I’ve made many versions of raw chocolate mousse, and by far, this recipe is my favorite. Why? The zucchini lightens up the heaviness found in some other recipes I’ve made, so it is both rich and lusciously light.

Raw Chocolate Mousse

2-4 Servings

Ingredients

• 1 avocado
• 1 cup almond milk, hemp milk or coconut water
• 1 zucchini, chopped
• 1 tablespoon raw cacao powder (or more to taste)
• Stevia to taste (chocolate or vanilla if you have it)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla powder (to taste) I LOVE the way the vanilla rounds out the cacao!

In a high-speed blender or food processor, blend ingredients until you achieve a smooth, velvety texture.

Put in refrigerator to chill and set… and then enjoy!

Optional Serving Suggestions:

• Fresh Berries
• Peppermint extract or food-grade peppermint essential oil, raw cacao nibs and fresh mint leaves

Do keep in mind, you may very well want to double up this recipe, even if it is just for you! It is that good!

Buon Appetito Raw Chocolate Mousse! 

 

Take action to produce results. If we do not take action, our goals are just dreams. To harness your power, get off of the bleachers and onto the court of your life, and begin with at least one action. Darren Hardy of Success Magazine calls this the compound effect. Lao Tzu, the ancient Taoist philosopher and author of one of the oldest Sacred texts, the Tao Te Ching, said it best, “Every journey of 1000 miles begins with one step.” One small step leads to two, to three and so on and before you know it, you’ve made progress in an area of life that is very important to you, an area that was likely once only a dream.
I offer up a very simple but powerful “Anthony Robbins exercise” to get you started. As soon as you wake up in the morning, jump out of bed, put your sneakers on and head out for an early morning walk. As you briskly walk, repeat with conviction and excitement, “All I need is within me now… All I need is within me now.”

Develop on this in a way that empowers you, like “All the love I need is within me now,” or “All the strength I need is within me now,” etc. Say it. Sing it. Scream it! The act of moving and saying these words repetitively and with conviction, feel it in your bones as you repeat these phrases, has a powerful effect on our subconscious mind. This simple exercise is a straight up state changer and will shift your energy and mood on a dime! This one simple exercise, by shifting your state, can set the stage for many other life-changing decisions. Repeat your incantation with an 8 count breath over and over, and if your anything like me, your words may soon turn sing-song, because your adrenaline will start really pumping!  Playfulness alone alters our state, and adds yet another whole level of freedom and fun! … All I need is within me NOW! ALL I need is within me now! ALL I need is within me now! Play with it. Have fun to CREATE your life!

“It is in moments of decision that destiny is shaped.” ~Anthony Robbins

In Immersion Health RECHARGE™ Spring Detox, participants learn that we cleanse our liver and our gall bladder during this season, according to ancient Chinese medicine. I offer you a juice recipe that participants get in their Recipe Guide this season, to support you in your own healing journey. I too offer up a few other herbs and foods to include, to experiment with, like chlorophyl and everything green, which binds to toxins for speedy removal. Add broccoli sprouts to enhance detoxification, dandelion greens to cleanse the digestive tract and offer liver support, lemons which stimulate enzyme production… and if you juice, add fresh turmeric root to improve liver function. This is a powerful liver cleanser green juice and amazing for cleansing and nourishing your whole body!

Serves 2

• 2 cucumbers
• 10 stalks raw asparagus
• 1 handful of parsley
• 1 handful of cilantro
• 1 handful of dandelion (wash well)
• 2 lemons, juiced
• 1 inch ginger root (optional)
• 1 inch tumeric root (optional)

Cheers!

Drink this elixir every morning when you first wake up to jumpstart your day, to cleanse, heal, tonify and alkalize your body!

• 8-16 ounces warm or room temperature water
• Juice from 1 lemon
• 1 teaspoon Bragg’s raw apple cider vinegar
• 1 tsp of raw honey or a couple drops stevia  (Optional: Do not use if you suspect bacterial, yeast or microbial overgrowth.)
• ginger, chunks (optional)

Raw honey benefits:

▪ It’s loaded with vitamins, minerals, & enzymes.

