This month is the beginning of your big campaign, your mission to protect yourself and fight for your life.  

Let’s start with how you begin your day – breakfast.  Are you taking time to eat a wholesome breakfast?  If you don’t eat breakfast, is it because you get hungrier when you do eat?  I hear that many times.  Mainly because many people eat cereal and that’s it…. just cereal. 

The missing breakfast ingredient is protein!  Eggs, peanut butter, nuts, yogurt or whey protein.  And honestly, most of us would be better off picking something besides cereal.  This cereal just barely gets you started in your day and then BOOM, you are hungry again.

Some better ideas….

- Peanut Butter Whole Wheat Toast with Fruit - and I mean 1 peice of 100% whole wheat toast or New England Brown Bread and about 2 Tbsp of PB. 

- Yogurt, Fruit and Granola Parfait – love the Dannon All Natural Vanilla Yogurt

- Whey Protein Shake – see recipe on my site under Power Up Cancer Fighter Package

- Steel Cut oats with Berries and Almonds

Take the first step, on this first day of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

October is right around the corner.  As it gets colder here in the Midwest, I am definitely reminded of the change in seasons.  I am most excited about my new task of spreading the word about the power of nutrition in the fight against breast cancer.   You have all seen my progress, blog development, items that are moved around, Twitter, Facebook, and on and on.  As I keep learning the ins and outs of this, my mission remains strong.  And so it begins, in 3 days!   What is it?  Watch closely and subscribe as we make October 2009 a month to remember.  Empowering you in your fight against breast cancer!

So all this hub bub about cancer survival rates and the time frame given to you after diagnosis - What does this mean to you? 

Don’t let it mean a thing!  Hope  – Positive thinking – An I’m-gonna-kick-this-attitude, can get you a long way.  Besides there are really no individual survival rates – these rates are used in research and research involves groups of people.   Not individuals.

As hard as it may seem, live your life.  Love yourself.  Don’t let yourself be concerned with the survival rates people tell you with your diagnosis.  No one knows what the future brings. 

 So why not be positive – cancer hates positive attitudes!

Look around you…not just right now but what you have been around throughout your day or week.  What is your stress level, are you anxious?  On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best…where are you at with your nutrition?  Are you getting any exercise?

These are important questions to ask yourself.  It has been shown that our environment and lifestyle choices greatly affect our risk of getting breast cancer and recurrence.  Therefore it is essential to look at your environment and decide what you can change or what you must change.  By adding in exercise, achieving a healthy weight and consuming a less processed diet you can significantly lower your risk of this disease coming into your life. 

I look forward to helping you achieve a better sense of wellness to improve your life!

Processed foods.  The unfortunate side to most of our days that can mess up our attempts at good health and nutrition.  As we try to ”keep up” with our day to day routines, it seems that choosing processed foods becomes our regular choice.  This will continue to threaten our health until we really get a grip on it.  Remember, the choice is yours.  Adding weight, increased cancer risk, more inflammation, increased heart disease risk, more fatigue and the list of problems goes on and on.  Processed foods rob us of essential vitamins and minerals, that protect us from illness.  I challenge you to take a look in your pantry, fridge, desk drawer, kid’s lunchbox, snack drawer and make some decisions about how you can un-process your diet.

I had the opportunity to walk through our local fair last evening – in the horrid heat and humidity!  And it truly amazes me how the color pink is so pegged with breast cancer and how it just brings the crowds out.  I had the opportunity to meet 4 young men who were working within a booth devoted to making more people aware of breast cancer and working to provide opportunities to cancer patients and their families.  How great to see men so involved with this disease – really made me smile.  If you would like to learn more about this group, check out Mrs. Dudes funds – it’s a tribute to his mother-in-law.

So as this new journey continues, I find myself succeeding.  Finally!  This dream of getting more information out to people who find themselves concerned over their future either as breast cancer patients or as people who want to prevent cancer, manage weight and work through nutrition concerns.  And this new blog journey will hopefully find its way to the people who need support and encouragement.  But also a way to look completely at their treatment so they are able to use the power of nutrition with traditional medicine to help in this battle. 

When starting this journey, I knew that breast cancer was my focus however I did not want to miss others who are looking for a nutrition resource.  Remembering that all the steps we take to move towards better nutrition improves our health whether we are looking at weight loss, cancer protection or other health protection. 

So use this to your advantage.  I am hopeful that you will learn more and identify ways in your life to improve your health and sense of wellness.  Also while realizing that I am a real person with real nutrition struggles just like everyone else. 

I look forward to great things with this new adventure of helping you customize your style of nutrition.