For just 100 calories, a ½ cup also gives you 22 percent of your daily value of slow-to-digest fiber, which contributes to keeping your morning hunger at bay. Make sure you drain and wash canned chickpeas before blending to get rid of that bean-y residue and excess salt. (While you’re at it, check out these 10 tasty ideas for chickpeas.)

Cottage Cheese

Protein: 14 grams per ½ cup

“My favorite way to pump up the protein in a smoothie is adding cottage cheese,” says Lauren Harris-Pincus, M.S., R.D.N., author of The Protein-Packed Breakfast Club. “When you blend it, the texture transforms into a creamy base that is not tart like Greek yogurt, so you need to add less sweetener to your smoothie.” That’s a great thing, since too much of the sweet stuff can spike your blood sugar and leave you grumbling for a snack by the time you get to the office. (Here are 6 reasons you’re still hungry—even though you just ate breakfast.)

Not a huge fan of eating cottage cheese? Neither is Kim Feeney, M.S., R.D., a board-certified sports dietitian in San Antonio, Texas—except when she blends it into smoothies. “I have primarily tried it with fruit-based smoothies that I would like to be on the creamy side, especially with berries or citrus,” Feeney says. “The flavor of the cottage cheese is pretty muted so it primarily adds a mild salt flavor to a fruit smoothie.”

Pumpkin Seeds

Protein: 5 grams per 2 tablespoons

Adding seeds for a hit of protein isn’t exactly revolutionary, but flax and hemp get most of the love when it comes to smoothies. “Flax seeds have such a thick shell that, unless they are ground, you don’t really get the benefit. They just pass right through,” says Judy Barbe, R.D., author of Your 6-Week Guide to LiveBest.