How to Make 2 Easy Smoothies at Home with Kelly LeVeque | B-Well Together | Salesforce

All right. Hello everyone and welcome to a tasty Tuesday of Be well Together. Today we are welcoming back the oh so nutritiously knowledgeable Kelly Levesque. So Kelly, this is her encore performance with us. She is a holistic nutritionist. She, she is a celebrity health coach who works with a listers like Jessica Alba and Jennifer Gardner and Chelsea Handler and all sorts of other famous folks. She is a best selling author known for her body love series including body a journal, 90 days to practice positivity, Create momentum and build you'd healthy lifestyle. And you can also catch her on the Be well by Kelly podcast which I am still loving by the way. So today's topic, I'm so excited about this. We are going to have the honor of attending smoothie school. So Kelly is going to whip up two really easy at home smoothies to get your morning started with a delicious nutritious blend. And just a point of note, you can find all of these recipes and then some on her website kellylevesque.com so with that, welcome back, Kelly.

Hey, thanks for having me. It's so good to be here. It's so fun to do smoothie school. I took this on the road for my last book tour and I was on the road with Williams Sonoma from January to almost, you know, quarantine middle of March. So it's fun to be doing it again. If anyone out there knows me, I am a holistic nutritionist. But I'm sort of known for this smoothie formula called the Fab four. And the whole reason and kind of my motivation behind creating this formula was that every time I went to places like whole foods or juice bars or smoothie places, so many of the, so many of the smoothies out there were full of sugar and they were full of fruit and they weren't actually satisfying or good for balancing blood sugar. So what I created was a formula that you could use in your kitchen to make smoothies at any time and you can really create any flavor. So today we're going to make two smoothies. The first one is my spa smoothie. And so this is an all green smoothie. There's absolutely no fruit in it. Well, there's a cucumber, but it's not traditional fruit. And then the next smoothie we're going to make is something called cookies and cream. So let's start with, let's start with understanding the formula and we'll build out the Fab Four smoothies. So first and foremost, whenever you grab your blender pro tip, always put Your nut milk or your water or your liquid in first. This keeps your ingredients from sticking to the bottom of your blender. Okay, so today I'm using a macadamia nut milk. Macadamia nut is the lowest in sugar out there available right now when it comes to a nut milk. And I would say when it comes to nutrition, it is mostly fat. So it's satisfying. But remember that a lot of these nut milks are actually not, you know, they aren't a really good source of nutrition. They're just going to make your smoothie creamy. So if you decide, hey, I don't want to use a nut milk, I'd rather use water, that's great too. You can use a little bit of extra almond butter or avocado, and that'll thicken up your shake. And you don't need to worry about adding a nut milk if you don't want to. So always about one and a half to two cups. Now, someone might ask, well, why would you do two? Or why would you do closer to one? Totally based on how thick you like your smoothie. Do you like a thicker, more ice cream consistency, or do you like a thinner, drinkable smoothie? So I go for one and a half cups. I find that that's sort of a sweet spot for me. And the easiest way to do it is just to look at the side of your blender because they always have the hash marks of exactly how much liquid you're putting in your smoothie. You don't need to measure it out with measuring cups or anything like that. Next up is protein. And this is a really interesting topic because a lot of my clients always want to know, well, how