So now what?

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I spent hours on the internet looking for answers as to what causes cancer and how I could have it.  And the answer is...no idea!  Yay!  That's not scary at all!

Since I had a mastectomy and the pathology showed they got all of it, presumably I no longer have cancer.  We still worry though, right?  Those "what ifs" drive us crazy!

I went through  am still in a phase where the world seems like a scary, carcinogenic world from shampoo to dryer sheets to microwaveable lunches to genetically modified produce to tap water to flame retardant upholstery.  Then when I started to research what I could do to fight cancer and to prevent cancer, I found the information varies wildly and even contradicts itself!  What's a tall girl to do?!  What I can't do is stay paralyzed in fear.  It's time to take control over the things I can take control over and leave it at that.

The American Institute for Cancer Research has 10 Recommendations for Cancer Prevention. Ten is a little much, right?  I think they all boil down to three, and three is much easier to keep up with than ten anyways!

1. Eat a plant-based diet
Not too bad, right?  Not totally life-altering.  We can cut back on the meat and up the veggies, fruit, whole grains and legumes.  Except all those yummy recipes on pinterest are full of meat!

2. Exercise at least 30 minutes a day (ugggghhhhhh!!!!)
I have a very active job, so I always considered work to be my work out.  I suppose now I have to get more serious about exercising.  Thirty minutes a day doesn't sound like a lot, right?  But what do you do every single day for thirty minutes?

3. Limit alcohol intake to 1 drink or less a day.  That's not an average - you can't save them up.  You can't skip one day and have two glasses of wine the next day.  Nope!  Just one or less alcoholic beverages per day (double ugggghhhh!!!!).  Did I mention my husband owns a bar?

I've been mulling over these recommendations for a few weeks now, and I find all of it a lot easier said than done.  So I'll be sharing recipes, exercise tips, mocktails and fashion advice for dressing this new body and we'll get through this together!