Category Archives for Healthy Eating

Is cancer genetic?

It appears......not.

When you transplant healthy genes into a cancer cell it still produces more cancer cells when it divides. AND if you take cancer genes and put them into a healthy cell that cell still produces more healthy cells when it divides.

If cancer was purely genetic, as in our DNA housed in the nucleus of each cell, when you remove the nucleus and transplant it into another cell then the new cells that get replicated from that cell with the cancer genes should have cancer as well if cancer is genetic. But, as it turns out, THEY DON'T.

In the medical research text book, "Cancer as a Metabolic Disease," the 3 plus decades of collective cancer research lead by Thomas Seyfried, the book's author, shows that cancer is not a genetic disease but rather a metabolic disease.

Now, are there genetics at play that make one more susceptible to cancer, I would say yes. Are there genetic variants that effect our metabolic pathway that plays into cancer, yes. But is cancer a purely genetic disease, it seems not.

This should be very exciting! This means no one, no matter what gene they might have, even if that gene is believed to cause cancer, is determined to get cancer.

What this means is that the environment and how we live our life and our lifestyle is what is the driving force behind the development of cancer and how our genes respond. AND this is something we can change, improve, and effect. We not only have a say in this, but we have a very high level of control.

If cancer truly is a metabolic disease, and I believe it is, and this research does too, then how we chose to fuel and care for our body becomes extremely important.

The basic, fundamental first tier step is deciding to become a fat burner rather than a sugar burner. That is the the fundamental summary concept. You influence this by what you eat, when you eat, and how you move. As you do this you need to keep a healthy balance of your body's coordination systems so it can play nice and be as strong and effective as possible. The body's communication system primarily breaks down to 2 sides:

Nervous System and the Hormonal System

So, here is the focus:

1. Become a fat burner over a sugar burner
2. Keep you Nervous system tuned up and in proper healthy repairing tone
3. Be hormone focused and stay hormonally sensitive

Everything I post here and write about is trying to drive those 3 point above. Go back check them out and keep learning, when you do, share what you have learned with me please!

Health is Freedom!

Dr. Don

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My Ethical Issue With Reduction vs. Elimination In Dietary Recommendations.

Just about every standard diet around or that has ever been proposed have all used the same model and construct of calorie reduction and reducing fat.

There have been many clever ways to package this idea from grazing on small meals and snacks all day long, to having a point system that maxes both fat and calories in a day, to constructing blocks designed of food combinations, to straight up calorie and fat gram counting.

This massive effort was promoted by all of our government agencies, stamped with approval by all our many medical associations and institutions, and embraced by the eager food industry to all help us loose weight and get healthy.

What came next was the introduction off modern "health food," labeled as low fat and reduced calories being now called "Diet," "Light," "Lean," and used terms such as "Healthy Portion," "Heart Healthy," and were quickly promoted and partnered by the new industry of weight loss and all their new programs like Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Lean Cuisine, all they way up to Slim Fast, Nutrisystem and Medifast and all the other countless shake based meal replacement groups out there.

This new cultural model for eating essentially promoted REDUCTION. The only thing limited was fat and calories. By reducing what you ate by 25% or 500 calories a day you would lose 1 lb of body fat a week. This new fad diet concept, and yes, it is the ultimate fad diet, did not care what you ate with your daily points, blocks, and the 75% of the food you were allowed to eat.....just keep the calories lower and the fat low overall.

The 2 main concepts, the very backbone and rational off this model, low fat and daily calorie restriction are both anecdotal hypotheses, not facts, and not evidence based, AND as it turns out very limiting and actually DANGEROUS.

Calories do not determine metabolism. Fat is essential and when it gets too low it causes part of the chronic stress and malfunction that leads to disease.

Low Fat, Low Calorie dieting may induce short term moderate weight loss but it does so by injuring our metabolism. What we now know from long term EVIDENCE is that it increases your risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer and overall causes of death. AND 98% of the weight loss (usually in the form of water, some fat, and some muscle) is regained plus interest (and usually as fat giving us a net gain in fat for our efforts).

Hormones drive metabolism and paint the landscape that our health is resultantly depicted. Hormones determine hunger, satiety, fat loss and gain, muscle mass and atrophy, and even mood, mental clarity, emotions, and quality of life.

