Carol Egan

Only Dead Fish Go With The Flow

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FishOnly Dead Fish Go With The Flow

I recently read a quote that caused me to laugh out loud, on the spot, “Only dead fish go with the flow.”

With a slightly different angle, it reminded me of a quote I had on a poster years back from the Book of Paul, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed.”

Both quotes remind me of the larger ‘get healthy’ conversation that I am so committed to because of the transformative benefits I experienced from going against the flow of common thoughts and ideas about to heal a sick body, my sick body.

I never knew anyone who went to an alternative doctor or healer — c’mon, I was an Irish-Catholic, middle-America, roast beef and mashed potatoes suburbia-girl!

But my doctor’s advice just didn’t make sense to me. Like taking a Zanax 3 times per day to stop the chronic anxiety and IBS symptoms I experienced. So agreeing to eating ‘weird’ food, read as unprocessed, nutrient-dense, live foods didn’t require a second thought.

Living life like a “dead fish,” going with the flow, not breaking from mainstream medical diagnosis and treatments didn’t make sense to me one bit. It was an easy decision to break from ‘the pack.’ I was sick and the symptoms I was experiencing were taking over my life. But know fully well, things like plant-based, high-raw, eating in ways to heal and nourish my body were as remote to me as the planet Pluto is to Earth.

In the spirit of breaking from the pack, and even more, in the spirit of discovering if there is a blind spot, a thing that you do not know you do not know blocking your understanding of what is really best for you, I offer you these questions to consider:

  • Do you eat in ways, do you do ‘things’ in ways that are familiar, comfortable and more in line with what everyone else in your world does, yet you intuitively know does not work for you?
  • Do you indulge in eating foods that you know are too heavy or just flat-out not good for you, but breaking the habituated patterns of ‘this is how everyone eats,’ is just too daunting for you?
  • Are you sick more often than you’re willing to deal with now? More tired than you know is ‘normal?’ Symptoms and care-for-symptoms more a prevalent than “seizing the day” mode of operandi?
  • What impact do you think avoiding these sorts of questions has on the your quality of life?

If you want to break from the pack, break from unhealthy and addictive eating habits, to look and feel your very best, to revel in all the benefits that are part-in-parcel with feeling best, you’ve got to, we’ve all got to,  challenge why we do what we do.

Is ‘it’ the best choice for you? Or is ‘it’ the choice everyone else is making?

Breaking from the pack, breaking from familiar ways of doing things, breaking from all that felt safe and sure to me at one time in my life was the best thing I could have ever done for myself.  Indeed, it was in those scary moments of uncertainty and change that I began to heal my body, and as I healed my body, a whole new world of possibility began to rise …

Only Dead fish go with the flow. Is that the best posture for you?

Who Chooses?

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who choosesWho Chooses?

I recently met someone who was 50 pounds overweight. They said they wanted to lose weight. They said they wanted to look and feel their very best selves again.

But, they did not want to stop eating all of their favorite foods.

I totally get it. I remember when my ideas about what to eat came from my family’s traditions, from my friend’s and their families’ traditions, from the larger social moré traditions. Even from the ways every mood, emotion, thought and idea defined the foods I craved.

And the irony is, the modern economy continues to get better and better at satisfying our every want and desire.

As fast-food nation and the consumer economy grows, we get to satiate the complexities of everything we think we want or need right now, with what our inner world demands, what every impulse, thought and desire insists upon, rather than move closer to what we intuitively know is healthier for us, what is best for us.

So who chooses for you? Your traditions? Your friend’s and your communities traditions? Your world at large, or you?

As in the metaphor, “is it better to give a man a fish, or to teach him to fish,” do you think it is better to order a healthy meal when you are out once-in-a-while, or do you think it is better to create a lifestyle of healthy habits that ask you to reconnect to the basic laws of nature and your inner-knowing of what best fuels and nourishes your body?

If you want to lose weight, if you want to look and feel your very best, you have to deliberately choose what you want, so you can put into action a winning game-plan. Thinking about it, like the person I met, is just that, thinking about it, which ultimately leaves you in default-mode.

Need help choosing your get-heatlhy game to finally look and feel 10 years younger with results that last? Join me here: Let’s do this!