▪ Helps to cleanse the liver, remove toxins, and flush fat from the body when done 1st thing in the morning on an empty stomach.

▪ Soothes indigestion (relieves acidity in the stomach).

▪ Energy boost

▪ Anti-microbial and anti-fungal – helps to keep your skin clear (helps with skin conditions such as eczema, ring worms, & psoriasis).

Apple Cider benefits:

▪ It is a natural remedy for heartburn.

▪ Can help clear up skin conditions and acne

▪ Promotes digestion and will keep you regular

▪ Helps control weight

▪ Can help regulate blood sugar

▪ Helps reduce sinus infections and sore throats

▪ It is rich in enzymes and potassium

▪ Can help ease menstrual cramps

▪ Helps promote youthful healthy bodies

Lemon benefits:

▪ Helps make the body more alkaline (increases pH)

▪ provides lots of Vitamin C

▪ blood purifier

▪ Cleansing agent & tonic for you liver by helping it produce more bile.

Cheers!!

Many believe that too much stomach acid causes acid reflux and heartburn, but the reverse is more often the problem. Most of us do not have enough stomach acid, hydrochloric acid, which is pivotal to healthy digestion. Why? For one reason, our stomach does not produce enough hydrochloric acid to handle an overly acidic of processed foods, and two, our body does not produce as much stomach acid as we age. This is one of the reasons why I recommend a diet high in raw vegetables and fruits, which are rich in enzymes to support their digestion.

But we do need healthy stomach acid to digest the food we eat and to maintain a healthy digestive tract. Have you ever heard someone say I can’t eat this or that particular food because it is “too heavy?” This is often because they just can’t digest what they ate because of low stomach acid.

If our stomach acid is low, our body cannot digest even the healthiest foods we eat. Sadly, this means that we are not digesting our food properly, which no doubt means poor nutrient absorption. Poor nutrient absorption can lead to a whole host of health problems, including malnutrition, nutritional deficiencies, infections and an overgrowth of bacteria or yeast beginning in our small intestines.

Low stomach acid also leads to indigestion. Many take antacids to relieve the feelings of acid reflux (common after eating high protein or overly processed foods). We simply can’t digest what we’ve eaten. An antacid may temporarily relieve uncomfortable symptoms from acid reflux, heartburn and indigestion, but over time regular use of antacids make the problem worse.

6 Steps to take to reduce acid reflux and acid indigestion include, and 1 easy-peasy, every day morning remedy:

• Chew your food thoroughly. Digestion begins in the mouth.
• Reduce or eliminate heavy animal product intake which requires more stomach acid to digest than plant proteins.
• Reduce stress which exacerbates the digestive process.
• Eliminate processed foods and sugar
• Eat whole, live-foods, like vegetables and low-sugar fruits
• Take a probiotic in the morning with:
• MORNING LEMON WATER ELIXIR: 16 ounces warm or room temperature water, Juice from 1/2-1 lemon, 1 teaspoon Bragg’s raw apple cider vinegar, a couple drops of stevia or raw honey (optional)

 

What do you do to turn on your ‘be-awesome-factor’ every day? What do you do to intentionally create success every day? To be awesome and happy everyday, to intentionally create success every day, to create our most powerful selves everyday, we begin by committing to 30-60 minutes every single morning to intentionally shape and grow a powerful success, be-awesome psychology.

An unstoppable success psychology does not just happen. We must create a success psychology to be awesome, to be our Highest, kick-ass selves! We must train ourselves. Condition ourselves. Like an Olympic athlete trains to compete and win in their sport, we train to create success and win in our lives.