Our current Standard American Diet creates imbalances in our hormones that in time can cause our health issues. By simply reducing the frequency and severity in which we imbalance our hormones but continue to imbalance them will not stop the disease process, and doesn't seem to slow them much once started either. To recommend them knowing this is unethical and to utilize these models knowing this is denial.

Elimination is the key to today's weight and chronic disease issues. There simply are behaviors and actions that we much stop if we want to loose weight and get healthy. There are other actions and behaviors we simply have to start for the same reason.

First steps:
1. Eliminate snacking
2. Eliminate sugar

Add in first steps:
1. Eat more healthy fat
2. Mix intensity exercise/training into your physical activity

Bonus musts:
1. Improve your sleep
2. Celebrate silence: meditation and paced breathing
3. Neurological tune up: chiropractic

For more advanced concepts, scroll back on my wall and keep an eye out.

Let me know how it goes!

Dr. Don

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Internal friction

internal friction

Part 1 of 5

I am currently pursing my PhD in Health Psychology focusing on this process specifically, but I am not a psychologist. I am just your friendly neighborhood chiropractor and a mild mannered nutritionist who has spent the last 17 years working with people one on one, and now in large groups and programs, in three out of four of these categories I am going to go into with great success. I leave the psychology to the experts who deal with this type of issues every day, but I know that if you improve the body by working on these three categories, detoxifying and healing the cells, reducing hormonal resistance, and improving the mental economy the physiology will improve and much of the mental stress, strain, and mood issues that come along with this friction improves greatly. Again, I am all for stress management and avoiding stress when appropriate, but my ultimate goal, one that I research daily and am personally committed to, one that I live by and teach my children, is how to be healthy, heal when needed, and build rock solid resilience to stress.

Internal friction. That is the best way I can sum up how I see our body and system working as it slowly builds up tension or a physical dissonance to our physical and mental tipping point that eventually spills with ill health.

Mentally when we feel anxiety, or we find ourselves drawn to negative thoughts, self doubt and we start to get irritable, critical, and start feeling like someone else is running this show, like the thoughts and emotions we feel building are someone else's completely. I can only describe how it feels to me and attempt to translate how it has been described by patients and clients over the years in practice as a literal internal FRICTION that swells, grinds, confuses, tempts, distracts and can consumes us.

It is this mental friction that makes the insanity of addictive behavior seem logical or acceptable right before we do what ever it is we do, again, and again, and again. Whether it is eating sugar and processed carbs again, or taking that drink or that hit again, turning to abusive behavior or language and saying nasty things again, or suppressing our own thoughts and feelings to "feel" loved again, all the while knowing this is in no way good for us, clearly knowing that this is doing harm, and perfectly cognizant that we are literally and figuratively feeding this problem......again.

We can feel that friction when it begins. It can start slow and mild, almost unnoticeable, and slowly builds and as it gains our attention and we hope it will pass or we try and do something, hopefully something positive, that might calm that feeling and ease that friction. It can build or just crash your good day and squeeze your life joy by coming on so strong that the next thing you know you are in a mini internal panic trying to escape and avoiding it at any cost.

Sometimes this friction can change our personality right before our eyes, or slowly push as it alters who we are to the point that when we do finally see the issue, or when it is pointed out to us, we are blind to even the thought that this could be true, that this could be us. Sometimes we are reacting through this friction before we even know it is upon us, almost like a black-out drunk, it happens and all bets are off to what we do or what comes out of our mouth. Suddenly there are tears or harsh words, sometimes there is pain, other times you just find yourself off point, eating junk foods or finishing that whole pizza and skipping that workout or pushing that work off, ignoring your kids and wasting your day. Then we are left to make excuses and feel even worse than before as we reinforce that internal friction with more power to come back and terrorize us again.

This often seems like a completely mental process making us feel crazy, defective, and alone. Because in those moments we see the lunacy of our actions and feel that no one else can relate, that no one else really thinks these things or does this and definitely not over and over like I do. But they do. We all do at some point and to some degree, whether in thought, feeling or action, in some way that is unique to us we feel that friction.

As mental as it seems I think something physical sets this up and then sets us off. I know that thoughts can drive actions and physiology but I also believe that our physiology can drive our thoughts and emotions as well.

To be continued……

Visceral Fat is NOT Dangerous

visceral fat is not dangerous

Yes, you read that right.

