All I can say is, thank you, Robyn, and your colleagues, for all your hard work in developing this program! It was easy to follow, well planned out, and your program incorporates cutting-edge knowledge in the healing field.
*results may vary
— Tamar S., Jackson, Mississippi
It Reminded Me What It Feels Like to Feel Good All the Time!
I needed this detox to reset my eating habits. This detox was the perfect thing for me to get me back on track and to try new foods and recipes. It reminded me what it feels like to feel good all the time. I ended the detox 5.6 lbs lighter.
My favorite recipe was the lentil soup. I will be adding the soup, the quinoa salad, the millet, the guacamole and chips, and the Hot Pink Breakfast Smoothie to my post-detox diet. Thanks so much for putting this together and making it easy to follow. The shopping lists, the forum, and the “Suggestions for Success” made it so much easier. I also wouldn’t have been able to do it without my “buddies.” I did it with my mom, my sister, and 2 friends.
The best thing about the detox, besides the weight falling off, was that I did not feel guilty about what I was eating. I knew that I was giving my body exactly what it needed. Thank you, Robyn and the GSG team!
*results may vary
— Venessa M., West Haven, Utah
Thank you Robyn!
My husband and I began with the green smoothies with Robyn in February 2008. Within three months my husband lost 60 lbs and I have kept off 20 and am at my normal weight…which is what I have averaged since high school.* I am 5’4” and 108. I am 41 and have two children under the age of 5. My husband can now sleep through the night (he used to toss and turn). I sleep soundly. I close my eyes and it is morning! My husband no longer needs Prilosec. My children, 2 1/2 and 5, drink green smoothies and they have not been sick in a year. My son goes to a special needs school and I have noticed that his behavior is much better. He also has an amazing creative streak in the past 6 months.
Thank you Robyn!
— Tonya Carney
I have felt the benefits of green smoothies
I started making green smoothies a year ago. My husband had been diagnosed with hemochromatosis, several years earlier. He had gotten that under control but because the disease had gone undiagnosed for years, he had organ damage, including heart, liver and kidney. He had no energy. So he started every day with a 2 liter bottle of Mountain Dew. My mission was to get him off the Mountain Dew and replace it with something that was better for him and gave him the energy he needed.
After some research and finding GreenSmoothieGirl.com, I purchased a high speed blender. I started making green smoothies everyday. I persuaded my husband to get off the caffeine and sugar and give this a try. He has done remarkably well. I went into this hoping–but knowing how difficult it is to break such an entrenched habit of caffeine, I had my doubts.
I am happy to report after one year, he has not gone back to Mountain Dew and he feels more energetic than he has in the last several years. I also have felt the benefits of green smoothies. Although starting this in generally good health, I feel better, more energetic and better digestion, than I have felt in years. A year ago I also stopped cooking meat for dinner every night. Although we have not gone to a 100% vegan diet, we have cut out 75% of the meat we used to eat. I am trying to cook healthier and have used Robyn’s recipes to do that. All that I have tried have been very good. I would recommend this simple lifestyle change to everyone.
— Karen R.
I crave green smoothies!
I crave green smoothies. They satisfy my hunger. I am a teacher; therefore, I am surrounded by germs and viruses. Since I have been on green smoothies for about six months, I have not been sick. I am convinced the phytonutrients in my breakfast and lunch smoothie are what has kept me in good health.
— Chris B.
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
Husband Lost 40LBS and Cured of Multiple Illnesses
I always considered myself a healthy eater and a good cook. I had been on Weight Watchers for 2 years and was almost to my desired weight, so I thought the foods I was preparing for my husband and children were healthy. Our dinner meals consisted of a medium serving of a white meat such as chicken, or lower fat ground beef in some form, a side of fresh or frozen vegetables, and a salad of lettuce and tomatoes with regular dressing and croutons.
However, in 2001, my husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He also had asthma, tons of allergies, and high blood pressure. He had suffered from these ailments all of his life and fought colds, bronchitis, and pneumonia every winter. If we had gone ahead with the doctor’s advice to remove the prostate, the operation alone would probably have killed him. Instead, I asked my husband if he was ready to try the “green diet” . When I’d told him about healthy eating before, his reaction was immediate, “That diet would kill me, I’m allergic to all of those vegetables!!” Now, with cancer looming, he said, “Well, if I’m going to die anyway, I might as well die trying something”.
In one month of eating mostly vegetables and drinking a green drink, he lost 40 pounds, stopped using his asthma inhalers, never went back to the doctor for allergy shots, and stopped using almost all of his medications. After a year of many healing illnesses, he is now enjoying the best health he has ever had in his life. The doctor who treated his cancer was very concerned with my husband’s choice to avoid surgery and told him that he would die within 10 years. He recently saw a new specialist in the area where we now live who could find no sign of the cancer and told him to never come back to see him! He said, “There is no proof that diet can cure cancer, but whatever you are doing, keep doing it!” It has been over seven years since the original diagnosis.
