March is officially “National Nutrition Month.”

National Nutrition Month is an initiative created to emphasize the importance of making healthy food and fitness choices.

In the Spirit of spreading education, I offer you the ANDI Chart to help you make your choosing easy-peasy!

You’ve heard the expression “nutrient dense?” Dr. Joel Fuhrman, created the ANDI scoring system, “Aggregate Nutrient Density Index.” to rate the nutrient density of all foods. The ANDI system rates a wide-array of foods on a scale from 1 to 1000 that are richest in nutrition and lowest in calories, with 1000 being the very best!

Nutrient Scoring Method*

To determine the ANDI scores, Dr. Fuhrman evaluated an equal-calorie serving of each food. The following nutrients were included in the evaluation: fiber, calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper, manganese, selenium, vitamin A, beta carotene, alpha carotene, lycopene, lutein and zeaxanthin, vitamin E, vitamin C, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, vitamin B6, folate, vitamin B12, choline, vitamin K, phytosterols, glucosinolates, angiogenesis inhibitors, organosulfides, aromatase inhibitors, resistant starch, resveratrol plus ORAC score. ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) is a measure of the antioxidant or radical scavenging capacity of a food.

For consistency, nutrient quantities were converted from their typical measurement conventions (mg, mcg, IU) to a percentage of their Dietary Reference Intake (DRI). For nutrients that have no DRI, goals were established based on available research and current understanding of the benefits of these factors. To make it easier to compare foods, the raw point totals were converted (multiplied by the same number) so that the highest ranking foods (leafy green vegetables) received a score of 1000, and the other foods received lower scores accordingly.

Cheers to National Nutrition Month and you optimizing your health with the best nutrient-dense choices! 

To see the rest of the chart and download a copy, just click the image above! (No opt in required.)

Post your thoughts below. I'd love to share some easy-peasy ideas to help you up level your healthy food choices!

Want a Guide full of nutrient-dense choices for breakfast to jumpstart you and your day? Click here. 

Do you suffer from brain fog? Do you suffer from a poor ability to concentrate, remember and focus?

Many dismiss brain fog as absentmindedness, old-age, or fatigue.

But actually, it’s about digestion.

There is a one-cell thick wall, your digestive wall, between you and the outside world. If your digestive wall is irritated, hyper-permeable or ‘leaky’ from the foods you eat, the stress you experience or an imbalanced lifestyle, undigested food passes beyond your digestive wall and into your body causing a whole host of problems, including slow brain function.

What’s more, when your body is irritated by poor food choices, stress and an imbalanced lifestyle, it produces excess mucous to protect you from what it deems foreign invaders. But an increase of mucous production and subsequent build-up further compromise your body’s ability to carry out normal digestive processes; break down, absorb, assimilate and eliminate the foods you eat.

If you are not breaking down, absorbing, assimilating and eliminating what you eat correctly, you’re body breaks down, with inflammation, poor concentration, poor memory and poor inability to focus but some of the expressions your body is in trouble.

Inflammation in your gut means inflammation in your brain.

In “Why Isn’t My Brain Working?” Dr Datis Kharrazian says inflammation in the brain slows down conductivity between neurons.

So what does that mean for you and your ability to focus?

Slow brain function triggers slow, dull thinking.

To counter brain fog and slow brain function, try these 5 healthy lifestyle strategies to improve your digestion and gut health, to improve your ability to concentrate, remember and focus.

1. Eliminate common inflammatory foods. The top 5 toxic triggers are gluten, dairy, sugar, coffee and alcohol. In the ideal scenario, you will eliminate all 5 for 21 days. Then add 1 food (beverage) back in every 2 days during a reintroduction phase. During this phase you monitor your body’s response to each food you add back in. The cool thing about the reintroduction phase is, you will know right away if the food is a toxic trigger for you, or not, because you will notice brain fog, lack of focus, or poor memory return. I had one client say, “I knew I was feeling much clearer, but didn’t realize how much so until I reintroduced gluten and dairy again.” His response told him that gluten and dairy were his toxic triggers.
2. Drink fresh, whole food green smoothies for breakfast. Load your smoothie up with fresh kale, spinach, cucumbers, berries, avocado, fresh almond milk and a clean plant-based protein powder. Think about it, by starting your day with a whole food, green smoothie, you’re starting your day with nutrient-dense fuel that will help balance the microflora in your gut, alkalize your body, quell inflammation and fuel your focus for many hours. Include a meal-sized green salad and a green juice daily too, for added healing benefit.
3. Balance your gut health. Do you know that you host more bacteria in your body than cells, by a ratio of 9 to 1? That means you host a community of trillions of bacteria inhabiting your gut, mouth, lungs, nasal passages, skin, and brain, your microbiome. The gut microbiome is critical to the normal functioning of the brain-gut axis. Balance the friendly flora in your gut to promote digestive health, to in turn support clear thinking and healthy cognitive function.  Your brain depends on the neurotransmitters produced by the microflora in your gut to process thought and emotion. 