Kale Chips

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Kale ChipsThe Kale Chips

With winter-greens season upon us, yes, with bountiful bunches of fresh and local kale abound, I thought it a perfect time to offer you this time-tested recipe I’ve been refining for years. This is my favorite. The coating is thick enough to offer a great texture, but not too thick to overtake the flavor of the kale.

  • 1 bunch kale, washed and dried (dry completely)
  • 1 red pepper
  • 1 clove garlic, peeled
  • 1/2 cup cashews
  • 1/2 cup hemp seeds
  • 1 -2 Tbsp Coconut Aminos (or to taste)
  • 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
  • 1 lemon, juice
  • Water (to thin mixture if necessary)

Blend all ingredients until well-combined except kale.

Remove main center vein from the kale leaf and break into pieces (not too small)

In batches, put kale leaves into a large bowl, pour some of the cheezy mixture over and massage.

Place massaged and coated leaves on a dehydrator tray with paraflex, or bake in a very low oven a the lowest temperature your stove allows.

 

Bake or “unbake” until crispy.

Buono Appetito!

Tomato Bisque

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Bisque

The Bisque

I promise you this, this recipe will soon be your new favorite tomato soup recipe ever, and a staple in high-tomato season! Easy-peasy, purely nutritious and as satiating as satiating can be! The ingredients offered make only 2 servings, so I highly recommend you double or triple the recipe!

Serves 2

  • 3 tomatoes, large, cubed
  • 1 – 2 garlic cloves, chopped
  • 1/4 – 1/2 avocado, diced (or 1/2)
  • Extra Virgin Olive Oil, drizzle to taste
  • Sea salt and black pepper to taste
  • Basil, chiffonade

Blend all ingredients except the basil: reserve that for garnish!

Recommendation: Begin with 1/4 avocado and add more for extra creaminess per your preferences

Top with fresh basil to garnish

Buono Appetito! 

The Natural Outcome of Your Choices

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the natural outcome
Puffy eyes. Dark circles. Premature saggy skin. Way-too-soon wrinkles.

With each choice you make, you cast your vote for your vibrancy, your glow, your clear, gorgeous skin, or not.

It’s the difference between a Cosmo, or freshly, pressed juice.

A fully-loaded cheeseburger, or a fully-loaded salad.

A donut, or a cup of berries.

Late nights, or early nights.

Stress, or meditation.

Couch potato, or fitness enthusiast.

The way you look right now is a direct result of your unwitting preferences, your culturally-fashioned and your freely-opted-for favorites, your decisions and your lack there of.

Click here to find out how you can take responsibility for looking and being your very best self.

An Unlikely Teacher

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struggle

Have you ever heard the quote, “How you do anything is how you do everything?”

I love that quote. It brings me back to a revelatory moment on my yoga mat when I noticed how much I struggled to do the posture correctly, in a make myself wrong kind of way.

I wasn’t so much noticing the struggle that stood out to me. I am a ‘boot-straps-kinda’-girl,’ so fighting for what I want is just part of my home-grown, born-in-America mindset.

Struggle. Hard work. Do or die. Make it happen.

All just normal posture for me … Until that moment on my yoga mat.

What I noticed was that struggle was my default mode of operandi and behind the struggle was an undeniable self wrong-making … and this didn’t resonate with me, so I co-opted ‘struggle’ as my teacher. In that moment I consciously decided to use struggle as the vehicle to teach me about letting go of making myself wrong.

If “how we do anything is how we do everything,” I viscerally knew I wanted to do everything in my life with an equal measure of grace and ease with my highly self-regarded in-action way of being. Moreover, it made sense to use struggle to my advantage, than ‘it use me!’

I’ve learned that struggle teaches us what we want, by showing us what we don’t want. I’ve learned that rather than struggle, I could look for what the moment wanted to teach me. Tweet: Rather than struggle, look for the opportunity in the moment via @CarolAEgan http://ctt.ec/4Rdh7+

But just because I’ve taken on struggle as my teacher does not mean that it doesn’t continue to rise.

Like today. Recently I started running in the morning, though I assure you, I was likely one of the last people I’d ever expect to become a runner. Today when I went out for my morning run, I noticed struggle rise up. When I saw it, I immediately tapped into some of the lessons my old teaching friend has taught me.

Here are three reflections on the ways you too can co-opt struggle as your teacher, so you too can exploit this unlikely teacher as your most powerful advocate for your success!