I discovered the GreenSmoothieGirl.com site while searching for new recipes and ideas for meals. I ordered the 12 Step plan for the recipes. I have found the book be to very informative and wish that I had raised my children in this way. They can see that the way we have been eating has really benefitted us, but prefer to continue to eat in the manner they were raised. We will keep working on them!
We began drinking green smoothies this summer, and now my husband complains if I don’t make time to prepare them! He has still had issues with his blood pressure and has recently noticed that he doesn’t need to take as much medication and is sometimes able to go completely without it. We attribute that to the additional nutrition we are getting from the smoothies. I am slowly trying the recipes in the book.
Last week I made the Chocolate Beet cake (Ch. 11) for a church dinner. It was entered in a dessert competition. Unfortunately, the highly sugared desserts won, but I had one lady who asked for the recipe and was excited to try it. She couldn’t believe it had beets in it! I also made a batch of the candied almonds for my father’s birthday gift. He has always loved dates and nuts, so this was a perfect gift for him! (I couldn’t stop eating them!)
*results may vary
— Christine Workman, Covington, WA
Eliminated Sugar Cravings, More In Tune—and 13 Lbs Lost!
First off, I will say that I have never participated in a detox of any kind before; my initial motivation was purely to address weight loss (I started ~35 lbs. above my ideal weight). My husband decided to jump on board in support of my efforts—though in his case he was hoping to discover some possible food sensitivities and reduce his cholesterol. We both lost about the same amount of weight, 13-15 lbs.
The biggest surprise for both of us was discovering that our desire for sugar was virtually eliminated from the start. Great news! When we were feeling tempted through the 26 days, there was not usually a fat-laden, high-sugar item involved. We were also fascinated to learn to tune in to the signals that our bodies send out regarding hunger and satiation…all things we previously ignored. It was empowering to learn that we could survive on so little food and (for the most part) feel fairly satisfied.
We were grateful to have participated in the full support option because we frequently turned to the forum to seek answers to our questions—from other participants, through Robyn’s videos, while listening to the expert lectures, or catching the live phone calls. These are all fantastic tools to offer accountability and help built general knowledge about health and natural wellness.
It was so great to learn new practices that are now part of my daily routine (dry brushing, oil pulling, jumping on the rebounder, etc.). I can’t neglect to mention the liberating feeling just knowing that we completed the 26 day detox in 26 days with NO CHEATS! Nice! Even today (Day 27), I have not struggled with giving into the temptation that some foods often present—that’s huge for me and helped me stay the course!
Unfortunately, we didn’t experience the boost of energy that many others did. In fact, we found ourselves to be more exhausted than usual. Perhaps that is because there was just so much going on inside our bodies—lots of toxins being released and systems being repaired: W-O-N-D-E-R-F-U-L!!! Despite that sluggishness we battled all month long, we would recommend this program to others—and will likely schedule another detox when it is most convenient based on our family’s schedule.
Above all, we are both grateful for Robyn and her staff. We so appreciate all of the hard work that went into putting this program together and then launching it successfully. Way to go!
*results may vary
— Susan I., San Antonio, Texas
We Thought We Knew a Lot about Nutrition and Health—But Wow! 10 lbs. Lost
Although my husband and I had been drinking green smoothies for over a year, had the GSG 12 Steps to Whole Foods program in the box unopened, and I had been eating GMO-free and organic for two months prior to starting the Full Support Detox Program…the detox has changed my life, my husband’s, and our buddy and her husband’s lives! We are all active, healthy people, but we learned so much! We each had our own personal food demons—mine being salt, my husband’s being coffee, and our buddies’ being meat and dairy.
We thought we already knew a lot going in, and found we actually had a lot to learn. Robyn provides a lot of the “whys” rather than just the “do this” for us to follow blindly. The four of us are the type of people who question everything, and Robyn gives you the reasons behind each step of the program.
The program materials were detailed enough, but also simple enough to use. We enjoyed the two live calls and the daily content that often had a video, so visual learners like us could get a better understanding of, say, skin brushing or colon massaging.
I’ve incorporated skin brushing into my daily routine, we bought a FIR Sauna as a result of this Detox, and towards the end we began reading the 12 Steps and listening to the accompanying CDs. A week after the detox, we are now on the 8-week menu planner that was written to accompany the 12-Step program. I am thankful for the 8-week guide, as I am no cook and I need to be told what to do and how to do it in order to learn. This fits the bill! The recipes have been very tasty, and the 8-week guide will help us be successful going forward.
Thanks for the program. Where else can you get all this information in one place? Nowhere!
*results may vary
— Marlene K., San Marcos, CA


