Banana Weight Loss Smoothie Recipe

A banana smoothie does not cause weight loss; no single food does. What it can be is a filling breakfast with a known calorie count. This one blends a frozen banana with unsweetened almond milk, Greek yogurt, chia seeds, peanut butter and cinnamon and comes to about 320 calories, 13 grams of protein and 8 grams of fibre, with no added sugar.

What a banana smoothie can do for weight loss

The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases states the rule: to lose weight, a person has to burn more calories than they take in through food and drink. A smoothie helps only where it replaces something with more calories. Drunk on top of a usual breakfast, it adds 320.

The figures for one glass are worked out from USDA FoodData Central.

One glass
Calories	about 320
Protein	13 g
Fibre	8 g
Sugars	19 g, none of it added
Fat	15 g

Recipe

Banana Smoothie with Chia and Peanut Butter

A banana smoothie with unsweetened almond milk, Greek yogurt, chia seeds, peanut butter and cinnamon. One glass with about 320 calories, 13 grams of protein and 8 grams of fibre.

5.0 (1)Print

Prep

5 min

Total

5 min

Serves

1

Cuisine

American

Ingredients

• 1 medium banana (sliced and frozen)
• 1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk
• 1/4 cup plain lowfat Greek yogurt
• 1 tablespoon chia seeds
• 1 tablespoon peanut butter
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup ice cubes

Instructions

1. Pour the almond milk into the blender first, then add the yogurt, the chia seeds, the peanut butter, the cinnamon, the banana and the ice.
2. Blend for 45 to 60 seconds, until smooth and thick.
3. If the blender stalls, add water a tablespoon at a time.
4. Pour into a glass and drink within 15 minutes; the chia seeds thicken the smoothie as it stands.

Nutrition

Calories:

320

Calculated from the ingredient quantities above using the USDA FoodData Central database, then divided by the number of servings. It is an estimate and will vary with the exact products you use.

Lighter and heavier versions

Version	Calories	Protein
As in the card	about 320	13 g
Without the peanut butter	about 225	10 g
With water in place of almond milk	about 305	13 g
With 1/2 cup of yogurt in place of 1/4 cup	about 365	19 g

The peanut butter accounts for about 95 of the calories and the chia seeds for about 60. Most of the sugar is the banana's own. A drink with about half the calories is the Chobani yogurt drink copy, at about 150 a bottle.

A frozen banana, and the order in the blender

Peel a ripe banana, slice it and freeze the slices flat in a bag. Frozen fruit makes the smoothie thick without much ice, which only waters it down.

Liquid goes into the blender first, so that the blades catch. The chia seeds swell in liquid: a smoothie left standing for half an hour sets like a pudding and needs a splash of water.

Looking for Meredith Shirk's recipes?

This page is not connected with Meredith Shirk. She is a personal trainer and the founder of Svelte Media, and her programmes and recipes, among them a MetaBoost meal plan, are on her own site. The smoothie above is this site's recipe, not hers.

Auf Deutsch: Für den Bananen-Smoothie 1 gefrorene Banane mit 120 ml ungesüßtem Mandeldrink, 60 g griechischem Joghurt, 1 Esslöffel Chiasamen, 1 Esslöffel Erdnussmus und 1/2 Teelöffel Zimt mixen. Ein Glas hat etwa 320 Kalorien, 13 g Eiweiß und 8 g Ballaststoffe. Abnehmen lässt er niemanden; er ist ein sättigendes Frühstück mit bekannter Kalorienzahl. Diese Seite gehört nicht zu Meredith Shirk.

More breakfasts with the numbers given

The blueberry cottage cheese breakfast bake has about 200 calories a square. The Costa Rican tea page answers the same weight-loss question for a sweetened tea.