And yes, I have repeatedly written to you about how dangerous and disease promoting visceral fat is to our health and quality of life. And now, today, I have to modify that stance.

Let me first start by making an apology. In this learning process, trying to make sense of some very complicated physiology and pathologies that are plaguing the American public, there are new discoveries and perspectives that change along the way. That can be frustrating, I get it. It is frustrating for me too. I do not like having to change my position or edit my protocols and programs due to new information but I feel I must. I want the best for myself and my family. I want the best most accurate and effective understanding of what is really going on in this body of mine so that I can make the best, educated, informed decision on how to best engage in this crazy world of ours so I can live as healthy, happy, and stress resilient a life that I possibly can and pass that knowledge on to my children. Hence, I course correct often, and this is one of those moments, I hope you understand.

Often I have described visceral fat as the fat that accumulates in our gut, in the abdomen, under and behind the fat that lines our waist. In doing so I usually grouped together the fat that accumulates around the organs in our trunk with the fat that accumulates within the organs in the same area. Yes, there is fat in both locations, yes, both are indicators of problems and can raise health risks, but they are distinctly different and so are the health implications.

As it turns out, visceral fat, as in the fat around the organs in our gut is just marginally more dangerous than the fat on the outside of our body that upsets us when we see it in the mirror. Organ fat on the other hand, specifically liver fat or the fat that accumulated inside the liver itself due to diet, is the real threat. There is a real eye opening study that I will write about and include later that shows that in reality when isolated and tested it is not the visceral fat that cause our metabolic dysfunction and raises all of our health risks, it is the liver fat.

I have been working on diagrams and pictographics on how this process exactly works and I should have more info and specifics with a visual very soon…..but this is rather complicated stuff, but I think I can get it to make not only sense but give us some immediate direction to avoid or improve it naturally and through lifestyle. At least that is my intention.

What this new information does is to reinforce the liver-centric and hormonal emphasis of how we have been looking at this whole health equation and basing our lifestyle modifications and nutritional and stress resilience protocols on. The bottom line is we have been on the right track and this new info and distinction only supports what we have been doing in our research, work and programs both in my one on one custom programs and in the larger population based programs we are running through Aduro.

All that said, and not jumping into the specifics too prematurely, I can tell you that the number one CAUSE, not correlation, but CAUSE of liver fat is sugar. There simply is no way around it, no way to sugar-coat it, and definitely no way to deny it. Sugar IS what is driving major metabolic dysfunction that leads to metabolic syndrome which sets the stage for weight gain and obesity, diabetes, heart disease, accelerated aging, premature death, and is implicated in cancer and Alzheimer’s as well.

So, what can I do today?

Step One: No added sugar of any kind. Especially in liquid forms.

Step Two: Live the insulin friendly lifestyle (see my blog)

Step Three: Exercise, it promotes fat clearance from the liver.

Step Four: Prioritize Sleep

Step Five: Sit as little as possible….sitting squishes the liver and pisses it off!

More to come my friends.

Here’s to a lovely liver!

Dr. Don

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Number One Contributor To Your Health

number one contributor to health

The number one contributor to our society's health is not stress, it is selfishness.

This is a rant, be forewarned.

Why do you eat this or that?

"I like it. It tastes good. It is what I have always eaten."

To this I say, “so what?” Grow up, step out of your lazy box and branch out. A lot of things taste good, that has no indication to how good it is for you, and in today's world with all the sugar, chemical sweeteners, and processed oils it probably means it is bad for you. Anything can taste good, healthy eating does not have to taste bad, but you have to learn how to prepare it and re-grow your taste buds that you killed with all the junk and processed foods and high sugar intake you have indulged in for decades.

Why don't you eat healthy?

"It is too expensive. I don't have the time. I don't know how to cook."

It does not have to be more expensive to eat healthily. You can't just buy health food and add it into the list of junk you already eat, you have to make a lateral shift and replace the junk with the real food.

Plus, you eat too often. You might eat too much, but I don't know that, but if you are eating more than 2-3 meals a day, with maybe one snack, then you eat too often. Eating is when ever you put food or any liquid in your mouth that is not water. You must count EVERY time, and if you do, you will see, that like most Americans according to research, you probably eat 12-20 times a day. TOO OFTEN! Eat just 3 meals a day and eat well when you do, no calorie cutting, and you will save money.

