June 9, 2012

Another visit to Susan the acupuncturist yesterday, and it was good to hear her say that my energy was better than last week.  It should be!  I’ve been working my ass off to get it that way!  Some changes (radical, for me) that I’ve been incorporating over the past several weeks:

● An oxygen, antioxidant, and Omega-3 rich “Green Goodness” smoothie every day.  Whipped up fresh in the Magic Bullet first thing in the morning, it’s jam-packed with organic kale and chard, blueberries, carrots, strawberries, sometimes mango or raw sunflower seeds, and always a scoop of milled flaxseed and a scoop of whey protein powder.  It looks like a big jarful of pesto, but I graze on it throughout the day and can just feel my cells getting gratefully oxygenated!

● Snacking on healthies throughout the day - celery with almond butter and sunflower seeds, Brazil nuts, grapes, bananas – rather than the cookies and chips and donuts and crap I had been eating.

Typical work-day menu.

● Flushing my system with lots more water.  I must be descended from camel stock, because I used to go days without drinking any water.  Huh, any correlation between that and the freaking KIDNEY STONE that started this whole adventure in Cancerland?!!!?  After that painful debacle, I not only began drinking water and lots of it, but put a water filter on my kitchen sink and use a stainless water bottle, to eliminate as many carcinogens and nasties as possible.

● Experimenting with new veggies.  I never bought a beet in my life prior to today, but now I own a bunch of ‘em, along with collard greens and sweet potatoes.  Can’t wait to figure out what to do with them! (Yay for Google…..)

The result of today's hunt-and-gather foraging at Boney's.

● Eliminating most meat and cooking with lots of protein-loaded lentils and barley.  I began doing this about 3 years ago because I just FEEL better when my body isn’t trying to digest a lot of animal protein.  And while I have the utmost in admiration for my baby Amanda and her strict vegetarian diet, I just ain’t gonna give up Mexican drive-through or BBQ pulled pork.  The other stuff, though – bacon, chicken, steak, hot dogs – I’ll only have rarely and only if I go out to eat.     

● Power walking again.  Until about 2 years ago, I walked at least 3 miles nearly every night - long, fast strides that pump O2 throughout the body and work up a good aerobic sweat.  That fell by the wayside as life got too busy, but now my LIFE gets to take priority again.  It feels gooooood to be outside after work, feeling the sun and wind and pacing to Lady Gaga and Pink in the earbuds.

This is what gets me out and walking after work.

Diet-wise, I spent most of my adult life waiting for the shoe to drop:  in the back of my mind, I always knew there would be some catalyst to force me to re-tool my nutritional habits.  I skated under the radar for far too long on cake and candy and McDonald’s and coke and CRAP, until this cancer thing hit me upside the head.  I’m not a believer that diet CAUSES cancer, but once that diagnosis is on the table, you want to do everything you can to help your body help itself.  I still have a bowl of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream every night, I still indulge my Mexican food habit, I gotta have the occasional In-and-Out burger, but junk no longer makes up the bulk what’s going into my digestive system and feeding those cells (the good ones AND the not-so-good ones).

So take THAT, lymphoma!!!