Hi Jen,

Absolutely you can start with a blender. It may be more preferable in the long run just because you get the fiber. You can get pretty creative with the blender. When I make a breakfast smoothie I generally put in a cup of greens - spinach, kale, chard, arugula or whatever I can get my hands on. I try to get organic when possible. To that I add about a half cup of blueberries and maybe a few strawberries or other berries and part of a banana. When you use blueberries your green smoothie is red. Sometimes I will throw in some left over veggies (beets, etc.) that were steamed/cooked. Add a cup of water or coconut water sometimes and a few ice cubes then blend it all together. It is a filling thing. There are some good smoothie recipes that I picked up from Dr Terry Wahl's book. If I can find them I will try and get them to you.

Juicing is fun and you still get some pulp. I bought some 18 oz glass bottles to store it in when I make it. Here's a website for juicing that I like. Hint - don't use the print button on the website or install their recipe toolbar - it will put a lot of junk on your computer. I like the site because it has recipes you can find for different health conditions. If you want to save or print a recipe, I would copy it to word or notepad and save it to a text file or print it.
https://juicerecipes.com/recipes/rock-the-beet-5887
John

Hi Jen,

If you had gastric bypass and you can only consume one cup of food at a time, I highly recommend you do juicing versus blending. My son had this type of surgery just recently, and he stays away from fiber. He has concentrated on eating protein, because even though he has lost over a hundred pounds in five months, he still needs to lose another hundred. He takes care of vitamins and fiber with pills at this point.
The reason I like juicing, is because I can drink the juice as if I was drinking a glass of water, right after I get the juice out of the veggies and fruits, and before it start loosing precious vitamins when exposed to oxygen. I know it is difficult to clean the juicer, but I would never store juice for later use.
Juicers are expensive. Mine cost $250, but I have used it for five years everyday. That is 14 cents a day so far. They have it at Best Buy, and if you have their card, you could pay it over 16 months. Are you afraid you would buy it and not use it? That would be my concern.
There is this little book called The healthy green drink diet by Jason Mannheim. I highly recommend it. I bought it in Amazon for $16 It has recipes for smoothies and juices. It talks about superfoods also; very interesting. I would buy first the book, and then make up my mind about the juicer.
You could also try drinking a cup of juice versus a cup of blended fruits and veggies and see how each work for you, since you have that little tummy now. Just thinking.....
Hope my opinion helps. Loli

Jen @sandytoes14 and Loli @loli - I prefer the juicer also. I think you get more nutrients than with the smoothie only because you are using more fruit and vegetables in it. Like others have said, you just don't get all the fiber. I agree with Loli that the juice is easier to drink. You can actually buy a decent juicer for less than $100 although you can spend 500 or more for one too. I bought a Jamba juicer for $88 on Amazon and it works great - 1100 watt motor with a high and low speed switch for hard veggies and soft fruits. I think the difference may be that the more expensive ones do a better job of extracting more juice from the same product. My daughter bought the Breville Juice Fountain which is $100 and she loves it too. She uses a plastic bag for catching the pulp (so do I) and she runs the pulp through the juicer again to get more juice. Me, I'm wasteful. I know that you can use the pulp in different recipes and soups but I don't cook so it doesn't help me.

I know it's better to drink it right away but I put it in glass bottles with tight lids so that I have a couple of days worth and keep it in the fridge. I've actually used some of juice as the liquid for a smoothie and I add the greens and some fruit with it. That way I'm getting more nutrients with a little more fiber than the juice by itself. I like Loli's idea of testing the juice vs a smoothie but I'm thinking that highly depends on the content of both. Yesterday I made some juice that called for beets and the beet greens from the beets I used looked so nice and I've used them in smoothies before and liked it. So it was basically the greens from 3 beets, 2 peeled oranges, 2 apples, 3 or 4 large pieces of celery and a lemon. The color with the beets was supposed to come out red but this one came out brown. I showed my daughter and she got a laugh when I called it my new juice "Brown Magic". It actually tastes quite good.

John