As a follow-up to last week’s blog on why smoothies are such a great breakfast option when you’re busy and short on time, this week I’m sharing my top three smoothie recipes.
I don’t have smoothies every single day for breakfast. I often have porridge or eggs and if I’m at a restaurant I’ll make the most of it and choose something like a full English breakfast or buttermilk pancakes!
But I will have smoothies on a very regular basis for all of the reasons I outlined in last week’s blog; because they are quick, simple, nutritious, easy to make and easy to digest!
So, without further ado, here are my favourite recipes:
Blueberry, Spinach & Avocado
Blueberries – 1 large handful, frozen or fresh
Baby leaf spinach – 3 handfuls
Milk – ½ pint (I use coconut, oat or almond)
Yoghurt – 2 tbsp (I use coconut & vanilla)
Avocado – ½ ripe, remove the stone and skin
Optional – 1 tsp of Greens or Maca supplement powder
Mango Protein Smoothie
Mango – 1 ripe mango or 1 large handful of frozen mango chunks
Banana – ½, peeled, preferably ripe and showing black spots on the skin
Cashew nut butter – 1 tbsp
Milk – ½ pint (I use coconut, oat or almond)
Yoghurt – 2 tbsp (I use coconut & vanilla)
Protein powder – 1 scoop
Creamy Banana
Banana – 1, peeled, preferably ripe and showing black spots on the skin
Milk – ½ pint (I use coconut, oat or almond)
Cashew Butter – 2 tbsp
Yoghurt – 2 tbsp (I use coconut)
Vanilla bean extract – optional
Maca powder supplement – optional – 1 tsp
Nutmeg – optional, but a very small amount makes this smoothie!
Many of these ingredients are of course interchangeable either to your taste preference, what you have to hand or what you can/cannot consume. If you like dairy products, then by all means use those in place of the plant-based kinds of milk, yoghurts and protein powder.
And for a truly filling breakfast ‘meal’, I’d also suggest adding a scoop of protein powder in every smoothie.
However, what I mostly want to emphasise with these recipes, is that they are balanced in the sense they each contain a good ratio of all three macronutrients: carbohydrates, protein and fats.
It’s really important to make sure that you include a decent portion of fat and/or protein in a smoothie so that it keeps you fuller for longer and stabilises your blood sugar. As per last week’s post, if you only include fruit and milk with perhaps a small amount of yoghurt, you will essentially be consuming mostly sugar.
One last point to make is that there are many protein powders out there that are created as an ‘all-in-one’ nutritional shake. They typically include all three macronutrients, a whole range of vitamins and minerals, fibre, greens and many also contain live bacteria and enzymes.
In addition to using the simple protein powders in my smoothies, I do also use one of these high-quality ‘all-in-one’ shake protein powders for when I’ve got very little time, or I’ve run out of the other ingredients.
Being a purest, I ideally like to include as many fresh ingredients in my smoothies as possible, but when it’s a case of no breakfast at all or an all-in-one shake, I’ll always opt for the shake! You simply add your choice of milk to these protein powders and you can either use a flask with a shaker or a blender to make them.
So if like many, you often struggle with what to have for breakfast, I recommend you give these smoothies a try for a week or so and I’d love to hear any feedback around if you’ve noticed an improvement in your focus, energy, mood or sleep!
Next week it’s October and all of a sudden here in the UK it feels like Summer is officially over, so we’re changing the subject altogether and I’m turning my attention to what we all need to think about as winter approaches.
Throughout the month, I’ll be looking at how you can best support your mental, physical and emotional health during the darker, colder months and why a focus on wellbeing is more important this year than ever before as a result of working from home, possible further lockdown measures and when a having a healthy immune system is key.
If you’d like support with your daily or morning routine and how best to support yourself using proper nutrition for focus, productivity, mood and energy; book in for a no-obligation consultation where we can look at what you’re struggling with and what you would like to achieve, contact us here.
Kate x
