How to Make a Healthy Pregnancy Smoothie
When you are pregnant it is really important to eat clean and healthily more than at any other time in your life. You want to aim for high nutrition and moderate to low calories so that you are able to get in more food and nutrients without eating a lot of extra calories or junk. Learning how to make a healthy pregnancy smoothie can be the perfect way to add in a whole ton of nutrition for your growing baby without gaining more than the recommended amount of baby weight.
In this article, we will break down exactly how to create a healthy pregnancy smoothie recipe of your own and give you a bunch of healthy pregnancy smoothie recipes to get you started on the right foot.
Why is Pregnancy Nutrition So Important?
We now know that what you eat during pregnancy has a direct outcome on your baby’s lifetime health and intelligence. By knowing which nutrients to eat more of in each trimester of pregnancy, how much of each nutrient you need to eat, and also how to best source those nutrients like you can learn in The Perfect Pregnancy Nutrition Plan, you can literally grow the healthiest baby possible.
The Perfect Pregnancy Plan is by far the best prenatal nutrition program on the market because it is the most inclusive and the most up-to-date. I followed it closely during my last pregnancy.
Another great thing about it is you get more pregnancy smoothie recipes too!
How to Make Healthy Pregnancy Smoothies at Home
You can simply follow some of the healthy pregnancy smoothie recipes that I’m going to give you later on in this post if you’d like. But as that old saying about teaching a man to fish points out… you’re going to be a lot more successful if I actually teach you how to design your own healthy pregnancy smoothies than if I just give you a handful of recipes to follow.
And since your pregnancy is 280 days, it really would be in your best interest to learn how to make a great healthy prenatal smoothie on your own.
Then you can take whatever you have on hand, whatever was on sale, or maybe fruits or veggies loaded with the nutrients you know you need to add to your diet from going through the Perfect Pregnancy Plan, and turn them into a delicious smoothie that kicks all your pregnancy cravings to the curb! (At least temporarily.)
RELATED: Pregnancy Smoothies: Everything You Need to Know
Building a Healthy Pregnancy Smoothie Step-by-Step
First let’s talk about milks for pregnancy smoothies:
The base of your smoothie should always be your pregnancy recommended protein powder and your milk of choice. Cow’s milk is a great choice and nut milk is a great choice as well.
Cow’s milk causes stomach discomfort and bloating for many people, even those who aren’t fully lactose intolerant. But even those who are normally sensitive to dairy, often report a decrease or even the disappearance of those symptoms during pregnancy. (I myself am one of them.) This may be one of many cases of your body knowing what it needs during this delicate time of your life.
Cow’s Milk
Especially in the third trimester, it is important to increase your dairy intake when your baby’s skeleton is hardening and many more vital aspects of growth that help baby survive outside the womb are taking place.
Your daily smoothie is a great way to get in that extra calcium during the final trimester. Cow’s milk is rich in Vitamin D, calcium, and contains omega 3’s. It also has more carbohydrates and sugar than a milk alternative. When making a selection between whole and skim milk, I highly suggest whole. Some reasons to choose whole milk over skim are:
- Whole milk is more satisfying, so you need less to feel satiated.
- Whole milk isn’t really that much more fat than skim milk. It is really only 3.25% milkfat.
- Whole milk is less processed than skim or nonfat milk. With very few exceptions, your food is more nutrient dense the less processed it is. The closer to nature you can eat, the better for yourself and your baby.
- Many of the vitamins in milk are fat soluble vitamins. You need the fat in order to absorb the vitamin D and thus the calcium. (Vitamin D and fat are essential to calcium absorption.) When you skim the fat out of your milk, you are skimming off the vitamins as well.
- Whole milk has more carbohydrates than its low fat counterparts.
Milk Alternatives
Almond milk and flax milk are other delicious milk alternatives that make wonderful smoothies and are still rich in calcium. However, you must take into account that it is fortified calcium and more like taking a nutritional supplement than actually getting calcium derived from your food.
Almond milk and other nut milks are lower in calories, have no fat, can have no sugar, but also have no protein when compared to cow’s milk.
Both are great options for your smoothies.
Make your personal choice for each smoothie from the information above and what your body is telling you. Maybe you’d like a little extra protein or need more calcium for the day; I’d choose whole cow’s milk. Or perhaps you already had a sugary treat today and want to avoid any more sugar today; I’d choose almond milk!
Let’s talk about fruits for your prenatal smoothies:
It’s tough to go wrong with blending up fresh fruits and vegetables when it comes to nutritional content. The fruits you choose will be the main flavor in your smoothie, the vegetable flavors are hidden if you make it right.
Since all fresh fruits and vegetables are full of nutrition that will help you grow a healthy baby and have a fit bump only pregnancy as a side-effect, they are all good choices. Just be aware of how many carbohydrates and grams of sugar you are adding into each smoothie because you want your healthy pregnancy smoothie to have a low glycemic load.
For example: imagine creating a smoothie with 1 banana, the juice of 2 oranges, and 1 peach. Sounds delicious right? I’m sure it is, however let’s take a closer look at the macronutrients. That smoothie (not even counting the milk or anything else you add) contains 66 grams of carbs and 45.4 grams of sugar! That smoothie would spike your blood sugars incredibly! (Bad for mama and it’s been proven to be harmful to your growing baby as well.)
