I'm offering gluten free weekly meal plans (gluten optional!) - try one FREE!

Good Morning!

Eating gluten free is too often talked about as if it's difficult and disgusting but it's not!

People ask if you spend all day shopping and in the kitchen, of course not!  I spend less time than most people I know, actually.

I have been gluten free for 10 years and found it to be way easier and yummier than how I ate before.  Many people ask me how I handle it so gracefully and simply, I have a plan.

Every week I plan several meals that range from instant to those that take more prep work and pick the one that fits my busy day the best every night.

I've decided to share these weekly plans for $5 on Fiverr along with options for other dietary requirements as well.  If you or anyone you know could benefit from a weekly menu plan, please go here:

Weekly GF Meal Plan

None of the meals require specialty gluten free products - just normal food you can get a grocery store - and most take about 15-20 minutes to prep (not always including cook time).

Another great benefit is that there are no strings attached.  Most meal planning services require a membership fee but I'm offering these a la carte, much cheaper.

If you would like to try a week for free, come like me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/dizzycocoa and I'll send it to you ASAP.

Also, if you refer someone to my Fiverr gig and they purchase I'll hook you up with a second week, with any of the options you desire, totally free as a huge Thank You!

Please let me know if you have any questions.  I hope this will serve you all.

Sharing your formula can be invaluable

I have found out lately that everyone has something they do in life that they think is common, a no-brainer, when it's not.  Sharing these little life formulas can be so helpful to someone else who is struggling with something you breeze through without a thought.

For example, I recently shared a page from my daily planner with a few friends where they could see my rows of sparkly stars each day. I have, for a long time, given my self a star on my calendar to track progress on any new goal, it's highly motivating for me to get a new star and so satisfying to see the pattern but painful when I break it. I don't know what this says for my maturity but I love my stars! A couple friends actually appreciated the insight – they'd never thought of doing that and it has since helped with their goals as well. For me, it's just something I do and I figured everyone did something similar.

Another example I read about a few weeks ago was a successful business man who had a formula for managing his time so he could be most effective in his goals (managing his company and social life) where he maintained a list of his top 50 friends and when he had free time he would start at the top of the list to see who had time to spend with him. It was his way of making sure he spent time with people he valued rather than allowing his time to be absorbed in other ways (in his position there are thousands of people who want his time). For him, it was just logic but for some of us that is an invaluable example of how to design the life you want to live rather than taking whatever you stumble on.

Even when I hear someone's formula and it seems like something completely unapplicable to me, I consider how I could tweak it for my own purposes.  Honestly, making a list of my top 50 people is not exactly going to be a life changer for me but a list of my top ____(fill in the blank)____ to spend time on instead of binge watching something on Hulu could definitely kick things up a notch.

So, I'm curious, what formulas do you have that keep the important bits of your life moving along how you like them?

I've heard quite a few the last couple weeks and they are so simply genius:

• Meal Planning (I'm incorporating this one right now by planning meals up to a month ahead of time)
• Doing all errands on the same day each week
• Also, finding a shopping center where she can get most, if not all errands done in the same place (hair, nails, shipping, groceries etc)
• Weekly/Monthly supply deliveries (from Amazon or other subscription services)
• Scheduling email processing for 2 times per day only
• "Out of office" and processing rules for certain types of emails as well, to automate.

I even had a friend cop to the fact that once per year she throws a party and invites everyone that has invited her over all year as a quick and easy way to repay the kindness.  She gets to limit all the work it takes to throw a party and treat her friends to a fun time, making new connections in the process.

I'd really love to hear more! Please share in the comments below :)

When you're being most difficult is when you need most to be loved

You know how sometimes it feels like you're going through your own personal version of hell? Honestly, are you nice to people? Is your first instinct to go out and be generous and helpful? For most of us, that is a big N.O.

We contract into a grumpy, petty little hurt animal that often lashes out at anyone approaching just because our critter brain is in survival mode and any perceived threat or distraction must be obliterated. Yes?

Sometimes we are lucky enough to have someone who loves us even though we lash out at them. They persevere and hold our hand saying, “I'm here for you. You're not alone.”

It means more than anything, when we are blinded by sadness, anger and fear to know someone has our back even though we're miserable to be around.

Is there anyone in your life right now who is being really difficult? Sometimes it's so bad that everyone backs away, unwilling to suffer any unwarranted injury. We “establish healthy boundaries” with them because their pain scares us or we aren't able to cope with the situation.

