Fiber breakfast cookies with Cacao Magic

You know how you’ve heard people say “eat dark chocolate” for antioxidants and abundant health? Yeah, that’s because of UNPROCESSED, RAW, VEGAN Chocolate… CACAO! Cacao powder is chocolate in it’s most raw and nutritious form. The Philosophie Cacao Magic has Cacao nibs, Cacao powder, Tocos (Vitamin E- good for skin and nails), Mesquite (high in iron & protein), Maca (good for energy & balancing mood) and 3 medicinal mushrooms that are excellent for anti-aging, preventing cancer* and healing the body.

WET INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 cup chopped prunes or prune puree*
• 1/4 cup sweetener (such as maple, brown rice or agave syrups)
• 1/4 cup apple sauce
• 1/4 cup nut butter (such as almond, pumpkin seed or tahini)
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 egg or 1/2 ripe banana
• 1 tsp vanilla

DRY INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup whole grain flour (or gluten-free flour)
• 1/2 cup psyllium
• 1/2 cup ground flax
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup or more of nuts, seeds, trail mix, or chopped dried fruit
• 2 TBL or more of Philosophie Cacao Magic

*to give them a sweeter taste, you could add chocolate chips!

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Place chopped prunes in a blender and just cover with boiling water. Let soak while you prepare the dry ingredients. Also, lightly oil a large baking sheet and preheat oven to 350.
2. Measure all dry ingredients into a large bowl and mix well. Measure all wet ingredients into the blender with the soaked prunes (do not drain), then liquify and stir into dry ingredients, combining well. Drop batter by the heaping tablespoon onto the greased cookie sheet and flatten just a bit with wet fingers or the back of a wet spoon. Bake for 15 minutes. Make sure you have a glass of water or cup of tea with each cookie. Makes about 20 cookies.

This recipe makes the cookies slightly crunchy on the outside. For a softer cookie double the amount of prune puree and apple sauce. This will make them almost muffin-like.

Enjoy!

This amazing recipe was contributed and created by Julie Collier–THANK YOU, JULIE! Please keep sharing your delicious, creative recipes, Philosophie lovahs! I’ll keep posting them as you send them in!

My husband, Adi Jaffe, is getting his PhD in Psychology at UCLA. His goal is to help people who are addicted to anything from gambling, to sex, to drugs and alcohol find healthier ways to cope with life. Therefore, we have a lot in common! Yoga and eating healthy food, in my opinion, are two of the greatest coping mechanism when dealing with life's obstacles and greatest challenges. We are both dedicating our lives to helping others figure out the best way to navigate this ship we call life, both in our individual and unique ways.

A New Tool in Addiction Treatment 

There are so many ways to treat addiction, and just like he states in a post he wrote, "different methods work for different people...if there's a tool that can help, we need to put it into action."

He's also been working on a system of matching each person to a treatment facility that is the best possible "fit" for that individual. The person goes onto his website, and after answering a few questions, the system figures out what would be the best match for them. As he explains, "We’re currently testing a system that will use some basic, and some a bit more advanced, criteria to help direct addicts towards the right provider for them. Don’t have much money and working full-time? Then residential treatment should probably not be your first choice? Medicated for schizophrenia? You better stay away from providers that don’t offer serious mental health services (though they’ll sure take you if you walk through their doors)" This amazing new tool will be available in the next few weeks, so stay tuned!!!

(This rehab finder is NOW AVAILABLE! click here to access this phenomenal tool)

The point here? We're not all the same. We are extraordinarily unique individuals with equally as unique issues. These issues could be worked out in a million different ways, and it's important that we are treated by and as the one-of-a kind person we are to get through these issues in a healthy way.

Yoga and Healthy Coping

There are all kinds of ways to cope with life's challenges. One way is by getting yourself to a yoga class and working out your issues on your mat. Yoga is a beautiful metaphor for life. As you practice yoga, moving through the asanas (postures/poses), you move as gracefully and truthfully as possible. Wherever you are that day, maybe you're in a crappy mood, you're just doing the best you can: moving, growing, evolving. Just as in life.