do I pick a protein powder? And so I think when you think about building a whole food smoothie, you want to think about minimal ingredients in your protein powder. There are so many proteins on the market. When you go to Whole Foods or Erewhon or Mother's or sprouts that have 20 ingredients in them, and I would recommend that you look for something with more limited ingredients. And I would do that because what you're doing is you're building a whole food shake. You're going to put fat, you're going to put fiber, and you're going to put leafy greens and veggies in it or maybe a little bit of fruit. And so really the protein should just be protein. It doesn't need to be prebiotics, probiotics, vitamins. All of those other sources actually increase the chances of contamination. They increase the chances that Something's not going to work for you or maybe cause gut dysbiosis or a stomach ache or something like that. So I always look for simple ingredients. Some great protein powders would be a plain grass fed whey, a collagen protein, and we'll talk about that one in a second. If you are vegetarian or vegan, a hemp protein or pea protein is my preference over rice protein. And that's because unfortunately rice, most grains are really good at sequestering heavy metals from soil. But rice does a better job than the rest of the. So chances of an increase in arsenic or lead is higher with a rice protein. You've probably seen maybe the reports on baby food products being contaminated with arsenic. It's honestly just because rice is really good at sucking that from the soil. So most grains are. But pea protein and hemp protein are great options. So look for minimal ingredients. I came out with a protein powder this year and it has three ingredients. So it's 100% grass fed beef protein. So you make it like bone broth. So it's beef and bones that are boiled. So it contains all your essential amino acids plus all your collagen amino acids. And then it's just monk fruit, organic monk fruit, which is a sweetener that is it's, it doesn't spike your blood sugar. And then either organic cacao or organic vanilla. So the coolest part about a protein powder is one you really want to like it. Like it has to be the flavor, that it's the base layer of your smoothie. So what I would do and what I recommend to my clients is head to a grocery store, buy the individual packets, look for limited ingredients. You don't need the whole kitchen sink. You're going to build a whole food smoothie. But pick individual packets and find the protein that you like best, a mellow vanilla or a mellow chocolate flavor. And then you build from there because that's where the sweetness is coming from. We're relying on the protein powder to create that sweet flavor. So whether you choose vanilla or chocolate will dictate. Okay, well what kind of flavors can we go with? Vanilla lends itself to green smoothies, berry smoothies, citrus smoothies, you know, pumpkin smoothies in the fall. And then chocolate lends itself to like cherries, raspberries, mocha, chocolate, almond butter, desserty type flavors. So think in terms of okay, if I'm going to include the fab four, it's protein, fat, fiber and greens. So first up is protein. And I want it to be, I want it to be, like I said, a simple protein. And this is going to be the base flavor. So because I'm making a green smoothie, I'm adding one scoop of vanilla protein. This is 20 grams of protein. So what you always want to make sure of, because the majority of research suggests that 20 grams of protein is really what you want to aim for in the morning because that supports lowering cravings in the afternoon, supporting blood sugar balance. People who start their day with protein eat less overall naturally and have less obsessive thoughts about food, less late night eating. So it's really, really productive in supporting blood sugar balance, decreased cravings and your ability to just concentrate.