But, when someone is hurting so much that all they can do is dish out their pain, that's the time they need to be loved the most. Somehow, their situation has completely depleted their stores of love so that there's none left for them to draw on and yes, it's our job to fill one another's love reserves back up, even if it's hard. Especially when it's hard!

I hope you'll take a few minutes this week to be compassionate to people who are angry, hurting or having a really hard time and let them know they aren't alone. Give them a little love boost. It can be as easy as letting them tell you their story and knowing you hear them.

If it makes you more comfortable to do it anonymously, ok, but I'd like to invite you to own it – there's something really valuable to knowing someone is intentionally there for you rather than a roll of the cosmic dice happened to land on your number that day.

We all need our hand held some days.

Killing sugar addiction

I learned something interesting about sugar addiction that changed my life.  After years of quitting sugar just to be drawn back in with fierce cravings I learned about the "bad" bacteria that feed on it that live in your digestive system and how they not only cause vicious cravings but are also releasing toxins that are no good.


I attended a nutrition class recently where they were talking about fermented foods - something that just one generation ago was a dietary staple but with the industrialization of food has fallen to the wayside.  What's important about them is that they are full of pro-biotics which are important for our health (beyond "regularity") including things like moods, energy and cravings.

You probably hear a lot of talk about pro-biotics lately, Jaime Lee Curtis commercials come to mind.  Personally, I hesitate to take them in supplement form because not only do many brands have undisclosed gluten in them, but most studies show that the chance of those organisms surviving through your digestion to get where they need to be for health benefits is slim to none.

On the other hand, fermented foods are also full of pro-biotics and the likelihood of their survival to the final destination in your digestive tract is high.  Why?  Because you are getting them with the food that they live on, so they have a snack on their way to where they need to be.  Like packing a cooler for your road trip!

How does this apply to sugar addiction?  When you have a system full of bad bacteria, a lot of them thrive on sugar (and release toxins, which don't make you feel good).  So, they are constantly sending out signals in your bloodstream, to your brain, for more sugar.  Your brain doesn't differentiate, all you know is that part of your body is desperate for sugar.  So, you crave it and willpower only gets you so far in avoiding it until that craving is so strong, you give in.  Sound familiar? No?  Just me then...

They have found that if you get more of the beneficial bacteria into your system (and feed them what they love, like veggies), they will thrive and crowd out the bad bacteria and you'll feel better.  Not only do you get the health benefits of the good guys but the fewer bad guys, the fewer sugar craving signals and that puts you back in control.

So, what finally helped me get over the sugar addiction was delicious fermented foods - sauerkraut and kimchi, specifically.  I started adding them to at least 1 meal daily and not only did my health start to improve, but the sugar cravings waned.  I still have to deal with that lovely sugar "high" addiction, related to the kick your brain gets when it's hit with sugar, but willpower can get you so far :)

On a side note, other fermented foods like yogurt are recommended but keep in mind how much sugar are in a lot of those brands, which might derail your progress.

If you need a little help kicking a sugar habit as well, try making your own kraut at home to start.  It's super easy and cheap.  All you need is 5 lbs of cabbage and 3 Tablespoons of sea salt (not iodized).  Chop up the cabbage, mix in the salt until it releases some water and then pack it down tightly in a crock or jars so that the veggies are submerged below the brine (salt water released by the cabbage).  You might need to put something on it to squash down the cabbage so the brine stays above it (like a plate or bowl).  Put it in a cool place like your pantry. Wait 4-6 weeks, until it smells and tastes good and enjoy!  You can experiment with other veggies and quantities, just keep the 5:3 ratio.

If you're looking for fermented veggies at the store, they can be hard to find - don't look in the canned food aisle - those have been heated high enough to kill the bacteria before canning.  Try the refrigerated section in a natural grocery or your local farmer's market.  Look for "raw" and "pro-biotic" brands.

Let me know how it goes!

Death & Taxes: even if you don't need a will

It seems like it takes a major life event or great amount of wealth for most of us to write a will. Maybe because it solidifies mortality in our minds and that is scary or maybe, like me, you don't think you need one because you're young, single and fancy free.

This year, I decided to deep clean my house as a birthday gift to myself. A fresher start to a new year. As I was going through some keepsakes, I had things from my grandma who passed away a few years ago and I wondered how difficult it was for her kids to carry out her wishes. I don't know if she had a will or left specific instructions, but I do know there were decisions left to the family, requiring some awkwardness during a very difficult time.

I realized that I want to alleviate as much of that as I can for my family and it was neglectful for me not to have a will. Death of a loved one is hard enough, I didn't want anyone I care about to have to figure out what to do with my yarn collection too!

