Strawberry Protein Smoothie

I don’t buy a lot of processed foods. As a holistic nutritionist, I know what is put in processed food in order to make it shelf stable. Let’s just say that our grandparents would have scratched their heads at most of these sketchy ingredients.

Since being in lockdown, we haven’t eaten out as much as we normally do. And now that I’m a non-stop cook, cheffing up meals that satisfy all of the varying taste buds in my house, I’ve found that I’ve lost my taste for crappy food.

One of the best things that we can do for ourselves is make our own meals. I talk about our evolutionary biological needs a lot for good reason. They run the show for our physical and mental bodies.

When we give our bodies sunshine, healthy proteins and fats (which are macronutrients, meaning, we can’t live without them), exercise, and face to face contact with real human beings, our biology runs like a well-oiled machine.

And we can’t outsmart our biological drives.

So, we can eat all of the processed and crappy foods in the world and we’ll wonder why we’re always hungry. We can eat low-fat yogurts (low-fat almost always means high sugar) and heart-healthy store-bought granolas and do ‘all the right things,’ but wonder why we’re still gaining weight and why we’re always hungry.

There’s a saying in the nutrition world that refers to being overfed but undernourished. This seems to be an ever-emerging reality of our fast-paced, convenience-based world that we live in, where we’re eating more and more food but getting less and less nutrition.

Our insatiable hunger is actually a biological signal that, no, we don’t need more food. In fact, it’s a strong signal that we need less food that is more nutrient-dense. We need healthy, stable fats (like coconut oil, animal fats, grass-fed butter, olive oil) and protein and we need fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables.

We all do better when we eat when we’re actually hungry, not when we’re bored, and when we stop when we’re full. And our circadian rhythms spark back to balanced life when we honour the cycles of eating only during active waking hours and stopping several hours before bed.

I have a ten-year-old daughter who loves her ‘sweets.’ If it were up to her, she’d eat carbs and sugar all day long. So, I’ve had to get creative with creating naturally sweet snacks that satisfy her sweet tooth and also put some nutrients into her body.

Smoothies are one of the best ways that I know how to deliver both a healthy snack and one that’s got some sweetness to it at the same time.

Sometimes I just feel like a light meal for breakfast. I don’t want my typical bacon and eggs or bone broth and meat. But I always need to start my day with protein. Protein fills us up and gives us energy to start our day.

If I were to drink this shake without the protein, I would feel shakey. I’m super sensitive to sugar; even fruit sugar. But the protein balances this shake and also adds some good fat with the almond butter.

It’s also really, really good.

Ingredients

1 large banana

1.5 cups of frozen strawberries

3 tbsp of almond butter

2 cups (or more) of almond milk

1 scoop of collagen protein powder

Combine all ingredients in a high-speed blender and blend until smooth.