So Kelly, I'm going to ask you a question there. When you say to get those 20 grams in in the morning, like what, like before noon? Like if I'm in the Pacific time right now. So if I already missed my shot at 9:00am or like.

Yeah. So whenever it comes to breakfast, we're breaking our fast. So we're breaking our fast. Your first meal of the day is what dictates how your blood sugar, how regulated your blood sugar will be. So the more balanced that meal is and the more satisfying it is, and the more it regulates your hunger hormones and doesn't spike your blood sugar too high and crash you down, the better you'll be. So it's just the majority of research on protein and satiety uses a benchmark of about 20 grams. And I found personally with clients that works really, really well. So the one thing that I would say is the majority of collagens on the market, the serving size is about 10 grams or 12 grams of protein. So for my clients who want to use collagen exclusively as their protein, they can, they would just use two scoops. So just always check the back nutrition facts and look for what's the serving size and what, how many grams of protein am I getting?

And then you have a pro. If you have a smoothie later in the day, do you need protein? Do you want to like kind of pull back a little bit on it? If it's like a snack at 3, you don't actually want 20 grams of protein at that point.

Yeah. So I talk about this in my books. I call it a roadie. So because it's just like, it's just like a little something to bridge you or a bridge snack to bridge you from lunch to dinner. It doesn't need to be as filling, but we're aiming for about half like 10 grams of protein, 5 grams of fadish, Some fiber. It really is just almost like a half recipe, if you will, so 20 grams of protein. So just look for your favorite protein powder. Use a scoop. When it comes to collagen, it's technically an incomplete protein. But if you are someone who eats animal protein, say you have filet of fish and turkey burgers and maybe you have grass fed steak or you've incorporated complete proteins and animal products. Collagen is a phenomenal way to round out your amino acid profile because it's getting you amino acids you're not getting from muscle meat. So so it's getting you glycine and proline, these amino acids that are great for tissue. It's basically collagen synthesis. So we have the inputs and then we're able to synthesize collagen internally. And the best way to do that is with the amino acids that you need to produce collagen. So if you're eating collagen or if you're eating, you know, if you're doing chicken with the skin on, or if you have pork rinds, or if you're a bone broth person or a gelatin person, you're getting those amino acids and that's great. And then vitamin C is what really helps to synthesize collagen as well. So we'll get to that. But we always have vitamin C in our smoothies. With spinach or a leafy green, we have our protein. Now we need fat. Great sources of healthy fat. Avocado, almond butter, peanut butter, coconut oil, olive oil. And choosing your fat will dictate how thick your smoothie gets. So if you like a thicker smoothie, you use a whole food fat. Today for the green one, we're using an avocado, we're using half of a small avocado. The best rule of thumb is to use your thumb. So if you're using liquid fat, it's one to two of the top of your thumb, that's about two tablespoons. One to two tablespoons. And then if you're using whole food, your whole thumb. So one to two of those, that would look like a quarter to a half of small or medium avocado. So we put the avocado in as our fat and then we want to think about fiber. So great sources of fiber. Chia flax, acacia psyllium husk. If you don't like nuts and seeds as fiber or fiber powders, you can use frozen cauliflower rice, you can add zucchini, you can add cucumber. You're looking to really just add fiber to your shake. Because what it does is it not only stretches your stomach, which regulates one of the strongest hunger hormones in your body named ghrelin. So the physical stretching of your stomach actually calms that hunger hormone, but it actually is going to slow the digestion of any sugar glucose derived foods like starch or sugar that's present in the food. It's going to slow down that digestion, which is going to support the elongation of your blood sugar curve. So fat and fiber is the same. It's always one to two tablespoons. So you have 20 grams of proteins. There's your one, that's the first part of the fat board. Then you have fat, that's one to two tablespoons. Then you have fiber, that's one to two tablespoons dotables. So we're going to use just some chia seeds today. And I'm sorry if I'm out of breath, I'm 20 weeks pregnant.

You go girl, you're doing it. You got this thing.

