Mineral Rich Chocolate Avocado Smoothie

In a breakfast slump and need something fresh and nutritious? Try out this mineral rich chocolate avocado smoothie! It is loaded with minerals from powerful functional foods like pumpkin seeds, spinach, cacao, and avocado.

Mineral Rich Smoothie

One glass of this mineral rich smoothie fills your body with essential minerals like calcium, magnesium, potassium, and selenium. Just look at these amazing nutrition details per serving:

• 466mg sodium
• 1582mg potassium
• 317mg magnesium
• 219mg calcium

These four minerals are essential for the functioning of every cell in the body. They are also needed in “macro” or relatively large amounts (milligrams) compared to “micro” minerals (think micrograms).

Getting Enough Potassium and Magnesium Minerals

The levels of potassium and magnesium in this smoothie particularly stand out, since these minerals are often in short supply in many people’s daily eating routine. We need generally a minimum of 4,000mg potassium per day, so this smoothie is a great way to get over a third of your day’s needs. For magnesium, an optimal amount from food is about 400mg, so just this one smoothie get you over 75% there! Pretty incredible.

Increasing your intake of minerals helps your body work more efficiently by helping it fight infections, regulate hormones, heal wounds, and increase energy, just to name a few.

How Many Calories Should A Smoothie Have?

If you glance at the smoothie recipe below, you might have a shock from one serving providing over 500 calories! For so long, many of us have been accustomed to try to reduce calories in our meals as much as possible. While staying within your calorie goals is an excellent way to maintain or obtain your good health, we need to make sure we understand what is a healthy amount of calories.

Smoothies As Healthy Meals

If using a smoothie as a meal replacement, especially as a well-balanced breakfast, then you want to make sure it provides you with enough nutrition overall- enough calories, protein, healthy fat, and fiber. Those are the components that make up a balanced meal. When it comes to calories, do you actually know how much is a healthy goal for YOU?

Understanding Realistic Calorie Goals for Weight Loss

In my experience working with clients over the years, especially those seeking weight loss, I find that women tend to think they should eat very little in order to lose weight. For some reason, “1200 calories per day for weight loss” became a common misconception amongst the culture. However, for most women, that’s way too low, even for weight loss!

A more common- and healthier!- calorie goal for many women might be around 1500-1700 calories per day. Of course, these numbers depend on the person! If a woman with a daily calorie goal of 1600 calories planned to eat 3 meals + 1 snack per day, then she could realistically plan to eat on average 450 calories per meal and one 150 calorie snack. Or do a larger breakfast, moderate lunch, and slightly smaller dinner, or numerous other combinations that meet your preferences. As you can probably see now, there’s quite a bit of food we CAN and SHOULD eat even when trying to lose weight.

Eating More But Less Frequently

For many women, the idea of planning to eat MORE is scary at first. And I get it. If you are struggling to lose weight, the idea of eating more seems counterproductive. But in my simple process that I teach called The 4 Method (I teach this in my private nutrition coaching and as well as my online group program also titled The 4 Method), once you first balance your meals with protein, fat and fiber, you change the way your metabolism works. All of a sudden, energy soars and cravings start to vanish. This then allows you to actually space your meals apart about 4 hours or so because you no longer need that snack every 2 hours. That means that you can finally fall back to the traditional 3 meals a day pattern.

Ever thought about the fact that humans for hundreds of years were perfectly fine just eating 3 meals a day without needing snacks all the time? Intriguing, right? That pattern of meal spacing actually works with our biology to support better blood sugar control, gut health, and, ultimately, a healthier metabolism. But to reiterate– that meal spacing pattern only becomes possible when we first eat a balance of protein, fat, and fiber and eat ENOUGH of it all.

Intrigued by this approach? Check out my online program, The 4 Method, where women learn The 4 Method process, the most effective way to get lasting weight loss and get your energy back without the need to count calories or follow unsustainable rules.

{Learn more about building meals with the simple Protein, Fat, Fiber framework by downloading my free Protein, Fat & Fiber Guide!}

Recipe blog content co-written by Jennifer Franzen, RDN and Victoria Peck-Gray, RDN.