We set benchmarks for success for forward movement in both our personal and professional life. We hold ourselves accountable. We read success-driven magazines and books. We listen to success-driven educators in our car, when at the gym, when out walking. We flood our world with success educators. We add an accountability partnership with someone committed to high-level success, someone invested in our success, like a friend, colleague, coach or a group that will hold our bar up high, to ensure success beyond what we initially set out to achieve.

Hold fast. Growth and forward movement inherently require change, inherently require a shift in our psychology from habituated, old patterns of doing things to success-driven practices. No doubt stories of challenge, stories that ‘it’s too hard’ to be awesome will rise. When you feel stopped, when discomfort rises, call your accountability partner. Call your coach.

When it comes to increased health, it’s not just what we eat but how we eat. Digestion actually begins in the mouth, where contact with our teeth and digestive enzymes in our saliva break down food. But these days most of us rush through the whole eating experience, barely acknowledging what we’re putting in our mouths. We eat while distracted—working, reading, talking and watching television—and swallow our food practically whole. On average we chew each bite only eight times. It’s no wonder that many people have digestive problems.

There are many great reasons to slow down and chew your food.

• Saliva breaks down food into simple sugars, creating a sweet taste. The more we chew, the sweeter our food becomes, so we don’t crave those after-meal sweets.
• Chewing reduces digestive distress and improves assimilation, allowing our bodies to absorb maximum nutrition from each bite of food.
• More chewing produces more endorphins, the brain chemicals responsible for creating good feelings.
• It’s also helpful for weight loss, because when we are chewing well, we are more apt to notice when we are full.
• In fact, chewing can promote increased circulation, enhanced immunity, increased energy and endurance, as well as improve skin health and stabilize weight.

Taking time with a meal, beginning with chewing, allows for enjoyment of the whole experience of eating: the smells, flavors and textures. It helps us to give thanks, to show appreciation for the abundance in our lives and to develop patience and self-control.

The power of chewing is so great that there are stories of concentration camp survivors who, when others could not, made it through with very little food by chewing their meager rations up to 300 times per bite of food. For most of us 300 chews is a daunting and unrealistic goal. However, you can experience the benefits of chewing by increasing to 30 chews per bite. Try it and see how you feel.

Try eating without the TV, computer, iPhone, newspaper or noisy company. Instead just pay attention to the food and to how you are breathing and chewing.

This kind of quiet can be disconcerting at first, since we are used to a steady stream of advertising, news, media, email and demands from others. But as you create a new habit, you will begin to appreciate eating without rushing. You have to eat every day—why not learn to savor and enjoy it?

 

I LOVE this illustration and quote from Dr. Alejandro Junger, “Your intuition, your ‘gut feeling,’ has its hardware in and around the intestines, a brain larger than the one in your skull. If your gut is not healthy your ‘gut feelings’ won’t be accurate, which is like being an explorer with a broken compass… “

Dr Junger’s quote and this illustration offers the kind of information that always gets me thinking.

Because I’ve spent much time studying with Anthony Robbins and other success guides, I find myself circling back to the point that Dr. Junger offers us with questions I’ve had about the accessibility for creating success IF we indeed suffer from poor health. That is, if our gut health is awry in ways that impede even our intuition, how can we “create state,” how can we create success with lasting and meaningful results, as Anthony Robbins teaches us, if we are biochemically off? How can, as Darren Hardy, editor of Success magazine and author of The Compound Effect, a daily commitment to small, seemingly insignificant practices  produce the ginormous results he describes as possible in his book, if we are tripping physically, mentally and/or emotionally from poor gut health?

