The Secret Ingredients That Makes Your Smoothie Burn Fat

What you eat every morning sets your metabolic tone for the next 24 hours. Skip breakfast or wait to eat until several hours after waking, and you set up a cycle of crashing blood sugar, snack attacks, insulin spikes, and exhaustion that can last until bedtime. Not only that, you encourage the release of stress hormones. That means you’ll feel hungry, moody, and foggy all afternoon.

Contrary to what you may have learned from outdated diets that encouraged you to cut calories to lose weight, skipping meals also means your body hangs on to your fat reserves. If you don’t consistently eat healthy, filling food, your system figures it better hang on to any extra pounds, just in case…

To give you the most bang for your metabolic buck, your breakfast should have clean, lean protein, filling fiber, and healthy fats.

I’ve been drinking a smoothie every day for over 30 years, and I can attest to the incredible health benefits. Not only is it ready in five minutes or less, but it’s portable, affordable, and offers ideal nutrition for a healthy, successful day. The recipe below is full of ingredients that give your metabolism an extra boost, so you set yourself up to burn fat for incredible, sustained energy. No more midmorning crashes or chalking up those added pounds to age!

The protein powder in your shake matters. Look for one that’s free of gluten, soy, whey, or other dairy. All are known to be potential causes of food intolerance, with uncomfortable symptoms including stubborn weight gain, fatigue, joint pain, sinus trouble, skin breakouts, and headaches. The ideal plant-based powder has clean, lean protein sourced from hemp, chia, chlorella, or pea, while paleo protein powder should be from pasture-raised eggs or grass-fed beef only. Look for one with 20 to 25 grams of protein per serving.

And protein isn’t the only important ingredient—you want to make sure your smoothie has at least 4 grams of fiber and no more than 3 grams of sugar (and ideally that number will be 1 gram or less!). Fat is also important because it helps stabilize blood glucose by slowing the digestive process so you stay satisfied and energized. This recipe also includes cinnamon, which has been shown in a number of studies to boost metabolism and help burn fat. It also has cayenne, another known metabolism-booster (spicy foods essentially "speed up" your system, including your metabolism).

Serves 1