I'm like talking, I'm like, why am I out of breath? It's okay. Two tablespoons of chia. And some interesting things to think about would be if you enjoy and indulge in, especially during quarantine, in wine, in chips, in cookies, if you go on a vacation or you're just like, I'm at home so much and I'm snacking. What those foods do, what those processed acellular and sugary foods do is they feed forms of strains of bacteria in your gut called candida and yeast, and sometimes inflammatory strains of bacteria that can lead to leaky gut and IBS and, you know, digestion issues. And what the old theory of thinking was when it came to gut health was, oh, if someone has some type of gut issue like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or one of these overgrowths of yeast or candida, what we'll do is we'll just, we'll disinfect it. We're going to give them antifungals, antibacterials, we're going to give them antibiotics, we're going to just kind of strip away those bacteria cells. And the new theory of that is actually the opposite, is that this is a beautiful ecosystem. And when it comes to making and building a strong, healthy microbiome, it's way more important to be consistent with fiber and prebiotics. Because what that's doing is that's feeding the good guys and they automatically outgrow the bad guys and they take control of the Microbiome. The problem with stripping away is that we strip away everything. And the guys that survive are most often the ones that cause problems, the inflammatory ones, the ones that have been overgrowing for a long time. So as much as you can, think about the fab four in your meals and in your smoothies and think like, well, how could I add a little bit of fiber or prebiotics to this? In your smoothie that might look like the chia or the flax? If you wanted to add a little bit more, you could add a fiber powder like a psyllium husk or an acacia fiber. And based on what you add, it will change the thickness of your shake. So a prebiotic like psyllium husk, really gelatinizing like chia, it's gonna thicken your shake. If you say, kelly, I don't like a thick shake, I would say, okay, well, let's steer clear of psyllium husk and chia. And let's lean more into flax and acacia. They're not gonna thicken your shake as much. Same goes for making a smoothie. When using fat to thicken the smoothie, avocado is gonna thicken it way more than a couple tablespoons of almond butter will. Okay, so just aiming for at least 2 tablespoons of fiber. And then what we want to think about is how can we add greens or vegetables or produce? That's what this is about. A smoothie is a great way to add produce to your life and start your day with colors, all those phytochemicals, water rich foods. So I call this a spa smoothie because it's got a cucumber, lemon flavor to it. Sometimes I'll put mint in it. So I just take about a half a cup of chopped cucumber. It could be Persian cucumber, English cucumber. Whatever you have around, just throw that in. And then we always add a handful of leafy greens. So spinach, kale, if you're like, that's disgusting. I don't want to have that to my smoothie. Think about things like herbaceous things. Can you do a strawberry basil smoothie? Think about the ways that you can add phytochemicals to your life that aren't bitter. Okay, so add a handful of spinach, and then anytime anything is bitter, my first recommendation is to find yourself a lemon or a lime and squeeze it in. So I'll squeeze sometimes a half to a full lemon in my smoothies. And what's so interesting about lemon and things that are Acidic like lemon and apple cider vinegar is. They're acidic when you taste them, but they're actually really alkalizing in the body. And they're great at your body ready for digestion. So it supports hydrochloric acid, it supports enzyme production. It supports. So it really increases digestion. Okay, so now when you think about how can you add veggies to your diet during quarantine, suggestions I made for clients was to buy frozen spinach, frozen kale, frozen cauliflower, rice, frozen berries. You don't even have to worry about having fresh produce around. But just remember, if you're buying frozen kale or spinach, it shrinks because it's basically been almost steamed and it breaks down into really small amounts. So don't add like a full cup of frozen spinach or you will be Popeye. Okay. You will not like it. So just keep that in mind. Okay, cool. So that's all we do. We just blend it up. Anytime you get used to using this formula, you just think in your kitchen, okay, what protein am I using? Vanilla, chocolate. There's peanut butter flavored ones. There's coffee flavored ones. That's the base flavor. Then you think about the fat. That would pair nicely with that. Greens and avocado are good. Maybe chocolate and almond butter is yummy. So you pair those fats and then keep a couple of fiber sources around. They don't really change the taste. They'll change the consistency. So like I said, chia and soy and husk are more gelatinous. Acacia and flax are less, like, a little thinner. If you don't like that thick smoothie taste and then add a little handful of greens, we'll make a berry one next. Or I'll walk you through it while I answer questions. But that's all it is. Ice is a personal preference. You can add ice or not add ice. I think when I add frozen veggies and or fruit, I don't add ice. I'm used to not adding ice, but it's totally a personal preference, so go for it. I'm going to go ahead and blend this. I'll let you check for questions, and I'll be right back.

So, okay, so here's a question for you. What are your tricks and recommendations for smoothies for the kids? Every now and then I can kind of get them in there, but the green for sure turns them off, which is like the number one thing I'm trying to shove in them. And I can try to say, like, you can't even Taste the spinach. Look, this is great, but they're not buying it. So what are your smoothie tricks for kids?

