NO GUILT RAW CHOCOLATE

For awhile now I have been talking about how eating healthier has been a journey for me. I have always had two sides within myself battling when it comes to food. There is the part of me that knows that what I put into my body will affect how I feel, think and act. This part of myself has a true desire to eat healthy, choose the spinach smoothie over the doughnut, eat the salad over the grilled cheese. Then there is another part of me that wants everything to be fun and delicious…and is genuinely saddened by the prospect of eating green smoothies and chia for dessert every single day of my life. I can justify almost anything when it comes to food. Justifications that sound a lot like “of course I can eat cake for breakfast, I’ve been so good all week." Whenever I give in to my sugary pleasures though. my state crashes and I feel terrible. Not just because of the inevitable sugar crash afterwards…though there definitely is one, but also because of the inevitable guilt crash. When I over indulge in the food department of my life, I felt guilty because I felt like I was weak for giving into my culinary pleasures. 

Then I came upon a program that has changed my eating and my life. It has given me back a sense of control with juggling my desires to eat healthy while eating yummy. This program has helped me to recover from decades of poor eating choices, while learning how to eat in a way that leaves me feeling full, energized and excited about food. It has taught me how to eat what I love (even chocolate!) in a way that is happy and healthy and with no guilt. What is the program I am talking about? I am talking about the Healthfix Program. I took part in the 30 day Healthfix program and it has made such an incredible difference for my family. Over the last 30 days, my husband Andy has lost over 25 pounds and his hotness has increased to the “wow I’m married to that hottie!”side of the line. My daughters are asking for healthy treats and my 2 year old daughter is asking for green smoothies everyday. I have lost about 5 pounds and can finally fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans! I have so much more energy and patience with my kids. I am loving to eat healthy treats that are so unbelievably chocolaty and delicious that I don’t even crave the surgery treats! Okay for me this was huge! 

I was thinking about why this program has been such a game changer for me when other diets and programs have not worked for me in the past. I think it is because in the past when I have tried other dieting or weight loss programs, I felt deprived. With other programs I felt like I had to do without to win so it was a matter of willing myself to not eat chocolate cake and willing myself to work out in the morning. This kind of change based on willpower only lasted a little while before my willpower muscles got tired and I reached for a candy bar and stopped going for a run. The Healthfix program is different because it gently took me through a detoxification process using all natural and healthy foods. Then it helped me learn through experience how to shop for and prepare healthy foods that fuel my body and leave me feeling full. The weekly coaching helped me understand how eating this way was helping my body heal itself. The healthy food detoxification, learning how to cook in a healthy way and the coaching in the Healthfix program combined to create an effect where my body naturally began to heal itself so I feel better and as my body started to change, my desires changed. I began to crave the boost of energy I feel after a smoothie and I craved the healthy and yummy chocolate treats over the regular sugary kind. I'm not perfect but the thing that I love most about this program is that I don't have to be! When I am regularly eating the healthy foods my body needs, I can still eat some of my old foods favorite foods in moderation. The funny thing is though, I have replaced most of these foods with healthy alternatives anyways!

So today in the spirit of Valentines Day I wanted to share with you one of my favorite chocolatey treats that is so unbelievably simple to make. I love this recipe because it has has a number of health benefits and is is yummy vegan milk chocolate. Try it out and let me know what you think. 

RAW MILK CHOCOLATE RECIPE

1/2 c raw honey

1/2 c coconut oil

1/2 c cacao powder

1/2 tsp vanilla

*4 tbsp full fat coconut milk (this is the solid part skimmed off a can of coconut milk that’s been refrigerated overnight)

• Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth
• If you want, add any other mixings you like (cranberries, coconut, chopped nuts, raisins) and stir
• For chocolates: pour into moulds to make little chocolates & refrigerate for 1 hour
• For chocolate dipped strawberries: dip washed and patted dry strawberries in the chocolate & put on a plate lined with parchment paper and refrigerate 1 hour
• For frozen chocolate dipped bananas: put a full banana on a chopstick and pour the chocolate over the banana, sprinkle chopped nuts on the chocolate if desired and put on a plate lined with parchment paper and freeze for 2 hours
• *you can leave out the coconut milk if you want more of a semi sweet chocolate

