ENERGY AND MOOD BOOSTER: BEET, BLACKBERRY AND CACAO SMOOTHIE

INCREASE ENDURANCE AND BOOST YOUR MOOD WITH A DECADENTLY DELICIOUS BEET, BLACKBERRY, AND RAW CACAO SMOOTHIE. THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE GO-TO SMOOTHIES BEFORE LENGTHY WEIGHT-LIFTING SESSIONS.

What are the Health Benefits of Raw Cacao? Raw cacao is made by cold-pressing un-roasted cacao beans. Cocoa may look like cacao, but it is not the same. Cocoa powder is raw cacao that has been roasted at high temperatures which can change the molecular structure of the cacao bean reducing its overall nutritional value. Although cocoa contains many nutritional benefits, raw cacao is more nutrient dense. It’s nutritious AND super tasty, so adding more raw cacao to your diet is a win win situation.

• Lowers insulin resistance • Provides minerals, such as zinc, potassium, and iron • Protects your nervous system • Shields nerve cells from damage • Reduces your risk of cardiovascular disease • Protects the body against free radicals • Reduces your risk of stroke • Reduces blood pressure

Cacao is also a stellar mood enhancer, as it can increase certain neurotransmitters promoting a sense of well-being. “The same brain chemical that is released when we experience deep feelings of love – phenylethylamine – is found in chocolate” (Food Matters). And who doesn’t want to feel more in love?

What is the Difference Between Cacao and Cocoa? Cheers!

Ingredients (serves 1-2):

• 1 red beetroot and greens • 1 cup blackberries (frozen or fresh) • 1 banana • 2 tbsp raw cacao powder (add more for a stronger chocolate flavor) • 2 tbsp almond butter • 1 cup almond milk or coconut water (almond milk provides a creamier texture) • dash of cinnamon • 1 tsp vanilla • 1 scoop plant-based unflavored or chocolateflavored protein powder (optional) • maple syrup, honey, or stevia to taste

Directions:

1. Gently wash the beetroot and beet greens, detaching greens from root. If not using beet greens, add greens of your choice, such as kale, spinach, or chard. Save beet stems to add to soups or create a

Quick-Pickled Beet Stems sidedish.

2. Peel beetroot and cut in cubes or quarters. 3. In a high-speed blender, add all ingredients. Pulse until smooth. If using frozen fruit, smoothie will be chilled. Add ice if using fresh fruit and you prefer a chilled smoothie.

Enjoy!

Aarika Chilson

A lover of life and everything beets, I am passionate about happy dance foods: healthy foods that invigorate, inspire, and make me want to shimmy with joy! The extraordinary beet is one of my many “happy dance” foods. It is my goal to bring simplicity, joy, and wellness into YOUR life, changing the world one humble beet at a time. When I am not sharing the beet love, I also enjoy traveling, yoga, reading, laughing, volunteering with animal rescues, dancing, hugging trees, and eating. Yes – I love food!

What I Don’t Know About The Beauty Myth

AT 22 YEARS OLD, A MILLION MILES FROM WHERE I GREW UP, I BUMPED INTO SOMEONE FROM HIGH SCHOOL. THEY SAID, “WOW, PUBERTY WAS KIND TO YOU.” A COMPLIMENT THAT SUGGESTED I WAS NO LONGER UGLY. I WAS THRILLED. NO TEEN DESIRES TO BE CONSIDERED UGLY, AND TO FEEL UGLY IS EVEN MORE TRAGIC. MY TEENAGE RELATIONSHIP WITH BEAUTY WAS COMPLICATED.

When The Beauty Myth Project asked me to sit for a photographic project, photographer Briony Walker asked me for a quote about beauty for the next generation of women. What do I want our daughters to know? I don’t have great wisdom about beauty. For me, it remains complicated to this day.

Three days before Briony shot this black and white image, I had put filler in my lips. When I told my husband I was considering it, he asked me not to. He couldn’t see any issues with my existing lips. They were my lips, lips he loved because they were mine. Then he hit me with the sucker punch, “What will you tell our daughter when she asks why you did it?”

I asked Dr Beauty for just a teeny bit of filler. A Did she or didn’t she? effect. I thought like a subtle haircut, no one would really notice. I would sneak it past the world, but deepdown I would feel like my lips were now somewhere in the stratosphere of the Jolie smile.

That night, and the following day, they swelled prodigiously. The bruising was nuts. It was less Angelina Jolie and more A few rounds with Mohammad Ali. They hurt. The kids gave me a confused side-eye at dinner. My husband couldn’t look at me. “Your face looks completely different. Your expressions don’t even look like you anymore,” he’d say for weeks after.

Kissing me wasn’t the same. My lips no longer yielded to his with the same softness. I felt it too. I also felt shame for wanting to be more beautiful. I had deep regret. I see images of huge lips that have gone too far, and I wonder how this plump-lip beauty craze even became a thing. I don’t know.

Who am I to speak on the beauty myth or to advise the next generation? I buy wrinkle creams, hair dye and take supplements that promise plump skin. I inject wrinkles with relaxant to

deny how tired I look without it; all in the name of holding onto youth and beauty.

Is it empowering? I don’t know. Am I doing it for me or following an ideal? Again, I don’t know. It’s tangled and complicated, tied up in many twisted knots. I observe how complicated Being beautiful inside, feeling beautiful inside, is so much more important than what you look like on the outside. Everyone needs to know that. my daughter’s relationship with her appearance already is. She’s eight. Kids say stuff. They see the media and compare themselves with one another.

We chat about kindness, smarts, tenacity and humour. Through my own experience and my work as a women’s integrative life coach, I know that how you feel about your inside, profoundly impacts how you feel about your outside. I help my clients to unravel years of stories and beliefs about themselves and their exterior and interior beauty.

That’s where you really need the work done. Smoothing, firming, relaxing and plumping your heart and soul. Being beautiful inside, feeling beautiful inside, is so much more important than what you look like on the outside. Everyone needs to know that.

But even as I write this, still remembering that feeling of burning shame and stinging pain, I can’t solemnly swear I won’t do my lips again. Because this beauty business, this folly of vanity and desire, even with everything I know, it is

still complicated. Danielle Colley

Danielle Colley is an integrative life coach, mum of two and founder of Your Good Life. She helps successful women who are stuck and dissatisfied with their life to reach their full potential by assisting them to transition from where and who they are now to who they desire to be.

As a former journalist and hustling single mum, Danielle understands the impact that stress and anxiety play on your ability to reach your full potential.

Danielle was a freelance health and wellbeing journalist for many of Australia’s most significant publications, and although her life looked great on paper she was hurtling towards adrenal fatigue and burn out.

The death of her beloved Dad was the last straw. She realised that the best time to design her life and take charge of her own happiness was now.

She loves showing her kids that following your dreams and doing what you love is achievable for everyone who has the audacity to envisage and then create it, not just a lucky few.

When she’s not coaching, dreaming, or creating, Danielle loves eating ice cream in her underwear.