So I would couple of things that I do with Sebastian. So I have a 20 month old and we make smoothies together is I always buy celery every single week. And I'm into zero waste right now, especially during quarantine and being home so often and having the time to do that. So I'll chop up all the celery leaves and I'll save those. They're a little less bitter and they're not as dark. So I can hide that color behind a berry a lot easier. Also chocolate, anytime you're using a chocolate protein, it's going to hide a green color a little bit better for kids. So maybe you do a chocolate almond butter blueberry or chocolate almond butter raspberry and then you hide a more mellow colored green in there like the celery top. That's great. Another thing is the cauliflower rice. Cauliflower rice is barely, you know, that's very little taste. It's super mild. In a smoothie it's gonna just be, it's almost like adding ice that doesn't dilute the flavor of your smoothie. And what's so great about it is cauliflower is a cruciferous vegetable. It's rich in a phytochemical called sulforaphane which is anti cancer. It's actually going to anti inflammatory anti cancer. What it does is it doubles cellular detoxification if you have it like once a day. So where you would your cells would release anti inflammatory and anti tumor necrosis enzymes every other hour. They then release them every hour. So when I think about how am I going to get cruciferous vegetables into little Bash's life. Cauliflower rice in a smoothie. You know, he was, he's fickle. He's 20 months old. So sometimes I'll saute kale. He's into it. Sometimes he's like, no, but like kale chips, frozen cauliflower rice, things like that where you're either hiding it in or making it fun. That really helps.

Great. That's a great tip.

If anyone likes a bitter taste or say they don't like the digestion to digest Brussels sprouts, kale, those like really heavy cruciferous vegetables. Remember that arugula and radish are also cruciferous vegetables. So you could do radish on a salad or an arugula salad and that would help.

Great, great. And another question I have for you. You mentioned that you had come up.

With your own protein.

Is that available for purchase? Is that out there in the world yet?

It's on Amazon. It just went up like five days ago.

Oh my God. Congratulations. This is very excited. So tell me what it's called.

It's called the Be well by Kelly protein powder.

The Be well by Kelly protein powder. I love it.

I'm really.

What kind of protein powder? What is in your protein power?

It's a pasture raised farm in Sweden and it's grass fed beef. So what is if people are using collagen. Collagen is extracted via chemical process called using hexane, which is how we normally actually extract protein from most things, like any grains, any collagen. But what's interesting is like a bone broth protein is just making bone broth and dehydrating it. And when you think about making whey protein, it's curds and whey and then we just dehydrate it. So I love a chemical free process. So the grass fed beef protein is the bones and the beef and it's stewed and dehydrated. And so there's. It's a chemical free process and you get all your essential amino acids plus all your collagen amino acids. And it's very like compact and efficient. So I'm like, it's taken me five or six years to really decide on what I wanted to do. Find a source and find the cleanest version. And so I'm really proud of it.

I can't wait to try it. I just worked out. I'm excited. Next time for your three, Pete, I'll give you a review.

Okay, great. I love it.

All right, let's do the cookies and cream one because I think I'm going to get in trouble if people don't hear what that is.

So let me just show you guys exactly how thick this smoothie is. You see, it's not, it's not thin because we use, we use chia. We use almond. Sorry, we used avocado. And, and so it's a little bit thicker, a little less smell. So I don't have two blenders. So I'm going to rinse this real quick and I'll be right.

Fantastic. Actually, I had that question myself. I was like, now does she, is she going to pull up a second Vitamix? Catherine, are you into smoothies? Do you do smoothies at home?

I don't, but it's one of the things that I want to get into, which is why I was very excited about this episode. And I don't actually have a blender. And this was something that someone asked in chatter. I'm sure you've gone through a ton of different blenders as you go through smoothies. What should we be looking for? Do you have kind of like a recommended blender that we should go for?