Principle in Action

I remember one day I was feeling kind of defeated. I stepped on the scale and didn’t see much change. I got out my measuring tape and as I measured my waist, I didn’t see as much belly fat loss as I wanted. I felt like giving up and thought “well if I am going to be the same, I might as well eat whatever I want to eat!” Then I indulged in eating some pizza…the cheesy, sloppy kind that comes in a huge brown box. I ate a slice of pizza, and then another, and then another, and then another. I ate beyond the “I’m hungry side of the line” to the “I’m so full I can’t move side of the line.” I went to bed and that night and I felt sick…really sick. I’m talking sore throat, nauseous kind of sick. I woke up the next morning, got back on track with the Healthfix program of green smoothies and something incredible happened. 

Within a couple hours I felt better! My sore throat went away, I didn’t feel sick anymore…like at all! I realized in that moment that when I am making a shift towards a healthier lifestyle sometimes the physical changes that I want don’t come as quickly as I would like them to but there is something bigger going on within me. It is a physical shift towards my body being in a healthier state, being more able to recover from sickness, more able to heal itself. Now I am not saying I am never going to eat pizza…I love pizza! We even have pizza night at our house still…although we use a cauliflower crust and it really is seriously delicious! I even will have the messy, cheesy, big box kind of pizza once in awhile…although I definitely learned a lesson about aligning to moderation! Maybe I’ll have some veggies first. I am saying that sometimes when we make changes in this life, we need to be patient with the results and trust that fundamental shifts are happening when we can’t see them. We need to remember the big picture and remember that the small things…feeling more energy, feeling happier are actually big things and are indeed worth it.  

Let’s make sure we’ve got it

We have talked about some principles relating to health so let’s review to make sure we’ve got it. 

• We don’t need to be perfect, we just need to be striving
• It is possible to eat healthy treats…and now you have the best yummy no guilt chocolate recipe ever
• When we make changes in healthy eating, we get momentum and eventually we desire healthier foods
• We need to stick with the process with patience by continuing to do the little steps towards better health

Digging Deep

All of us have edges of where we want to grow in the area of health. Maybe we want to feel more energy, or fit into our jeans, or be alive for our grandchildren, or feel more confident. I have talked about one of the areas in my life that I have been working on. Where is an area in your life that you want to be even healthier? Grab a pen and paper and let’s explore some questions that will help you to get clarity on how to get there.  

1. What do you want to be different in your life to be even healthier?
2. Why is this important to you?
3. What would happen if you don’t do this?
4. What is one specific daily step you can take towards this vision of a healthier you?
5. When can you do this everyday? 
6. How are you going to get back up and keep taking steps towards this goal when you forget or slip into old patterns?
7. Who can support you with this goal? Maybe it’s a friend, partner or program.

Now that we have talked about some principles about health and I have given you one of my favorite healthy treat recipes...I know you are going to love this chocolate recipe and all the delicious treats it can make! I wish I could give you all the delicious recipes that I have learned through the Healthfix program but there just is not room on this blog for all the juices, smoothies, dinners and treats! I just tried a raw cinnamon swirl recipe and raw chocolate brownies that are out of this world! I am so grateful to learn how I can create pure moments with my family around yummy food without paying the cost of the sugar crash crazies afterwards! If you would like to talk to a coach about how you could get started on your journey to health, click here. 

