The anti cancer lifestyle
>> April 10, 2009
April is cancer awareness month. My life has been touched very closely by cancer. My grandmother died from cancer. My dad has had cancer twice, prostate and testicular. My aunt died from leukemia, my other aunt is a breast cancer survivor. It quite obvious that cancer is very much in my family, which may put me and my children at greater risk. I certainly cannot worry about that, but I can live my life so that we reduce our risk as much as possible. To me that means implementing strategies to help prevent it.
For my children it has been easy! They have been on a whole foods, healthy living diet since they were born. I also reduce the number is phthalates they come in contact with by keeping the plastic toys to a minimum, storing food in glass, storing water in stainless bottles ect...
For Mike and I this lifestyle has meant getting ourselves to healthy weight and more importantly getting rid of the more dangerous belly (visceral) fat . I am super happy to report that my wonderful husband has lost 35 pounds and counting!! I have lost 15 pounds! And to lose this weight we have been concentrating on a healthy Mediterranean style diet which I believe is one the healthiest and most delicious diets you can follow. We eat alot of fruits and veggies, whole grains, olives and olive oil, nuts and seeds, dark chocolate. We eat very little meat and when we do it's either fish or chicken.
We have been exercising as a family. Walking almost every night. I run in the mornings about 3 times per week and I practice at least 10-15 minutes of yoga every morning.
I think another component of our anti-cancer lifestyle is reducing stress as much as possible. Stress in my opinion can be just as toxic as eating junk or smoking. Yoga really helps with my stress. Mike and I are in the process of hopefully doing something about something that has been a HUGE stress in our marriage for years now :-) and I believe that our entire family will be better off if we can eliminate it.
I hope that by sharing this information I can inspire other families to follow their own healthy living lifestyle!!
xo Sebrina
5 comments:
Sebrina; Thanks so much for the heart felt post. There is a lot of cancer in my family too. My Grandmother and all of her siblings (7) died from it. I need to loose weight and I need to do it for the right reasons. You have inspired me to pray for strength and to "just do it". The Mediterranean diet sounds very wonderful. I will have to check into it. Thanks again, Mickey
Way to go!
I have been doing better in this area as well. Dr Weil's plans are great and pretty easy to follow.
I find it very hard to stick to a specific food plan, because it is just me and I would rather do just about anything than cook. I do watch what I eat now, however, and I've lost about 10 pounds (with a lot more to go). Good for you and your family for your lifestyle choices!
Luckily for me I LOVE to cook. Almost as much as I love photography! I can imagine it would be hard to follow a certain diet or eating plan if you didn't though.
Good for you for loosing 10 pounds!! That's great!
I too have a lot of cancer in my family and even mentors at the University. I have been inspired by your journey to lose the weight and live healthier. Diego and I have gotten back into counting calories, eat whole foods and have been trying to get a good exercise regime going...this one so far is the hardest since we are both so busy... We are also trying to reduce stress in our life at work and home and we actively work at our own personal issues and those between us rather than letting them simmer. Thank you for sharing your journey, it is an inspiration to all!
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