The Future of This Blog........It's Going to be an Exciting Journey!!!!

I have been giving a lot of thought to the future of this blog.  Writing is not something that comes natural to me, and it takes time for me to write posts.  I won’t mention my horrible spelling that no matter how hard I focus on still seems to sneak into my writing.  It’s become something we laugh about, because I have totally given up in this area.  My sister, Kelly, and older brother, Darin, are the writers and storytellers of the family.  Definitely not one of my strong suits.  But here I am, giving it a go.  The start of this blog was focused completely on information sharing to help keep everyone informed about how I was doing as I worked through surgery, chemo, radiation and more surgery.  Keeping this blog updated helped us share information without needing to pick up the phone and call a long list of concerned family and friends.  If you are a regular follower, you have probably noticed my updates are not happening with any regularity at this point.  But, I am hoping to change that.

 I have decided to make an exciting shift and share information about nutrition and how I am trying to stay healthy and instill strong health ingrained habits into Charlotte’s life.  Preventing a recurrence of breast cancer is something I feel very strong about, and I am 100% focused on preventing a breast cancer diagnosis for Charlotte.  My fear that Charlotte will be diagnosed in her early 30’s totally drives my thirst for information.  For the last month or so, I have been researching places to study nutrition.  Thanks to a fantastic book I recently read called Kicking Cancer In The Kitchen, I came across The Institute of Integrative Nutrition in NY.  I received a raving recommendation for the program from one of the authors of KCK who was nice enough to share her personal experience attending IIN with me just the other day.  The course is online based and very much geared towards someone who is busy with work and family.  The program will take a little under a year to complete.  I have not signed up yet and am still doing a little research, but I am very excited about this program.  I am pretty sure Steve thinks I am crazy to pursue this.  He already thinks I am spreading myself too thin (sometimes literally too thin) with everything I have going on at work, non-profit, being a good mom, wife, and just life in general.   

I am constantly giving advice.  In reality, advice might not be the right word.  I tend to lecture my family and friends related to what they are eating, and I don’t always have the answers to their questions or have the right response to their resistance.  I know whole grain is good for you, but why?  And what's the big deal with white flour?  Although, I am not quite as opinionated as I was in my early to late 20’s when my big mouth got me in trouble on numerous occasions (if you know me you probably totally have a story you could tell…..please don’t).  Cancer has totally mellowed me and my opinionated mouth, but I am still very passionate about certain things.  Don’t ever get me started on organic milk and why we should care about it.  I have had several heated conversations on this very topic, but I will save organic milk for another day :o)

I have been soaking up information about nutrition like a sponge ever since I read Crazy Sexy Diet by Kris Carr.  I read this book sometime during my 1st phase of chemo when things really started to click, and I started to connect the dots.  As I read through the chapters about dairy, sugars, pH balance, meats, and many more great topics, I started to piece it all together and understand just how important what we eat and put in our bodies really is.  I started telling my friends and sharing the information I learned from this book with others.  I enlisted some friends to take the 21 day cleanse challenge in the fall of last year and again this past January.  Our dear friends and fantastic neighbors, Jeff and Emily, totally embraced the 21 day cleanse, and they have made so many great changes to how they eat on a daily basis.  Emily is my go-to for recipes, and because she is insanely organized and one of those crazy meal planners I always wished I could be, she always has great things to share.   After reading this book, Steve and I started eating more raw vegetables and cut out a large percentage of the red meats we eat.  We are now down to maybe once or twice a month eating red meat, and if I had my way, there would be no more.  We started experiencing the power of the green juice and how it can really make you feel better.  The benefits are so worth giving it a try.  This book is full of bent page corners, tabs, and highlights.  I re-read it often to reinforce why Splenda is bad, the benefits of acid vs. alkaline foods, enzymes, gluten, probiotics, and so much more.  

I hope you will follow me on this journey as I continue to improve, gain, and share knowledge about nutrition and how important is really is to our incredible bodies.