Budget and plan and you will save money. Cook at home and buy intelligently and you will save money. Learn what should be organic and what can be conventional and you will save money. Make the time if your health and the health of your kids are truly important to you. You spend time eating junk, buying it, waiting in lines, driving to junk pushers, take all that time and prepare, buy and prep accordingly and you might even save time as well as money. Learn to cook, yes, even you men, learn to cook, it is part of being a self supporting adult. NO excuse not to.

Do you exercise regularly?

I move all day. I don't have the time. I don't like to."

Physical activity is not the same as exercise. I am glad you get physical activity in your day, keep it up, but that is not exercise, nor should it be counted as such. Make time. Even 10 minutes 2-4 times a day is better than nothing and can be as beneficial as one 30-40 minute continuous workout. Get up early and move your body. Get up 30 minutes earlier and do it. Go to sleep earlier if you need to, but do it. Time issue solved. And I don't care if you don't like it, find something you do like, anything, there are more options than ever from dance aerobics, to drumming aerobics, lifting classes, intensity classes, yoga, spin classes, home videos, and so much more....just find something and do it, you can not have optimal health without it.

Do you work on yourself?

"I don't know what that means. I can't meditate. I am not into all that."

We know to much now and have too many studies and overwhelming research on the impact of self improvement from building awareness, to mindfulness, visualization, breathing techniques, meditation, goal setting, and much more to not be doing something. If you don't reframe your thinking about stress from the current conventional thinking, then you are destined to choose to have it consume you.

Celebrating silence and taking time for yourself is a must, not a luxury, and only something you can do for you. But you have to learn, seek it out and do it. Do it not, and you get more of what you got.

Look, life is busy, I get it, I have a few things on my plate as well, but that is why you must do these things and your excuses have to be checked at the door. The people who allow these excuses I listed above to guide their reactive lifestyle are the same people that when they get sick with a chronic issue like diabetes, heart disease, depression, anxiety, pain, digestive disorders, and much more they ask "why?" Why did this happen to me.....they say it isn't fair.....it doesn't make sense.....I didn't do anything bad.....etc.....and the other people around them say, “wow, I didn't see that coming, they were fine yesterday.”...NO, they were not! And if a health scare is not enough to wake these people up they then will say, “it was in my family.” They then use the lie of their health issue being a genetic problem that they could not avoid and continue to pull the same cop-out card and waste away miserably.

We can do better.

I don't claim to be perfect or that anyone else is or should try to be. But you have to try, you have to have these things on your radar and be working to learn about them and incorporate new ideas and behaviors into your life at any level and pace that you can. We have to be sharing and teaching each other and watching out for slip ups and the gradual decline in our efforts to we can check our behavior and course-correct.

This blog will bring a lot of things up for a lot of people. Before you tell me how you are different, how your excuse is justified, how your health issue is "really" genetic and how your doctor enables that belief, how your life is unique or any other excuse to not be doing all you can in these areas, read the post again, and if you still want to defend your lack of doing all you can, write it all out in an email, every detail, your history, what you have been through, what you have been told, what you have tried, how your life and situation is different, and send it to yourself. Or better yet, send it to your spouse and family, send it to your kids or grand kids. But don't send it to me.

Look, I love you and I want the best for you and will be happy to support and help you GET BETTER. Going through all your excuses will not help you get better and only push people who want to help you away. I am very interested in planning new action steps, developing support systems, building proactive nutritional, supplemental, and exercise protocols, getting the supportive health services needed, and creating a long term strategy to change your path and create a new future for you and your family.

Strategy is key. Strategy is the process of aligning your personal goals and values in life and for your health improvement with how you want to get there and when. When you have your strategy you then can build your team and resources and list out your options as they reflect your values and goals. Then you choose. No one can tell you what to do, but they can share info, interpret information and tests, offer options, insights and experience, even propose a course of action, but at the end of the day you have to choose to follow it and do it. Even a prescription is a fancy official way of making a suggestion and you are in no way obligated to take that suggestion any more than you are obligated to take any other suggestion along the way.

At the end of the day you pay the ultimate price or reap the ultimate reward for the choices you make based on those suggestions. So, gather them well and from the best sources you can and make sure they all align with what you truly value and are wanting. Do it not, and the potential to go right back to excuses and being the victim are high.