 Pose-Backbend"][/caption]

Back bends, for example, are a natural way to release endorphins. Natural opioids (also called endogenous opioids), which include endorphins, are used by the body to relieve pain and increase relaxation, especially during periods of extreme stress. These are the chemicals that make sure we can function during accidents, like after breaking our leg.

This chemical is released during yoga over and over again, which is why we feel so good during the class and for hours following the practice.

After a light warmup, you can practice back bends in the comforts of your home. It's a great way to relax before bedtime or if you begin to enter into dangerous space or get thrown off track. After your body is warm, a really gentle pose to try is upward facing dog or Urdhva Mukha Svanasana.

Try This Heart Opening Yoga Pose

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1) Lie prone on the floor. Stretch your legs back, with the tops of your feet on the floor. Bend your elbows and spread your palms on the floor beside your waist so that your forearms are relatively perpendicular to the floor.

2) Inhale and press your inner hands firmly into the floor and slightly back, as if you were trying to push yourself forward along the floor. Then straighten your arms and simultaneously lift your torso up and your legs a few inches off the floor on an inhalation. Keep the thighs firm and slightly turned inward, the arms firm and turned out so the elbow creases face forward.

3) Press the tailbone toward the pubis and lift the pubis toward the navel. Narrow the hip points. Firm but don't harden the buttocks.

4) Firm the shoulder blades against the back and puff the side ribs forward. Lift through the top of the sternum but avoid pushing the front ribs forward, which only hardens the lower back. Look straight ahead or tip the head back slightly, but take care not to compress the back of the neck and harden the throat.

5) Urdhva Mukha Svanasana is one of the positions in the traditional Sun Salutation sequence. You can also practice this pose individually, holding it anywhere from 15 to 30 seconds, breathing easily. Release back to the floor or lift into Adho Mukha Svanasana (downward facing dog) with an exhalation.

Impulse control has a lot to do with ones addictive behavior. If we can learn to regulate our impulses in healthy ways, i.e. through healthy challenges like sitting through an entire yoga class, we can figure out ways to bring this control off the mat and into our everyday habits.

There are so many healthy ways to cope with life's challenges other than reaching for an unhealthy addictive substance or turning to an addictive behavior. One extremely healthy way to face obstacles in one's life is by getting into your body to get out of your head or repetitive unhealthy patterns. Yoga is a wonderful way to connect inward.

Adi Jaffe writes for a website/blog called All About Addiction, which is a great resource for the latest cutting edge research and science in the addiction and psychological realms. He also contributes to Psychology Today, another amazing resource.

 

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Where the laws of nature have been overlooked we find disease (dis-ease: a disruption to ease). There is only one disease: toxicity and enervation, a lack of nerve force.

Alkaline foods are foods that raise the the amount of oxygen that your blood takes in. The most alkalizing foods are RAW green leafy vegetables, non-sweet fruits and (wheat) grasses. The opposite of alkaline foods are acid foods.

How much oxygen your blood can absorb is measured on a pH scale that ranges from 0 to 14. A pH of 0 is most acidic while a pH of 14 is most alkaline.

Eating alkalined foods is good for you and the Earth because it is completely in harmony with natural law. Fresh, delicious, organically grown alkaline food that is good for the land, promoting shade-bearing vegetation that rejuvenates soil and contributes to purifying lakes, rivers and oceans.

This way of eating is the ultimate healing program. Start with a Philosophie cleanse to experience this way of eating yourself!

The Acid - Alkaline Balance

Our blood is in balance when we're slightly alkaline: with a pH of 7.365. The blood is an organ-a liquid organ. It streams through the vascular system, throughout the arteries, away from the heart, and returns via the veins to the heart once again.

