Coffee Replacement Chocolate Morning Drink

One of the most beautiful things we can do for ourselves at midlife is to get to know ourselves without caffeine.

Each time we introduce caffeine into the body, we trigger our flight or flight response and your stress hormone cortisol spikes in your beautiful midlife body. We rely on this early morning jolt for daily energy and often do not realize that it is robbing us of our innate vitality and our sleep at the other end of our day.

As estrogen our juicy hormone and progesterone our balancing hormone are in decline during midlife, it is easy for our stress hormone cortisol to dominate our hormone profile leaving us anxious, losing sleep at night and feeling burnt out daily. Ironically this can cause us to lean more heavily on caffeine to jump start our day and we exacerbate the cycle down into exhaustion with our morning cup of joe!

Our job at midlife is to love on ourselves with dense nutrition and stress reducing lifestyle practices so that we support our bodies through hormonal change and reduce the uncomfortable symptoms of peri-menopause that come with changing and dominant hormones.

This may mean giving ourself healthy boundaries and a midlife break up with caffeine as we move through hormonal change. In this way we can get to know where our natural daily energy lies and ensure we can sleep like a baby through our forties and fifties and avoid feeling tires wired and frazzled.

Hot Take: you can always make up with caffeine later when your hormones are on an even keel!

This morning beverage is a recipe designed to nourish the body first thing in the morning.

It is rich in our relaxation mineral magnesium found in raw cacao and boosts our happy neurotransmitter serotonin to give you that lift in the morning that you enjoy from coffee. It includes anti-inflammatory spices and calms the brain early in the day by providing healthy fats from coconut butter and the omega 3 fatty acids found in protein rich hemp seeds.

Dates are rich in iron and the B group of vitamins and collagen provides the amino acids needed to build health skin, joints and a healthy gut lining.

Above all else, where coffee jolts the brain and leaches nutrition from the body as it dehydrates our skin, this morning elixir nourishes, calms and builds your midlife health.

Coffee Replacement Chocolate Morning Drink

Ingredients

4 tbsp raw cacao

4 tbsp hemp seeds

2 tbsp coconut oil

4 dates

1 pinch sea salt

4 cups boiled water

2 tbsp Collagen (optional)

1/4 tsp cinnamon (optional)

1/4 tsp ground turmeric (optional)

1/4' fresh ginger (optional)

Instructions

Add all the ingredients into a vented blender and blend until silky smooth.

Decant into mason jars and cool.

Top with lid and refrigerate until required daily.

Beet Hummus

When we pass through peri-menopause we have two options of how we approach our health and the discombobulating symptoms that we are feeling from this natural hormonal change.

1. We can fall into a victim mindset and bypass the learning that comes for the experience by jumping straight onto the HRT train delaying our inevitable transition into peri-menopause or worse, suffering and complaining for up to 10 years because we buy into the story that this is what it means to be a woman…that we suffer from our own bodies and hormones. Not a happy place to be.

2. We can begin to take greater care of ourselves, to nourish ourselves deeply with dense nutrition and listen to our bodies and learn from our symptoms to discover exactly what our minds and bodies are needing during this time of hormonal change.

The joy of an empowered approach to peri-menopause is that the path is paved with delicious health promoting recipes that build health for the next chapter and supports our bodies as we metamorphosis into strong and vibrant women with energy, excitement and robust health striding into the next chapter.

If I had to pick one recipe that supports midlife health in a myriad of ways it would be this gorgeous scarlet bowl of Beet Hummus.

Beets are rich in betalains that support stage 2 of the detoxification process in the liver. Our livers are our greatest ally in managing fluctuating hormones as it deconjugates and binds excess hormone ready to leave the body.

The liver also needs a fibre rich diet to function effectively as the body wants to detox daily when we poop leaving us free of circulating hormones that cause our night-time sweats, daily hot flashes and weight gain.

Fibre is the midlife womans’ best friend helping her to balance hormones, protecting heart health and supporting digestive health.

Chickpeas are fibre rich and packed with the B group of vitamins for energy and plant-based protein.
Chickpeas and sesame seeds found in tahini also contain phytoestrogens that trickle feed our bodies a safe plant-based mimic for estrogen. This benign estrogen helps us to get our mojo back and feel like our juicy hormone is balanced in our bodies.

So much gorgeousness here. The colour, a burst of flavour and the dense nutrition supporting our midlife bodies.

Besides it’s gorgeous colour the secret beauty of this dish is that it only takes 10 minutes to make and sits in the fridge ready to add a nutrient dense, liver loving snack or lunch option to your day at any moment.

 Ingredients

3 medium/ 1 large beet
1½ cups (15-oz can) chickpeas, rinsed and drained
3 cloves garlic 
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp sea salt
½ lemon, juiced
¼ tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp tahini (optional)

Instructions

I have made this dish with both cooked and raw beets.
I have cooked beets in the oven with a little salt and pepper. I have thrown chunks of raw beet into the blender. I have bought a vacuum sealed pack of cooked beets from Costco. The hummus always tastes great.

Throw all of the ingredients into a blender and blend on high until the hummus is smooth and whipped.
Season to your taste.

Serve with gluten free crackers or chips.

Nut and Seed Mix

I am all about baby steps. Simple switches in the food we eat everyday so that as you move through ypour daily routine, you automatically build dense nutrition into the food you consume. Not a diet overhaul, not an overwhelming change everything situation but a simple switcheroo.

One of my recommendations for decreasing the hidden sugar in your diet and to boost the nutrition you eat daily is to JUST EAT WHOLE FOODS!

Ditching cookies, muffins, cakes, candy and energy bars is a good place to start.

I advise many of my clients to create a mix of health promoting dark chocolate drops, whole nuts and seeds to keep in the refrigerator and to turn to when they are looking for a snack.

Dark chocolate is low in sugar and rich in antioxidants, iron and the relaxation mineral magnesium. Dark chocolate has also been shown to boost brain serotonin levels in clinical trail...we really do feel happier when we eat chocolate!

Whole nuts and seeds provide our bodies with heart healthy fats, vitamin E which helps to reduce hot flashes and minerals such as selenium and magnesium which support a healthy thyroid gland and are required by the body as a cofactor for a myriad of small biochemical reactions.

Sugar is removed from the diet when we switch to eating these foods raw, whole and individually rather than smooshed together in a processed, grain based bar by SUGAR!

Ingredients

Find a medium sized recycled jar to hold your mix.
Add Brazil nuts...selenium ++, macadamia nuts, heart and brain healthy walnuts, vitamin E rich almonds, Zinc rich raw pumpkin seeds, pecans, pistachios and sunflower seeds.
Add organic, dark chocolate chips or chunks
For me the dark chocolate feels like a treat or celebration, it elevates a mundane nut mix to something special. It nurtures me.
Add goji berries for vitamin C or sugar free cranberries for a burst of fruitiness.

Keep refrigerated so that the healthy fats in the nuts do not go rancid and the jar is not on the counter as a permanent temptation 

Ditch the Oreo cookie and reach for a handful of your mix when your energy is low or pack into a small container to carry with you for when you have a busy day.

Nutrition is the first line of self- care baby ❤️