Mixed Berry Breakfast Smoothie (with a magical secret ingredient!)

It's interesting how you can stumble upon something that takes your life in a totally new direction when you were never actively looking for it.

I wasn't looking for information on nutrition, or diets, or losing weight. At all.

But in my other life I am a wedding pianist, and one of the many podcasts that I listen to is the Evolve Your Wedding Business podcast. I was driving somewhere listening to it a few weeks ago, and she had a guest on talking about nutrition. The idea was that entrepreneurs need to take care of themselves, have plenty of energy, etc.

The guest, whose name was Karl Pilz, cut right to the chase and said that by far the number one cause of weight gain by far was too many simple carbs and not enough protein -- and, oddly enough, not enough fat.

And I sort of gulped, because not only I am big carb-eater, but ... well, uh, let's just say that I'm not as thin as I'd like to me.

The next morning I started listening to Karl's podcast, I'm Too Busy for Nutrition, and downloaded his smoothie recipes.

Karl advertises these smoothies as a way to "Double your energy in 25 minutes and start losing weight using a a secret magic ingredient." I don't want to steal his thunder and give away the secret ingredient, so you can go here to download the full set of recipes.

(By the way, I don't have any affiliation with any of these people or podcasts. Just wanted to clarify that.)

The Ingredients

8 oz whole milk
½ scoop chocolate whey protein powder
2 TBLS almond butter
2 TBLS chia seeds
½ cup frozen mixed berries
Secret Magic Ingredient (click here to find it)

Directions:

Combine everything in a blender. Oh, and be sure to add the secret ingredient last. And melt it first. (Am I making you curious? :))
Make sure you use a cool smoothie straw to drink it with.

So how was it?

First of all, I'll be honest: both the taste and texture is very different from smoothies I've made before or, say, a smoothie you would get at Starbucks. Most smoothies are pseudo-shakes, and if you're hoping for something similar to strawberry ice cream, you won't find it here.

But that doesn't mean it was bad. I liked it ... but I think it might take some getting used to. For one thing, I'm not used to drinking my breakfast.

How about the promise of energy? Well, we didn't notice a sudden jolt of energy specifically. But it was surprisingly filling. I typically feel like a snack about two hours after breakfast, and after having had these smoothies for a few days now, I'm not the least bit hungry for a good five hours.

Update:

That one innocent podcast led to a lot of discussions with my husband, who is big on scientific research. We both did some digging, and the more we read, the more we heard about how carbs lead to not only weight gain, but everything from wrinkles to diabetes to heart disease.