Restoring the health of our gut is pivotal, and is the foundation of my work, the foundation of my efforts as a health coach simply because I personally know how poor gut health can thwart our efforts in achieving success in other areas of life because our ‘our machine’ is ‘out of whack.’ Indeed, this IS the very reason why I say it is NOT about food (my mission as a health coach), but about living life fully. Personal experience and tireless research makes clear how poor gut health does indeed get in the way of creating our selves and our life fully. I always say to clients, we can pray all day long, we can grow ourselves professionally, financially, physically and personally… day in and day out. We can even have the most opulent home and luxurious car, shoes, watch, BUT, if we are bio-chemcially off, if our bodies are not functioning as were designed to function, if we are NOT healthy, the question then emerges, have we really achieved all that we are capable of achieving? How can we know if the life we are living is the richest, the fullest the most vital, if everything we’ve done emanates from a ‘dis-eased,’ ‘broken context?’ It’s like a house of cards, or icing on a mud-pie. If our digestion is off, if our minds are not clear, if we are constrained by illness, even seemingly unrelated illness, and the neurotransmission in our gut fails to connect our ‘inner’ circuits to our brain, all that was possible for us may very well elude us.

Optimizing or restoring the health of our gut is essential for proper digestion, proper absorption and proper elimination to occur. If one of these processes fails to function optimally,   our overall health will suffer, even our intuitive gut feelings.

To restore the health of our gut we begin with “crowding out” toxic food, drink and lifestyle practices that cause inflammation and an overly acidic body. Add in healthy, healing whole foods, like 80% raw vegetables (especially green) and low-sugared fruits. Eliminate ALL processed foods. Take a probiotic and eat probiotic-rich foods like raw-fermented vegetables. Go for a walk and take in some Vitamin D. Breathe deeply. Research repeatedly shows that we create great health and vitality when we practice our health care from a holistic health-care approach. This course of action will set the stage for greater health and well-being in all areas of  life. If you want additional support in healing your gut with whole, nutrient-dense foods, from a well-rounded holistic perspective, please contact me at  carol@carol-egan.com

So many take mood-enhancing drugs today. Gosh, I remember my heart just breaking the first time I heard someone say that their child was taking a medication that altered their mood. Their child? The rate at which “we” acquiesce to taking medications like Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil is startling. Perhaps what is more startling is the rate at which they are prescribed.

My research continues to point to the ways the health of our gut has everything to do with the state of our mind, the balance of our mood, the cognitive ability we possess, or not. According to Dr. Alejandro Junger, our “gut” is more than our body’s digestive tube. Our “gut,” includes the healthy intestinal flora inside the lining of our digestive tract, the immune system and the nervous system. What is most important is research now clearly shows that our gut is akin to a “second brain” in our body, which makes perfect sense because of the close bio-physical communication and relationship these two major organs share.

For years, the medical world has been trying to figure out what causes our moods to change and what causes common problems like stress, anxiety, and even depression. We now know that the common problems that many of us experience like these are directly linked to serotonin production, the neurotransmitter that triggers feelings of happiness and wellbeing. What you may not know is that 90% of this “feel-good” serotonin isn’t even produced in the brain. Serotonin is largely produced in our gut. Because the gut primarily produces this bio-chemical process of the neurotransmitter serotonin to interact with our brain, problems we experience with our gut, undoubtedly show up with problems in our emotional health.

What we put inside our belly directly correlates to our emotional health. Hands down. Because of the proximity of our nervous system around the gut wall of our digestive system, if our gut is out of balance, our brain will be out of balance. Our nervous system surrounds our digestive tract and stages direct communication to our brain.  Have you ever had an upset stomach because your mind was so stressed?

Important to note too, our body contains 10x more bacteria than cells. Yes. Our body houses 37 trillion cells, but a hundred trillion bacteria (think the size of a quadricep)… and this bacteria (known as the friendly flora in the mucosal lining of our gut) not only acts like a “satellite liver” to neutralize about 40% of the toxins we take in through our food, it too communicates closely with our brain. Maintaining a balance of healthy gut flora is critical far beyond just the health of our gut. It impacts our overall wellbeing, including emotional balance and mood. Many scientific studies now point to gut problems behind the mood problems many experience today, and vice versa.

