Try My Slow Carb Smoothie Recipe

Woman pouring smoothie into glass, close up

One of the tenets of the Four Hour Body (or Slow Carb) Diet is that you should begin each day with a minimum of 30 grams of protein in the morning. What this supposedly does is give your body an energy store to work with right away, and in my experience this energy store has helped reduce the amount of food cravings I have for quite a number of hours. I’m usually feeling very full until it’s time to eat lunch, and I have a general sense of being full throughout the morning.

The recommended breakfast that the book and a lot of websites recommend is some combination of egg whites, beans, and a green, like kale or spinach. This is fine, but a lot of people report having a difficult time eating so many eggs in the morning when they’re not used to it. Now I don’t have any problem with eggs and I enjoy eating them, but I much prefer making smoothies. However, making smoothies the traditional way would involve using fruit to sweeten it, which is against one of the tenets of the diet. I’ve had to modify the smoothies I make in the morning to become them Slow Carb compliant, and although I searched around online to find some recipes that would work well with the diet, I didn’t find very many options. That’s why I had to make up my own!

Now just note, if you have a sweet, mall food court smoothie in mind before you taste this, you’re not going to think this is the world’s most amazing smoothie. It’s not something I would recommend having every day because you will get burnt out on this flavor. The taste is hard to describe but the strongest flavor you taste is definitely the nut butter, which gives the smoothie a sort of peanut-buttery taste. If you’re expecting the smoothie to be a comparable match to what you’re making with fruit, you might be disappointed. That being said, the smoothie is palatable and effective.

Now the preferred ingredients vary from person to person, but when I make smoothies I use the following:

  • I start with two tablespoons of some type of nut butter. One option I like is sun butter, which is made from sunflower seeds, almond butter, and cashew butter. There’s also a nut blend called Nutso that works really well.
  • I’ll then put a cup of coconut milk. However, it has to be unsweetened. Flax milk is another choice: some flax milks have protein added to them which could boost your overall protein, which is an added plus. You could also use almond milk.
  • One tablespoon of Chia seeds,
  • Three tablespoons of hemp hearts, which are basically shelled hemp seeds,
  • One scoop of protein powder, and I use a protein powder that’s low in sugars and low in carbs.
  • Then I’ll put in a cup of chopped kale. I’ll usually approximate that with a generous handful.
  • Next, another cup or generous handful of spinach.
  • Then I’ll put in some turmeric powder. There’s a brand called Daily Turmeric, and I use one scoop of it.
  • I then put a medium or average-sized carrot in there.
  • Then I will add seven to ten ice cubes.
  • Finally, I’ll add a cup or so of water during the blending process to get the consistency I want.

After I combine the ingredients, I blend it on low speed for 30 seconds just to get the bigger pieces chopped up, then gradually increase the speed and let it blend for a minute and a half altogether. The recipe above should produce about one and a half glasses of smoothie, which measures somewhere between 600 – 700 calories, which should far exceed the protein requirement.

A word about blenders: I’m using a Vitamix Blender, so you may want to experiment with your blender depending on the variety that you have, since different types of blenders vary in their size and blending power. I would highly recommend that you get a good blender for the Slow Carb diet. I chose the Vitamix— which I bought at Costco— over the Blendtec and the Ninja. It seemed to be the most reasonably priced for the quality of blender it is and I’m very pleased with it.

Well that’s it, I hope you enjoy your smoothies! Let me know if you have suggestions as to how we can make them taste a little better by leaving some ideas in the comments. Thanks!

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