Commit

Commitment is your transformational vehicle. Commitment is the thing that says your actions match your word. Commitment is the thing that exemplifies your promise to your result. Commitment is you noticing the ‘struggle’ that you don’t want to do it, and you do it anyway!

As Michael Jordan’s coach, Tim S. Grover wrote in his book Relentless, “Bottom line, if you want success of any kind: you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Every time you think you can’t, you have to do it anyway.”

If you say you are going to do something, do it. For example, you say you are going to run every single day, but when you wake up you feel tired, but with no real promise to the result you want, you roll over and go back to sleep. Before you know it, you’ve got to leave for work and you haven’t even showered yet. Run? No time.

Conversely, with dyed-in-the-wool, non-negotiable commitment, you not only run everyday as you said you would, you reap all the benefits honoring your word to yourself offers, like time-mastery, like freedom from living a life of excuses, like garnering a worthy place in the road race you entered!

Commitment is waking up feeling energized, because you went to bed knowing you were running in the morning. No. Matter. What.

Let Go!

Letting go is mindfulness in action. Letting go is noticing thoughts of struggle rise and not believing them! Yes, exactly, not believing them! If you believe every thought you think, good grief, you can systematically seal the deal of ever achieving your dreams!

Think about a time that you really wanted to do something, and thoughts of “I can’t rose up.”

Did you listen to the thoughts, or did you let them go and ‘do it’ anyway? I noticed all these amazing, teaching-struggle-thoughts rise up when I went out for my run, and because this is a whole new fitness game for me, the struggle thoughts were awesomely instructive!

So come with me for a moment – I’m running at a slow but steady pace, but my heart rate is rising rapidly, and I start to pant! Ha! Yes. Pant like hyperventilate, and as I notice my strained breathing, I also notice my struggle around my breaths and I stopped. No. I didn’t stop running.

I stopped the thoughts of struggle around my breathing and focused on my breath. I stopped the thoughts: “I hate to run … I can’t run … My cardio strength is too weak to run … My head hurts … I’m too tired … and just breathed.

I let go of the struggle around my breath and an ease rose up and the hyperventilating stopped. Crazy? No. Just like moving into a yoga posture on the mat with ease, just like asking the boss for a raise matter-of-factly because it’s time, just like saying no to a date you don’t want to go on because you’d rather do something that serves you better, just like asking for help when you need it because you know you don’t know how to do ‘it,’ I let go of the stories of “I can’t,” and moved into my run with greater ease.

Letting go of struggle-thoughts and just being with ‘what is’ is a very useful tool in all areas of life.

Stay Strong

I suspect you’ve heard this recommendation in quotes and sayings many times over. One of my favorites is a Japanese Proverb, “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” And if you have a negative mindset, these sorts of sayings prove very effective to direct your thoughts. However, here I mean to literally create strength in your body as your vehicle to let go of struggle.

When I was running, and my breathing grew shallow with my increased heart rate, I noticed how I lost connection to my upper body. My posture felt sloppy and I noticed the struggle in my form as well as my breath. So I created an ease in my body by connecting to my core and creating proper form. I held my chest and head up, held my arms in proper form at a 90° angle, and placed my feet on the ground with a mindfulness-practioner’s focused intentionality.

I grabbed back strong physical form and … I felt my confidence skyrocket, which fueled a surging passion to run faster!

My new morning run simply validates these lessons I learned earlier in life, but with new and fresh nuances. And funny, though I had zero interest in running, I am on-fire for the ways life came to teach me these lessons yet again!

By letting go of the thoughts of struggle with my breath and the thoughts that running is hard, I shifted my whole mindset … and completed my first two mile run! Now those are results worth achieving.

So, the next time you’re faced with struggle at work, at home, or while running, remember to commit to yourself, let go of the thoughts around that struggle, and stay strong.

Because how you do anything is how you will do everything.

 

Want to Lose Weight? Action Required.

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Lose Weight. Action Required

You want to lose weight.

So, you start another diet.

You count calories. You portion and track your food. You spend hours on the elliptical.

You know how to lose weight, you’re following the diet and exercise plan, you’ve so got this.

But the scale doesn’t move.

And you are flat-out baffled.

You feel frustrated. Defeated.