Don't be negative. This is not meant to put you down or make you feel bad but to give you a little health tough love and help you see you can go where you want to health wise and you have more control and options than you might think. You can do this. And honestly, only you can do this for yourself and your kids. Do not take it lightly, it is an opportunity, whether you take it or not is up to you.

Live well my friends,

Dr. Don

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Insulin Friendly Diet

insulin friendly diet

What we promote is not exactly low carb or high fat, it is not paleo specifically or Atkins or even Nutritional Ketosis. What we promote is an insulin friendly eating style and lifestyle. If you are like most people you are asking yourself, “what the heck does that mean?”

I often write and post about what can seem to be very different concepts in natural living, health and healing, weight loss and medicine. As different as the topics may seem, the theme and thread of commonality that I consistently use is building a lifestyle and protocols that are metabolically and hormonally healthy. If you have been following my posts over the last two years then you realize how complicated this whole concept truly is.

What I focus on and try to do is make these concepts as simple as possible, for myself and my own health endeavors and for those reading. In making things simple I inevitably run the risk of missing important points and over simplifying to the point of being, well, in a word, wrong. That being said, I am going to do my best here, and want you to know that no one post is the end all, be all, of the story. Nor is it all inclusive, nor am I ever trying to be vague. It is just the nature of the effort to keep things simple. I hope you understand.

We as a culture and in medicine have been locked in the glucose driven model of insulin resistance, pre-diabetes, diabetes and cardiometabolic issues and it can be hard to think any other way. The fact is that glucose is toxic and the body will stop in its tracks and burn it whenever possible to get it out of our system. This immediate action the body takes on glucose and that urgency often gets interpreted as the body having a preference for glucose over other fuels.

Blood glucose levels are specifically relevant to our health depending on the metabolic state we are in. When we are a chronic sugar burner, taking in a lot of carbohydrates and predominately burning glucose for fuel, then the normal glucose blood levels are 70-99. When we are fat adaptive and burning fat efficiently then that number can drop into the 50's and has been reported in experienced fat burning athletes to drop into the 40’s with no abnormal change in physical or mental function. This new set standard in a fat burning person can make any blood sugar level over 80 a problem.

The true danger in high blood sugar is the toxicity level it produces and the correlative insulin levels. The body can handle high blood glucose levels from time to time, but a chronically high glucose level and its toxic effects can eat away at the body from the inside out. The risk factors for diabetes, heart disease, dementia, and heart disease come from the chronic exposure to high insulin levels long before the high blood sugar levels alone can do their damage.

It is this chronic over exposure to insulin that literally burns-out our system and health. So what can we do? How do we avoid or fix this? The simple answer is low insulin levels. How do we get these low insulin levels? A low insulin diet and lifestyle.....and here it is:

Low insulin stimulating foods. The strongest stimulators of insulin are carbs. Low carb diets beat low glycemic index diets out of the water regarding weight loss, metabolic function, hormonal improvement, satisfaction, and sustainability. It is not about the glucose levels alone but the corresponding insulin levels and a low carb diet overall keeps insulin pretty low. Carbs trigger 23% of our insulin response. Protein is responsible for 10%. Fat has no effect. That leaves 67% in this insulin equation that is not stimulated by food and the rest of the 67% is from the incretin effect (think stomach hormones) and cross hormonal reactions (think thyroid (toxins), cortisol (stress), and brain chemistry (think addiction and emotions in life).

So, what does that all mean? Basically it means that there are foods and behaviors that are blood glucose friendly but terrorize insulin. You can be blood glucose healthy and still drive all the health issues that are correlated to high blood sugar due to how it raises and keeps insulin levels up. For example:

1. Dairy. As in milk and yogurt...both are glucose mellow but insulin insulting.

2. Animal protein. Red meat and white fish......again, no blood sugar rise but a very steep increase in insulin

3. Workout shakes, whole grains and convenient foods. Protein powders, grain products, and processed foods....may not have a big glucose rush (initially) but will crank insulin.

That said, sugars, grains and starches are the biggest offenders.....they should be avoided FIRST.

Behavior Considerations:

A. Hyper stress response (cortisol) will throttle insulin.

B. Poor sleep...one night of poor sleep will increase insulin resistance.

C. Anxiety...will immediately raise insulin levels.

D. Slow and low cardio over time will promote sugar burning and free radical production as well as raise insulin and cortisol.