After you try the raw chocolate recipe please let me know what you think. I hope you have a wonderful Valentines Day that is filled with healthy yummy chocolately treats :)

Much love,
Connie

5 STEPS TO HIT ANY GOAL

The Kaizan of our lives

I mentioned before that there are some specific tools that can predictably help us reach our goals. In my previous post, we explored the three things that get in our way to reaching our goals. These three dream stealers are lack of perspective, pride, and hopelessness. We also identified the six steps towards creating lasting change. If you remember those six steps are:

• 1. Creator
  2. Heart
  3. Action
  4. Need to
  5. Get back up
  6. Excel in Kaizan

Now that we understand those principles, we can dive even deeper into the specific tools we can use daily that help us to reach our goals. I recall a time in my life when I did not know about these tools and I wanted to paint my house. I had never painted a house before and I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the prospect of painting the entire outside of my house. At the time I had a small child at home with me and life was busy with naps, laundry mountains and everything else involved with being a mom. I had no idea how I was going to fit in learning to paint, buying the paint and supplies and the hours and hours it would take to finally get the job done. I was stuck in analysis paralysis. Ever been there? It is a quaint little place where time stands still and we think we are getting a lot accomplished because we are thinking about something a great deal but the reality is that even though we are exerting a great deal of energy thinking about getting started, we are not actually taking any action, so nothing gets done.  

Then I learned about one tool at the Master Your Power Within Event that helped me to get to work in an effective and manageable way and helped me to finish painting my entire house in just over a week while working in the cracks of time between my baby’s naps. This tool helped me so much that I began to use it in every area of my life; from making sure I spent daily quality time with my kids, to writing a book. It has changed everything for me because it has helped me understand what specifically I can do to get the things I want done.  

So what it this tool? Well it is something that Brandon Broadwater teaches at the Master Your Power Within Event called "Bullseye Times". It is  part of a process that he spends over half a day teaching and although I don’t have half a day now to share with you everything he taught me, I will give you everything I can within the time we have together.

Basically a Bullseye Time is a small period of time that you dedicate each day to taking action on something you want to accomplish in your life and it allows you to accomplish that goal in small, manageable, daily steps. Here are the basics to succeeding at bullseye times.

Bullseye Times:

• Set one specific goal you want to accomplish (i.e.: I will make 5 sales calls daily)
• Set a start and end time of when you will do this everyday.
• Plan to work on it between 15 min to an hour every day. We are much more effective when we are working in small bursts of time.
• During your bullseye time you are taking direct action on the thing you want to accomplish. It’s not a time to plan, it is a time to do! 

Now that you understand what bullseye times are, there is something else you need to know about this process. If you leave this out you will have unpredictable results but add this next step to your goal planning and you will be able to hit any target.   

Consequences and Rewards

This next step is critical because if we leave it out we will not be completely driven to do whatever it takes to reach our goals. All of us are either driven by pleasure or pain. When we are truly motivated to change, it is either because we want to have something pleasurable or we don’t want something painful. For my husband, he is motivated by pleasure and he loves to eat good food so he would be completely motivated to do work he doesn’t necessarily enjoy to get something yummy. Pain motivation doesn’t work for him very often. He is pretty easy going and adaptable so he will just put up with less than ideal circumstances rather than it driving him forward to change it. Now for me I am motivated by pain. I will do a lot to avoid painful consequences. I like good things in my life and will work towards them but when push comes to shove, I will do anything to avoid painful things I don’t want in my life. So for us to predictably and effectively reach our goals, we need to have a motivator in place pushing us forward. If we do not put this in place, our results will be sporadic and unpredictable. If we attach consequences and rewards to our goals and are committed to following through on implementing them based on our performance, we will have a fire lit within us pushing us forward towards creating the life we desire. 

 

To get started, we need to find something you really want everyday. Maybe it is a special type of food, or checking your emails, or hey even brushing your teeth. Whatever it is, it needs to be something that you just can’t do without and would do anything to have it. Now what you do is attach this thing you want most of all to the goal you have. Here’s some examples of how this works. Let’s say you want to workout everyday and you also love to shower every day, you could decide that you can have a shower (reward) as soon as you workout for 15 minutes (goal). If you want to improve your relationship and you realize that you haven’t been telling your kids you love them, your could decide I can brush my teeth (reward) as soon as I tell my kids I love them (goal). 