To repopulate the friendly flora in your gut, take a high quality probiotic of 50-100 million units daily. Alternate your selection monthly to nourish the diverse community of bacteria that live in your body. Include fermented veggies daily. You can make them yourself, or buy them in the cooler section of your natural health food store.
4. Reduce stress. Stress triggers the fight-or-flight response and causes a cascade of hormonal responses, increases inflammation and causes an imbalance in your gut flora, which all impact your cognitive function. Include stress management as a daily practice to not only help you decompress and lighten up. Try, for example, yoga, meditation, deep breathing and even walking in the woods or going on a bike ride. While meditation, yoga and deep breath work are noted to help improve concentration and focus by quieting and calming the mind, choose what you enjoy. If it brings you pleasure, it’s the right choice.
5. Exercise. Beyond the physical benefits exercise offers, research shows over and over that exercise improves overall brain performance. Exercise increases your decision making skills and promotes higher thinking and learning by releasing feel good hormones, increasing oxygen in your bloodstream and nourishing your microbiome.

Want to play a fun game? Implement these 5 healthy lifestyle strategies and watch what happens!

Your digestion will improve, your focus, concentration, memory and clarity of mind will return … and you will very likely experience healthy weight loss, balanced emotions, glowing skin and a skip in your every step! Think I’m kidding? Go ahead, prove me wrong … and in the interim, get ready to have your socks blown off and your brain turned on!

My area of expertise is gut health. From personal experience and 30 years of research, study and close scrutiny on the steps it takes to heal your gut, I've got something to offer you. Let's talk about the ways I can help you. Email me at carol@carol-egan.com.

I paused when I first read an article in the New York Times that said some companies use financial incentives to motivate employees to attend corporate wellness programs.

I get it. Offer reduced insurance policies to those who participate, and impose penalties to those who don’t.

Money incentivizes. Always. The ‘bottom line’ matters to us.

But does it matter most over the long haul? Are savings on insurance premiums going to be the variable that keeps employees engaged in the get-healthy game? Can companies save more, and gain more over the long-haul if employees choose to participate because of the value they derive beyond just financial incentives?

The problem with incentives is they smell of company interests, not employee wellbeing and happiness. So, dangling the carrot, or exacting ‘the stick’ will no doubt excite employees initially, but over the long term, will it keep them invested? And if not, what’s the loss?

With health care costs sky rocketing, companies can no longer ignore the impact a sick workforce has on company growth, nor the benefits a wellness program could make. Experience and research offer three compelling considerations when implementing corporate wellness programs:

Connect with your employees

Employees who feel seen, heard and valued join in and get involved in wellness programs, even those who may feel intimidated and ‘not ready’ initially. Connecting with employees on a personal level is the sure-shot way to promote fully-vested, even fully-passionate buy-in to wellness programs.

Everyone loves to feel connected and connection fosters ‘we are all in this together’ team Spirit.

What difference would it make for your company if every employee brought the very best of themselves to their work everyday?

Cultivate genuine interest for employees and their health and well-being, and watch game-face turn on to program initiatives, with the added benefits of a health and wellbeing contributing to company bottom line. Because you connected with them. Because they trust you.

And the win? Company-wide growth and productivity for the business and employees alike.

Question ideas about healthy lifestyle habits.

Garnering employee buy-in is not enough. The years of indulgence are glamorized and continue to linger in day-to-day practice, especially for Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, which is in many ways the antithesis of a healthy lifestyle.

Add the nuances of the modern lifestyle, like fast-food nation, immediate gratification, the pull of family and memory and what ‘everyone else is doing,’ it’s no wonder many find the cornerstones of a healthy lifestyle difficult to develop. Restraint and self-discipline land as ridiculous.

For employees to bring the very best of themselves to their work everyday, to increase productivity and foster creativity, there’s got to be a mental shift, a questioning around how we think about healthy lifestyle habits, how we live our lives and how we care for our body.

James Allen said in his timeless classic As a Man Thinketh, “A man is literally what he thinks.” A wellness program falls short if it does not guide employees to questioning what they think about health and wellbeing.

Encourage reconnection to self and self-awareness.