So, today I'd like to invite you to consider, if you don't have a will, to join me in this simple process I did. It only took about 15 minutes and it was a good first step to being more responsible to my loved ones, now and when I'm gone.

Start by sitting down and writing a letter to the person(s) who will most likely be in charge of things after you're gone. No mushy love stuff, no sentimentality. Just the facts. You can write the tear jerkers later!

The intention of this letter is to delegate the entire business of your life, so please keep it simple and unemotional.

Write down your thoughts and wishes about 

• donating your organs
• funeral arrangements 
• how much should they spend and what should they do with the flowers and cash gifts that arrive?
• which couch cushion you stash your mad money in
• any directions about your assets that you require
• do you have particular items to go to particular people?
• who's responsible for burning your diary and closing your facebook account?

If you're like me, you might include a disclaimer for them to do “this or whatever is easier for you” on parts that you really don't care about but are just letting them off the decision hook.  Permission to put off, delegate or ignore a task might be what they need more.

Then, consider what is left – what isn't on that list? Someone will have to handle that too, who will it be? What do you want them to do?

For example, what should they do with your clothes, dishes and pantry stock? No one thinks about that but believe me, when you're gone, someone is going to be standing there trying to decide who should get the cans of soup and those things hanging in your closet you never wore. You can make it easy by listing your favorite charities and instructions to donate or consider who might benefit from those things and gift them.

That's it! Just a nice list to make life easier for someone who will be deeply sad for losing you, in writing, so there's (hopefully) less drama and confusion.

Now, the caveat here is that laws may or may not uphold your will, there may be extenuating factors and people may even protest it. So, I'd recommend getting professional legal help to make it as official and binding as possible.

Finally, let your person(s) know where this document is and consider giving them copies. There doesn't have to be a conversation about it even – just that it's done.

Don't forget to review it and update periodically *put it on your calendar annually*.

Let me know how it goes. I know I sleep better at night now, I hope you and your loved ones will too.

What's your meaning of life?

I have a theory that we are all searching for the meaning of life and that is the meaning of life: the search. Connecting to something greater than yourself.  A lot of people try to find that meaning in collecting money, shoes or other people and I'm not here to judge their level of success, just to ask how that is working for them.

What is your meaning of life?  What are you trying to connect with and is it working?

I read an interesting take on life's meaning last week and have been pondering it quite a bit.  It went something like: we are not a body, we have a body.  We are a spirit and our body is simply a vehicle for communication so that we can have a human experience.  Further, that the body can't think, that it is our mind that interprets the sensations and gives them (sometimes arbitrary) meanings: good or bad.

What was really interesting to me was how differently everyone interprets the same sensations.  Two people can experience the exact same thing and interpret it very differently.  For example, a roller coaster.  One person can get in it and ride for hours, throwing their hands up and screaming with delight.  Another person can get in with fear in the pit of their stomach, clench the safety bar until their knuckles are bleeding and throw up from the excruciating horror of it, refusing to ever ride again.

There are even studies of infants 4 months old, showing how extremely different each can react to the exact same stimuli so we don't even know exactly when we start to form our perceptions of this world.  So, I'm not going to get into the psychology/biology of it.
What I wonder, is can we learn to change our perception and should we?

Personally, I think if something isn't working for you or you just want to make a positive change, the answer is yes on both counts.  We naturally look for evidence to "prove" our personal beliefs - just look at your friends' Facebook pages, you'll see they are filled with things that support their own view of how the world should be and you'll find exact opposite view points on a different person's page.

So, the challenge is to search out the perspective that supports the meaning you want to bring more of into your life.  You can focus on the good news or the bad news, change or the status quo - which one do you choose?

Being a cognitive miser

This week we were talking about how some of the most successful people live a surprisingly simple life and the various tactics we can adopt from them to also become more successful in our endeavors.

There is actually a lot of science behind why simplifying your life can actually bring you a lot more prosperity, satisfaction and happiness.  One theory is the "cognitive miser".  It has shown that we actually have a limited amount of decision making ability each day, called "decision fatigue". This is the reason that a lot of us can't decide what to have for dinner or lose our resolve to do certain things by the end of the day.  We have literally used up our ability to make decisions through out the day starting with what to wear before we leave for work and all the decisions that follow.

So, if we can minimize some of the simple decisions we have to make each day, imagine how many other opportunities to accomplish bigger things would open up.

You've probably heard of people who have precise morning routines that they rarely deviate from (likely you've heard of them because they are successful and doing an interview about a day in the life, like Tony Robbins, Ivanka Trump etc.).