The next step is to also attach a painful consequence to your goal if you don’t do it. By painful I don’t mean physical pain (that would be weird!), I just mean something that you don’t want that will drive you to take action on your set goal. Here are a couple examples. “I can’t have a shower (consequence) until I have exercised for 15 minutes in the morning (goal).” “I can’t check my e-mails (consequence) until after I have had my morning spinach smoothie (goal).” It is just attaching a consequence painful enough to motivate us to do whatever it is that we really want to do. 

Putting these rewards and consequences in place helps us to avoid being caught in the dream stealer trap of losing perspective because they help keep us focused on our long term desires rather than short term pleasures. We make it easier for us to take the small steps forward necessary to reach our goals than it is staying in comfortable complacency because the pleasure and pain that we have chosen for ourselves drives us to take those small steps. This is just awesome because it helps us to get out of our own way.

Principle in Action 

I had an inspiration that I should write a book book but I found it so difficult to get started and stay in momentum. I would start writing one day and commit to writing for 5 minutes every day. I would do awesome for a couple of days and then life would get in the way and I would have the same old excuses (not enough time, energy, knowledge…the list could go on and on) and I would stop. My progress was so slow that I remember thinking the book might be finished by the time I am 95 years old! Then I learned how to use bullseye times at the Master Your Power Within event and finally understood how I could set myself up to win by simply putting a bullseye time in place and attaching consequences and rewards to it. So that is what I did. I decided that I could have a shower after I wrote in my book. After I did this I remember one time it was about 10:30 at night and Andy came outside and saw me frantically writing in my book and knowing that I normally am not writing that late, he said to me “whatcha doing?”. I told him I am writing in my book because I really want a shower!

Even though putting bullseye times and rewards in consequences worked most of the time, I wasn’t perfect with it. I remember one time I didn’t write in my book and so I couldn't have a shower but I really needed to quickly run into Costco. So I threw my hair up in a ponytail, put on some clothes lying on the floor and ran out the door. While I was at the grocery store I saw someone that I know. At that moment, a mental checklist raced through my mind…"did I remember to put on deodorant, is my shirt clean, I think I have baby spit up on me, did I even comb my hair today?” Let me tell you my friends, it only takes a couple times of running into people you know while running through the stinky pants mental checklist before you are willing to do any goal to get a shower! No one wants to be the stinky, crazy hair lady! That is the power of this principle. When the consequence and reward are something that will really motivate us…we will do anything to get it done!

Let’s Make Sure We’ve Got it

• To predictably reach our goals we need to do it in small manageable steps
• Setting bullseye times are the most effective way to take small, predictable steps towards our goals
• For bullseye times to be effective we need to:
  1. Set one specific goal you want to accomplish (i.e.: I will make 5 sales calls daily)
  2. Set a start and end time of when you will do this everyday.
  3. Plan to work on it between 15 min to an hour. We are much more effective when we are working in a small burst of time.
  4. During your bullseye time you are taking direct action on the thing you want to accomplish. It’s not a time to plan or think, it is a time to do!
  5. Attach a pleasurable reward and painful consequence to doing your daily goal

Digging Deep

Now that we know this principle of bullseye times let’s put it into action in your life. Get a pen and paper or an electronic notebook and let’s get started! 

• What goal do you want to accomplish?
• What specific small daily step can you take towards this goal? (has to be something you can daily say yes I did it or no I didn’t do it)
• When are you going to start doing this every day? 
• How long will you do this for? (15 minutes to an hour is ideal)
• What pleasurable reward can you attach to it if you get it done?
• What painful consequence can you attach to it if you don’t get it done?

Now we know how to set specific, achievable goals and we understand how to break them down into small steps that we can take every day towards our goal. We also know how to set up the environment to win by putting in pleasurable rewards and painful consequences to help push us towards our dreams. I promise that when you put these things in practice in your own life, you will move faster towards the life you want to create. If you want help with becoming clear on your goals or setting specific goals in any area of your life; business, parenting, relationships, money or personal happiness click here to register for a complimentary coaching session.  

Please let me know know how using this process works for you and the successes you have had in moving towards your dreams. 

Much love,
Connie