Personalized and detailed diets plans. Individualized fitness programs. Reduced premiums. All are super awesome in encouraging health and wellness in the work place and life, but the grandest buy-in to corporate wellness initiatives helps employees develop self-awareness.

While we weigh in how our time is better spent in dollars earned, we’ve become disconnected from the very simple day to day things that ground us down, beyond all the achieving.

Mindfulness and meditation are the tools. Science shows that by integrating mindfulness and meditation techniques into corporate wellness programs, mental clarity and productivity increase, focus and concentration expand, creativity and innovation grow.

Mindfulness promotes self-awareness. Self awareness promotes healthier choices.

Mindfulness training is essential in helping employees reconnect with themselves, to make smarter choices about health and wellbeing for greater physical, emotional and mental health.

Successful corporate wellness programs remember,

1. It’s about the genuine wellbeing of employees, not just the bottom line.
2. To explore habituated ways of thinking about doing things, to make way for new healthy lifestyle habits.
3. Encourage reconnection to self and self awareness.

With all three points in place, you’re sure to offer a corporate wellness program that does work, a program that assures the results you most want, an office buzzing with peak potential and productivity, high-energy, increased focus and booming creativity!

To discuss corporate wellness programs, contact team@carol-egan.com

“Did you take care of business, did you do the work?”

When my son Christopher was young, I would say to him when he came to me wanting something, anything, really, “Did you take care of business, did you do the work?”

When my student Lauren’s mother came to me pleading to excuse Lauren from delivering the required presentation, I asked, “How will that help her prepare for the opportunities life will offer her?”

As sweet as ‘easy street sounds,’ we get the gold star in life when we do the work.

When we do what we said we’d do, every single day.

When we challenge ourselves beyond what feels comfortable, because new things always feel uncomfortable at first.

When my client Genevieve asked me if she could drink “just one cup of coffee” every morning, rather than the typical 3 or more throughout the day, I said, “you can do anything you want, but what do you want more — that cup of coffee, or the benefits of healing your digestive system?”

When we set out to heal our body from the ravages of the modern lifestyle, from anywhere in between common allergies and persistent digestive problems, to autoimmunity, diabetes and chronic health concerns, the game is always the same.

Will you do the necessary work required to create the result you want?

As with my son, my former student Lauren, and my client Genevieve, it all comes down to doing the work.

And it doesn’t have to be hard.

You start with one.

One goal.

One objective.

One result.

And most importantly, one action.

You choose one action you need to make to get you closer to achieving that goal, objective and result you want. When you’ve mastered that one step, choose another step.

And another.

And another.

My son learned that if he wanted that new pair of pants or shirt, he needed to scour the bathroom every Tuesday and Friday.

Lauren learned that to achieve the grade she wanted she had to do the required presentation.

Genevieve learned that to heal her digestive system she needed to remove coffee from her diet for a healing interim.

What is the one thing you could do to get you closer to your goal, your objective, your one-prized result … and more importantly, then on to all the rewards that achievement offers?

Please share your thoughts below in the comments section. I'd love to hear what you think about this post and let me know - Did you take care of business?

If you'd like a tool to help you choose that first powerful action, get my 7-Day mini-course, Commit to Change. It's helped hundreds of others get started too!

What If It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way?

Someone you know—maybe someone you love—will face a chronic disease.

Maybe it’s already you.

It feels inevitable, doesn’t it? Like your genes hold all the power. If your grandmother and mother had it, so will you.

But that’s not entirely true.

Yes, your genes matter. But they’re not the whole story. Epigenetics tells us that while genes may set the stage, your choices decide the outcome.

Your Genes Aren’t Your Destiny

Epigenetics is the science of how your environment influences your DNA. It shows that what you eat, how you move, and even how you think can turn genes on or off.

The research is clear:

• Nourishing, live foods give your cells what they need to thrive and keep mutated genes quiet.
• Processed, inflammatory foods disrupt your system, setting off a cascade of biochemical imbalances that cause symptoms.
• Clearing toxins lightens the load on your body, freeing it to do what it’s built to do: repair, detox, and heal.
• How you live—how you manage stress, what you eat, and your choices—determines whether your body stays in balance or struggles to keep up.

Runs in the Family? Not So Fast.

You were not born a victim. You have a choice. You always have.

You may not control the genes you inherit, but you control what you do next. Some might debate the science, but isn’t the possibility of choice better than no choice at all?

You’re not trapped by your DNA. You’re empowered by your decisions.

Let’s Rewrite the Story Together

If you or someone you care about is struggling with chronic illness—or just doesn’t feel their best—it’s time to start fresh.

Email me at carol@carol-egan.com. Let’s explore how simple, healing choices can transform your life.