Others issues to consider:

- Medications...statins, anti-biotics, and thyroid meds all promote insulin resistance.

- Artificial sweeteners can mess up gut bacteria and promote metabolic issues.

- Alcohol....sorry people....it stresses our insulin/glucagon balance and decreases glutathione (a major anti-oxidant) and stops fat burning in its tracks as well as plays havoc on our nutrient economy and feeds the addiction cycle.

Ok, you still with me? Take the concepts above and put them into action as you can in your life and add these 3 modalities to help balance your neurological tone (the driving factor for this whole process):

1. Meditate

2. Paced breathing

3. Body work... specifically chiropractic upper cervical adjustments.

Now, mix this into the other concepts we go over here and keep at it. Yes, there is a lot to learn, don’t stress, we are on this road together, let me know your insights and if mine are helping you.

Dr. Don

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Pesto Cauliflower Salad

Pesto Cauliflower Salad over Baby Arugula

Here’s and oldie but a goodie! Originally posted on our Abundant Health blog – this one is a true family favorite – even skeptics who don’t like cauliflower loved it!!!

I know I have touted the health benefits cauliflower before, but it still bears mentioning that – even though it is not green – it is one of the most nutrient dense vegetables out there. You can read more about the specific benefits of cauliflower in my Mashed Potato Surprise post here.

OK – Recipe time…

Ingredients:

  • One large head of cauliflower
  • Juice of one lemon
  • 1 tbsp Olive Oil
  • 1/2 tsp sea salt
  • 2 bell peppers chopped
  • 1 cup cherry tomatoes – cut in halves
  • 1/2 cup Coconut Pesto
  • 4-6 handfuls of baby arugula

Break the cauliflower up into small, bite sized florets and toss with the lemon juice, olive oil and sea salt. Cover and place in the fridge for 2-3 hours to marinate (you can leave it overnight too if you have the time.)

Toss the marinated cauliflower with the peppers, tomatoes and pesto. Taste and add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve over 4-6 handfuls of the baby arugula. YUM YUM!!!

*** if you have any left over salad, its really yummy the next day if you warm it up a little with some white beans and maybe a touch more pesto sauce????

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Coconut Macaroons

Skylar’s Coconut Macaroon Trees

I love it that my Daughter loves to help in the kitchen! This is one of her favorite cookie recipes – we don’t eat sweets and we are essentially a grain free house, so this is one of our healthy treats. My daughter modified this recipe based on a recipe she found from Martha Stewart. This version is very low in sugar, but you can easily use pure stevia extract to lower the sugar content even more.

Ingredients:

  • 2 ½ Unsweetened Shredded Coconut
  • ⅛ cup sugar
  • 2 Tbsp Baking Stevia (this is a stevia sugar blend available in the baking aisle of most supermarkets.)
  • 2 Large Egg Whites
  • 5 teaspoons Pure Vanilla Extract
  • Pinch of Salt
  • Confectioners’ sugar

Pre-heat oven to 350°

In a large bowl, combine coconut, sugar, baking stevia, egg whites, vanilla extract, and salt and mix well.

Shape into tree shapes and place on a cookie sheet* about 2 inches apart.

Bake for 12 – 15 minutes until the tops and undersides are golden and toasty.

Let cool on a wire rack.

Once cooled completely, right before serving, dust with confectioners’ sugar.

*We love to use our Pampered Chef Stoneware for these cookies.

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Coconut Pesto

This is a fantastic, dairy free pesto sauce. Toss it with your salad, with Zucchini Noodles, or over you favorite veggies.

Place the following ingredients in a food processor:

  • 2 tbsp coconut cream*
  • 1 tbsp tomato paste
  • 1/2 cup walnuts
  • 1 cup parsley
  • 1/2 cup basil
  • 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
  • 3 scallions
  • the juice of half a lemon
  • 1/4 tsp sea salt

Begin to process all the ingredients together and then, with the processor running, slowly drizzle in 1/4 cup olive oil until all ingredients make a smooth paste.

Coconut Cream
*Coconut cream, aka coconut butter, is NOT Coco Lopez. It is not sweetened. If you cannot find it you can make it – place about 3-4 cups shredded, unsweetened coconut (I use the Lets Do Organic brand) in your food processor and process for about 10-15 minutes. It will take a while, but it will turn into a smooth, creamy, DELICIOUS, liquidly butter.

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