Yeah, you know what? I've actually. I had the same blender from 2008 to 2012, and then I gifted it to my friend. It was just like the bottom level Vitamix. And it's still lasting. She has five kids and she makes smoothies all the time. And it's still on her counter working. And I upgraded to the A3500. But it's just about a motor and a blade. Because a lot of times you can get a blender that doesn't have a very sharp blade or chops up your smoothie and then it tastes like a salad, and then that's really not fun to drink. So I've always been a Vitamix person. I do have the mini nutribullet, the little mini Travel1. That's $30 from Target. That's something like if I go to New York for work and I'm there for a week, I will actually be the person who. Who brings it in my luggage to travel blend if I need to. Okay, so let's talk about a cookies and cream smoothie real quick. I'll make this one a little bit faster. So cookies and cream. Chocolate base. A chocolate base of your smoothie is going to. Well, it's going to cover up any greens, but it's also just going to make it taste like a little bit more like desserts. So if anyone has cravings, they tend to be. I make this recommendation for women who are like coming maybe pmsing or about going through menstruation as you cravings for chocolate and things like that increase. Or if someone's like really trying to diet and restrict and feel like their cravings are really raging, Starting your day with a chocolate smoothie and just nipping it in the bud right there. Then. And there is a great way to lower those cravings. Or we do a roadie with a chocolate smoothie in the afternoon. So keep that in mind. This is, you know, when you're using stevia or monk fruit, you want to avoid protein powders that have real sugar in them because they will have an effect on your blood sugar. But stevia and monk fruit. Monk fruit tastes a little more like sugar. Stevia can tend to be a little bit bitter, but it's a great way to hit that spot and also satisfy you because it's really just protein. Protein regulates four of your eight hunger hormones. It's the most satisfying macronutrient. So getting it in, like I said, first thing is important. All right, so chocolate cookies and cream is actually a chocolate almond butter smoothie with a little bit of blueberries to add extra sweetness. So we are going to add a big heaping tablespoon of almond butter. Let's see if I can get even more. Yep, there's two. So I always recommend people start with the base smoothie formula. So that's the 20 grams of protein, and then it's one to two tablespoons of fat, one to two tablespoons of fiber. So start with a tablespoon of fat, a tablespoon of fiber, and see how, how long that keeps you full of this smoothie is that it would keep you full for six hours. That's regulating your blood sugar, elongating your blood sugar curve, regulating hunger hormones. And what the best part about that is. The goal of this is to get you to lunch or your next meal without crashing. Because if it can prevent the crash, then you can make better choices for your next meal and more balanced choices. So that's really always the goal with the smoothie, is depending on when you have breakfast. If you decided, oh, I'm going to have breakfast at 10am and I only need to get to one, you may be fine getting away with a tablespoon of fat and a tablespoon of fiber. But if you had a smoothie at 6am with Sebastian and I, because we were up at 5,45, then you might need double. So gauge it based on your lifestyle. So we're adding two tablespoons of Chia. You could add two tablespoons of flax. Flax is going to give it a little bit of a nuttier taste than chia. We have our protein, our fat and our fiber. Now we need a little handful of leafy greens. So grabbing a handful of spinach. And then here's the kicker. This is kind of what I'm known for, is that I limit fruit. So it's a fourth to a half a cup. And I'm doing that because when we talk about blending fruit, a lot of smoothies on Pinterest recipes you find online, it's a banana, it's a date, it's two cups of pineapple is 28 grams of sugar. So it's blended up, it hits your bloodstream really fast. You ride that blood sugar roller coaster up for 90 minutes and then you're crashing. Crashing means increased cravings, irritability, inability to concentrate. And so it's really detrimental to work life feeling calm and relaxed. So you can get all the flavor and antioxidants in a fourth to a half a cup. So these are wild blueberries. They are going to add extra sweetness to this shake and then we are going to blend it up because those are frozen. I'm not adding ice and I can blend it or we can answer questions.

We are at about time.

Okay.

So that was awesome. I'm loving this new cookies and cream. I'm going to try that this afternoon for sure. Thank you so much, so much for joining us again.

My pleasure.

Congratulations on the pregnancy. Yes, there it is. That little bump is coming along just fine and maybe we'll see if we can get you back here and check out a big bump.

Ok.

That's wonderful. So thank you to everyone for tuning in today. Such delicious, delicious treats and things to try. Really appreciate it. Be happy, be well and we'll see you back here again tomorrow.

Thank you. Bye.