I don't know about you, but when I hear about these routines I pretty much think it sounds impossible.  I mean, get up before dawn in the middle of winter to go to the gym, cook a big breakfast, read the papers, tie my shoes...ha ha ha.  But, when I feel myself hitting a wall in the evening where I'm looking at the fridge and can't figure out what to do but open a can of peas for dinner, things get ugly.

So, a few of us decided to see if we could change our lives for the better with these tactics and I'm here to report out so we might help you too!

It was harder than we thought!  For example, have you ever thought about the sheer insanity you face at the store?  There are thousands of choices in breakfast cereal,  dozens of types of eggs, don't get me started on the ice cream (seriously, if you want dairy free, sugar free, fat free ice cream maybe you should consider a trip to the produce section instead for a juicy peach), 5 scents of the same brand of bathroom cleaner, hundreds of types of toothpaste and then you have to consider that a lot of those "choices" are actually the very exact same thing from the same plant, off the same line into the same can with a different sticker on each.  We live in a society of unlimited choices for everything and to make matters worse a lot of us want to find the best "deal" in all those choices so we are comparing prices and endorsements to figure it all out. It's a lot of work just to get the supplies we need before we even get to the real work of life.

All that aside, we decided to focus on 3 things: encapsulating our work wardrobe, meal planning and play time (aka exercise).

Wardrobe:

Have you ever noticed that most working men have a uniform?  The same color suit/pants/jacket and maybe a couple color variation of shirts and shoes (which often go to after work and weekend events too)?  More women are adopting that concept as well but every one I know still wants fun accessories and require unique outfits for occasions.

Personally, I've had something of a "uniform" since I got my first job out of college and a wise colleague said she just wore "black pants and a top" everyday so she fit the dress code and didn't spend a lot of money on outfits that the same 10 people were going to see every day anyway.  She was brilliant and didn't even know about decision fatigue.  At the time, I had a love of fashion that led me to a full and vibrant closet but every morning I found myself spending half an hour trying things on until coming back to the 20% of my closet that was easy - the neutral colors and simple tailored lines.  Then, racing out the door.  It took me a couple years before I finally resigned myself to the fact that I did indeed have a uniform and I separated my closet to the work side and the fun side and saved myself that 30 minutes every day.

Meal Planning: 

The next part we tackled was food.  Gemma already had this one down pat to gift the rest of us.  Every morning she had the same bowl of muesli for breakfast with almond milk. Done.  She highly recommended that we each eat the same thing for breakfast every morning.  Our struggle was to decide what.
Jill needed to get 30 grams of protein in the morning so was often struggling between shakes, bars, eggs or a drive thru and trying to feed her kids at the same time (who each wanted something different). She was using a lot of decision making ability first thing in the morning and felt like this one would make the biggest difference in her life.  So, she settled on just having eggs every morning because it was also something her kids would eat without much of a fuss.
A couple weeks later, she reports that it has worked out well.  She thought cooking in the morning would take more time than cereal or a shake but she found they are actually gaining time by not having any discussion around it.  We gave her a gold star!

We also came up with systems for other meals (each night of the week has a theme and lunch is always leftovers).

Play time:

This seemed to be the thing that was hardest to routinize because in the morning was too hard with all the other activities to get out the door and by evening, well we all had used up our cognitive resources so it would end up on the list to definitely do tomorrow. Hmm.

One day I saw an interview with Tracy Anderson (personal trainer of Gwyneth and Madonna) where they asked her what exercises she would recommend for a lady who only had 15 minutes.  Her answer was shocking and real.  She said she would tell them to get out their calendar and figure out why they didn't have an hour to show up for their health every day.

I shared this immediately and we all agreed, we had to do whatever it took to show up for our health every day and got creative, plugging in our exercise when we still had will power left during the day to make it a habit.

We each put a non-negotiable appointment on our calendar no more than 6 hours after we woke up and chose a single workout to do for 40 days.  It might sound boring and go against the crowd who say you need to change up your workout so you don't plateau but that wasn't the point.  What we needed was a decision-less action to take every day to show up for our health.  Maybe after 40 days we can start changing it up, once the core habit is established.

Of course, we made these changes one at a time over the course of a few weeks but the results have been phenomenal.  We have each found more time in our days to do the things we really love and make strategic movement toward huge goals.

I hope that this will inspire or help you if you're also struggling with that feeling of not enough time in the day or running out of will power.  Let me know what your challenges are and I'll share some of our brainstorming with you to help!






The millionaire who lives in an Airstream trailer