In the beginning of the 20th century, very smart scientists and nobel prize winners made a great discovery. If our blood cannot absorb enough oxygen we get sick: cancer, heart issues, arthritis and candida infections and diabetes are the result.

You know that our body tries to maintain a constant temperature 98.5F or 37C. But but do you know that your body tries even harder to maintain the right amount of oxygen in your blood (a pH of 7.365)? When our pH is too high or too low, we don't feel well, we feel tired, gain weight, have poor digestion and get aches and pains.

Most people in the US and Europe are too acidic: they cannot absorb enough oxygen. That's why cancer, heart disease, arthritis and diabetes are epidemic.

Why are we too acidic?

* Stress

* Toxins

* Parasites and

* The FOOD we eat.

Acid Foods List

It seems that what we eat is more of a health factor than people have thought. Common reasoning is that there is a multitude of disease. However, keeping blood and body tissue at a proper pH seems to keep premature death at bay and makes the difference between vitality and death. This is the secret of an alkaline body. It's too bad that the foods most people like make us most acidic and thus sick. What are these food? You guessed right:

• Junk & Processed foods
• Sugar (raises insulin levels)
• Coffee & Tea
• All animal food/flesh (meat, eggs, chicken, fish, lobster, oysters)
• Grains: (white) wheat, rice, pasta, flour, bread etc
• Some Fruits
• Dairy products (milk, cheese, butter)
• Bad fats
• Peanuts, cashews.

Alkaline Foods List

During most of our lives, the majority of the foods we eat are (highly) acidic. These make us sick and tired. By eating raw alkaline foods and drinks, we can help our body to heal it self from most dis-eases:

• Vegetables - especially raw green leafy vegetables
• Fresh Herbs & Spices - parsley, basil, cilantro, cayenne, ginger
• Fruits - watermelon, avocado, cucumber, young coconuts
• Wheat grass
• Sprouts: i.e. alfalfa, mung bean, broccoli etc.

The best alkaline drinks are alkaline water, vegetable juices and wheatgrass juice.

How Acidic Are You?

How do you know your body pH? I love this one, because it's incredibly easy to find out what your alkalinity is. You simply buy some pH test strips (also called litmus paper) at a health store and pee on it. The paper will tell you instantly what your pH is and thus, how alkaline or acid you are.

The Best & Easiest Alkaline Foods

Would you like to know the best and cheapest alkalizing foods? Edible wild plants. They're highly alkaline, abundant, fresh and free!

Just throwing a few of them in your salad will help balancing you. Try sea veggies for a great alkaline food!

Go to a local farmers market and check out the local organic produce.

Ready to make changes now?? Try a Philosophie cleanse. It is an incredible way to jumpstart any healing program for quick recovery from modern dietary excess. It will leave you feeling rejuvenated and looking radiant!

We are a work in progress, constantly constructing and deconstructing ourselves. Philosophie offers the high quality building materials needed for this constant cycle. It is rich with enzymes, so it costs you nothing to digest, and all of its properties are highly charged and easily used in the body.

As if the S.A.D. (Standard American Diet) weren't bad enough, the awful diet is now causing deep-rooted psychological and physical issues.

Check out this great post about how to stop food addiction, specifically dealing with processed and refined sugars.

If you want to deal with your food and/or sugar addictions, a great way to start is by doing a food or juice cleanse as a "restart" button.

Answer these questions to see if you could use a cleanse or could suffer from an addiction to food:

• Do you eat when you are not hungry or when you feel low or depressed?
• Do you eat in secret or eat differently in front of others than when you’re alone?
• Do you consume inordinate amounts of food and then purge later with vomiting or laxatives to get rid of the excess?
• Are there foods that are unnecessary or harmful to you, but you eat them anyway?
• Do you feel guilty after eating?

If you answered yes to any of these or have any questions at all, please email me at Sophie@thephilosophie.com for help with healing and suggestions or contact Mr. Addiction himself through his website: allaboutaddiction.com