Because no matter how hard you try, you always find yourself back on the couch 10 pounds heavier than when you started.

So what gives?

You ask yourself, all the time, “How does exorbitantly successful me find myself continuously on the hamster wheel of weight on, weigh off, weight on… again?“

You are not alone.

You are among the growing rank of 100 million dieters in the United States.

Yes, the annual revenue of the U.S. weight-loss industry, including diet books, diet drugs and weight-loss surgeries is a whopping 20 billion dollars per year.1

The one thing the annual revenue of the diet industry makes very clear, or at least one very important thing it makes clear is, they are very successful … because diets do not work.

The diet industry sells you books, pills, programs and even surgery to get you looking how you want to look, for a moment. The diet industry offers recipes to last you five lifetimes, smoothie challenges, juice challenges and detox programs to keep you busy for increments anywhere from 1 day to 30 days, plus approaches to weight-loss that give you knowledge akin to a Ph.D. in weight-loss theories, tenets and principles, with no lasting results!

But the books, the programs and the pills don’t teach you about the psychology of success and how it directly impacts the weight loss you produce, or not! {Tweet It!}

Yes, losing weight is a psychology game, a mind-shift training game, a ‘you are what you think game!’

Losing weight with lasting results is like any and every other successful endeavor you’ve ever achieved, you’ve got to clearly define the result you want to produce, why you want to produce it, create a plan to get you to your end game, and by taking one step toward your desired outcome each and every single day.

Ask yourself these questions to create your weight loss success plan:

  • What outcome or result do I most want? (How much weight do you want to lose? What is your ideal, healthy weight? Be very specific.)
  • Why do I want this result? Why do you want to lose weight? Go deep with this question. Look for the lowest-common denominator, the most basic, underlying reason, like what will being a lower weight make available to you? What will life be like for you at this ideal weight? Will this change impact who you are and how you treat yourself and others? How will that feel? For you? For those you love? For those closest to you everyday? Go deep for your answers here — you will be able to hang on when “the rubber meets the road” if you get to the gold of why you really want to lose weight!” If you don’t, the superficial responses can not possibly hold you steady when habituated ways of doing things come ’round to pull you down!
  • When will I achieve this result by? Be very precise when you will win your game by, when you will achieve your ideal weight! Your unconscious mind will begin to support you in creating success!
  • What is my plan? Create a solid winning plan, like what days will you prepare food for the week? What time of the day will you make your juices and smoothies. What time of the day will you workout? Success happens when preparation meets opportunity, and you are create a winning opportunity by preparing, by preparing again and by preparing even again with a solid plan, as solid structure of fulfillment!
  • What is one thing I can add in every single day, to move me towards achieving my result?
  • What is one thing I can omit every single day, to bring me close to my desired result?

Let’s simplify this approach to weight loss with a few applicable questions.

If you were going on vacation, would you plan ahead of time? Would you pick your location ahead of time? Would you book your hotel or cottage ahead of time? Would you book your travel plans ahead of time? Would you schedule your time off from work ahead of time?

Think of losing weight with lasting results like planning that vacation. You incrementally go through the roster of ‘things to do,’ and in this case, the things you need to DO to lose the weight is to clearly define the result you want to produce, why you want to produce it, what your plan is and what the one thing you can add in and what the one thing you can omit to get your game started and moving you closer to your result, your outcome. Of course once you create momentum with your one first healthy habit, you add in another, and another, and another.

Indeed, the thing that differentiates those who are successful and those who are not are the habits they create with straight-up, no-joke commitment and consistency.

In his 1968 classic, The Greatest Salesman In The World, You Can Change Your Life With The Priceless Wisdom of Ten Ancient Scrolls Handed Down For Thousands Of Years, Og Mandino says that until we become ‘a slave to our good habits,’ our bad habits will run the show!

And when we create good habits, we literally obliterate the bad habits!

Your every-single day commitment is non-negotiable IF you really want to arrive at your end-zone with solid results in hand!

AND if you’d like any support in achieving your weight loss goals, I’d love to support you in creating new healthy habits. Just email me at carol@carol-egan.com.

Game face on… and cheers to your success!

1ABC News

Take Time

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Take TimeTake Time

Take time to think.