The fruits with the lowest carbohydrate content per 100 grams:
- Watermelon has 7.55 grams of carbs
- Strawberries have 7.68 grams of carbs
- Blackberries have 9.61 grams of carbs
- Raspberries have 5.44 grams of carbs
- Avocado has 8.53 grams of carbs
- Cantaloupe has 8.16 grams of carbs
The fruits with the highest carbohydrate (and thus sugar) counts are:
- Bananas
- Mangoes
- Pineapples
- Apples
This list is only meant to make you aware of making balanced choices when adding fruit to your smoothies.
Adding half of a banana into your smoothie gives it a great texture! But you need to be cognizant of using low carb fruits also when you do choose to use a very high carbohydrate fruit.
Additionally, you will want to be sure to add protein and fat to each of your smoothies.
Adding Vegetables into Pregnancy Smoothies for More Nutrients
Vegetables are optional to add to your smoothies, but it IS a wonderful way to add additional nutrients. Remember, right now your goal is to get as many essential nutrients as possible from your diet without drastically increasing your calories.
On the other end of the spectrum, being a mom of 3 I know how hard it can be to stomach some things during pregnancy like meat and sometimes even vegetables. Vegetables in your smoothies may completely turn you off to the entire idea of consuming smoothies while pregnant.
If that is the case leave them out! Pregnancy is not the time to force yourself to stomach foods just because they’re healthy. Even if your meal is loaded with nutrients if you can’t keep it down or it makes you more queasy so you are eventually repulsed, it’s not doing you or your growing baby any good.
Listen to your body and your stomach. But also know that vegetables are typically lower in sugars and carbohydrates, add in extra nutrition, and help you to feel more full from your smoothie. If you decide to try adding vegetables into your smoothie some great options are:
- Spinach
- Kale (if you have a really good blender)
- Cooked cauliflower
- Beets
Let’s talk about protein for your smoothies!
Protein is simple, add your protein powder! Keep in mind that with any protein powder selected from the Top List of Protein Powders selected by a mom certified in prenatal nutrition, you are also adding a huge amount of nutrients your baby needs to grow. On average protein powders have between 13-22 grams of protein per serving.
You can also add extra ingredients into your smoothies to increase the protein!
Remember, you need to be trying to get in a ton of protein every day. Protein is the building block of every cell in your body, and thus of your baby’s body as well.
Adding in a scoop of nuts, seeds, Greek yogurt, chia seeds, or hemp hearts will provide you with even more baby-growing protein!
Don’t forget healthy pregnancy smoothies needs fats
Most people think of omitting fat from their health foods and smoothies.
How can you not?
For decades we have been conditioned to think fat is bad. That fat will make you fat. But after decades of food companies removing fat from their products, creating low fat and nonfat options, and creating artificial sugar and butter substitutes, our nation and world’s obesity and related diseases are at an all time high.
Repeat this to yourself: “Good fat will not make me fat. My brain and my baby’s brain are essentially made of fat. Fat is necessary to absorb the nutrients that my baby needs.”
The right fats are loaded with nutrients in and of themselves and are essential to mineral absorption from your fruits and vegetables. Even healthy fats need to be eaten in reasonable amounts, as any food does.
Including a healthy fat in your smoothie is important for mineral absorption, as well as lowering the glycemic load of your meal and stabilizing your blood sugars after eating it.
High carb fruits should always be eaten in conjunction with protein and fat or added fiber.
Ingredients to get healthy fat into your smoothie (appx 1-2 tablespoons):
- Avocado
- Avocado oil (this sounds weird but is tasteless and makes the smoothie very creamy!)
- Nut butters
- Nuts
- Seeds
- Flax meal
- Chia Seeds
- Hemp hearts
- Plain full fat yogurt
Putting Together Your Healthy Pregnancy Smoothies
Now take all that amazing prenatal nutrition info I shared and wrap it all together every time you want to make a healthy pregnancy smoothie.
- Choose your milk base
- Add in some fruits
- Maybe add in some vegetables
- Scoop in your protein powder
- Add some healthy fat
- Then also add in ice or water to get the consistency you want your smoothie to be.
Some Healthy Pregnancy Smoothie Recipes
- These are some of the best pregnancy smoothies I’ve found and the most delicious. I really loved the morning sickness smoothie!
- Here are a ton more smoothies for pregnancy that are super healthy and delicious.
- Ultimate Superfood Pregnancy Smoothie
- Favorite Pregnancy Smoothie
- 5 Healthy Pregnancy Smoothies With Superfoods
Wrapping Up How to Make Healthy Pregnancy Smoothies
I hope I was really able to break down for you the best way to build your own healthy pregnancy smoothie every day. Essentially I just taught you to fish instead of giving you a fish. So that you are now prepared to design your very own pregnancy smoothies!
Want to learn a whole lot more about prenatal nutrition because it has the direct ability to affect the genetic outcomes of your child? I would go through The Perfect Pregnancy Plan like I did.
Did you try out any other healthy pregnancy smoothie recipes that I linked? I’d love to know which was your favorite in the comments below.