The best way to make sure your body has healthy bacteria is to eat live foods rich in healthy bacteria, oxygen and enzymes. Begin your healing, healthy nourishment program with lots of fresh, organic vegetables and fruits and add probiotic-rich foods, like raw fermented sauerkraut, raw fermented vegetables, coconut kefir. and probiotic-rich drinks like fermented tea, Kombucha. You can also include probiotic supplements to your daily protocols. Indeed, many health practitioners with me recommend this supplement as a solid healthy, daily practice. Keeping gut-health in check will help you to digest food properly, absorb vital nutrients, eliminate health-fully and maintain a healthy state of mind. Follow this protocol, with an alkaline-forming, high plant-based diet, and your body will begin to thrive in no time!

Mineral deficiency continues to show up on my desk. As I delve deeper into the theory of acid/alkaline balance, gut health, cognitive function, even the health of our skin and bones, proper mineral balance looms in the background as a very important, yet very underrated variable for creating vibrant health.

Hello glorious sea vegetables! Why? First because sea vegetables (or seaweeds) offers us the broadest range of minerals in any food, including calcium, iron and iodine, which help balance hormone and thyroid levels and every other bodily function. Secondly, that our bodies process whole-food nutrition so much more readily than pill-form supplementation, sea vegetables offer us a broad range of minerals and all its cofactors in a whole food form. I advocate whole foods nutrition precisely because each food that we choose to eat offers a specific set of co-factors and enzymes that work synergistically with the the vitamins, phytochemicals and minerals of that food. And in this case, the minerals in sea vegetables are more bioavailable because of the high concentrations of Vitamin C and Vitamins B1 and B2.

In Chinese medicine, sea vegetables correlate to the winter season and to the kidneys, adrenal glands, bladder and reproductive organs. The strengthening, balancing and cleansing properties of sea vegetables are known to help these organs as well as the hair, skin and nails.  Eating too many processed foods or foods grown in mineral-depleted soil can result in a lack of minerals in the body, leading to cravings for salty or sugary foods. Adding sea vegetables to your diet can help balance your energy levels and alleviate cravings. Here is one very easy go-to recipe that I lean on quite regularly, simply put, because it is so easy and so nutritious! But do please note that there are endless ways that you can use sea vegetables every day. One other very easy way is to stock kelp, nori or another sea vegetable in flake form, to season and nutritionally fortify any dish you serve!

Mighty Miso Soup

Prep Time: 5-10 minutes

Cooking Time: 10-15 minutes

Yield: 4-5 servings

Ingredients:

4-5 cups spring water

1-2 inch strip of wakame, rinsed and soaked 5 minutes in 1 cup of water until softened

1-2 cups thinly sliced vegetables of your choice (see notes)

2-3 teaspoons barley miso (add more or less to your palate).

2 scallions, finely chopped

Directions:

1.  Chop soaked wakame.

2. Discard soaking water or use on houseplants for a boost of minerals (your plants will love it!).

3. Place water and wakame in a soup pot and bring to a boil.

4. Add root vegetables first and simmer lightly (maintain firmness for nutritional value).

5. Add leafy vegetables and simmer for 2-3 minutes (leave firm again, to maintain nutritional value).

6. Remove about 1/2 cup of liquid from pot and dissolve miso into it. Return it to the pot.

7. Reduce heat to very low; do not boil or simmer miso broth (you will destroy the gut-promoting enzymes and healthy bacteria).

8. Allow soup to cook 2-3 minutes.

9. Garnish with scallions and serve.

Note:

Any combination of vegetables can be used in miso soup. Here are some classic combinations:

• onion-daikon: cleansing
• onion-carrot-shiitake mushroom-kale: mildly sweet
• onion-winter squash-cabbage: great in wintertime
• leek-corn-broccoli: great in summertime

Variations:

• Add a tablespoon of uncooked quinoa or millet at the beginning and let it cook with vegetables for 20 minutes.
• Add bean sprouts toward the end.
• Season with 1/2 teaspoon ginger juice for an interesting twist.

Enjoy!