Time to feel. Time to celebrate. Time to consider. Time to visualize. Time to imagine. Time to dream. Time to create. Time to sort out. Time to reflect. Time to ponder. Time to process. Time to mourn. Time to mediate. Time to mull over. Time to wonder. Time to inquire. Time to marvel. Time to love. Time to laugh. Time to enjoy. Time to reconnect. Time to disconnect.

Time.

Time to take into your cells and process all the nuances and details, emotions and ideas, experiences and thoughts you experience every day.

Time to remember who you are.

Time to remember how powerful, resilient, strong and glorious you really are.

Everyday.

Without taking time, you end up reacting to life, rather than creating life.

Take time, it’s non-negotiable.

Why Getting Healthy Seems To Always Fail

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WhyHealthyFailsI bet like me and the other 108 million Americans you’ve not only tried to get healthy more than a few times this past year, but you’ve also contributed to the 20 million dollar diet industry in some way.

I bet like I was you are one of the every two Americans who suffers from one chronic disease (I don’t any longer!), or perhaps you are the one of the every four who suffers from 2 or more chronic diseases?

From 25 years of research and study, personal inquiry and experience, I know that you’ve got this whole healthy game wrong.

Getting healthy with lasting results is not about your next best recipe. Getting healthy with lasting results is not about a sporadic fitness practice either. Actually, getting healthy with lasting results is not even about getting healthy, or ‘we’ wouldn’t be so unhealthy and sick.

Read more here

Heal Your Body

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IMG_1174 (1)

Jon Kabat-Zinn, renowned creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and student and teacher of the benefits of mindfulness in our lives,  says:

Concentration is a cornerstone of mindfulness practice. Your mindfulness will only be as robust as the capacity of your mind to be calm and stable.

I’ve long admired Kabat-Zinns’s work and have attended workshops held by one of his highly trained educators. He is so very right that mindfulness can help us cope with stress, anxiety, pain, and illness.

But there is one very important variable missing that I’ve not heard anyone point to since immersing myself in the world of meditation and “mindfulness based stress reduction” (MBSR), or any other form of meditation.

What if you can’t concentrate? What if inflammation in your body, which of course means inflammation in your brain too, since your brain is part of your body, has impacted your ability to concentrate?

Do you try to meditate, to no avail and feel yourself a failure? And what happens with these feelings of failure? Where do they go? Do they manifest in other areas of your life, along with your inability to focus and concentrate? Who do you think you are now that you can’t focus and concentrate? How does your inability to focus and concentrate manifest in your life, at your the job, in your relationships, in your ability to keep up and produce results?

Alas, I work to empower those committed to healing their bodies and leveling up in all areas of life precisely because of the sequence of responses that result from the questions raised above.

Chronic disease and the backlash of it’s effects are not necessarily the first problem I am concerned with, however, as an Executive Health and Life Coach.

I am concerned with your quality of life. I am concerned with who you think you are as a result of the myriad chronic symptoms you experience, the myriad chronic symptoms that you consider your new normal, the myriad chronic symptoms that you attribute to ‘getting older,’ the myriad chronic symptoms that you correlate with your chronic disease and how these symptoms effect you and your life.

Healing your body is paramount. Paramount. Healing your body is paramount for you to achieve all that you are capable of achieving. Healing your body is paramount for you to create. To innovate. To deliver. To defy. To surmount. Accomplish. Solve. Assert. Aspire. Triumph. Dream. Imagine. Argue. Discover. Negotiate. Help. Explore. Influence. Laugh … and love. Yes, and to love on the level that exceeds the superficial realms of fleeting bliss. And to focus and concentrate long enough to choose clearly what is best for you “in your one wild and precious life.”

shadow-ornament

Healing your body is the first step to you bringing forth in your one lifetime the very best you have to offer.

Healing your body is essential if you hope to ever achieve all that you are capable of achieving.

Healing your body is flat-out non-negotiable to experience the deeper sweetnesses life has to offer.

As Seen In:

Forbes Huffington Post Better Connecticut Bella Mia Magazine Boston News Network Blog Talk Radio

Carol Egan – Heal Your Digestion to Heal Your Life

Let’s Talk About Health

I work with accomplished professionals who want to look and feel as healthy as they are successful. They spent years prioritizing success over health, and are now troubled by excess weight, exhaustion, and foggy thinking at work and home. I help them take control of their health, so they can focus on what matters in their life and career.

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