Visualization turns the tide to health

Day 32 and I can finally say I have been able to eat completely healthily for three days in a row.  This is a real turning point for me.  It's not that I was so awful before, just kind of sloppy and vague about it all, and a bit rebellious, as I've written in former blogs.  I'm not overweight, but as a breast cancer survivor, I'm supposed to eat a rainbow of 6-9 fruits and vegetables per day, eat less than 30 grams of fat per day and exercise regularly to prevent recurrence.  Not that easy for me until now.

Women whose cancers are the same as mine, estrogen negative, have a 50% lesser chance of recurrence if they follow the guidelines above.  Considering that estrogen negative cancer does not respond to tamoxifen or other aromatase inhibitors, which can forestall recurrences for five years after cancer, considering that ER- cancers recur at a higher rate than ER+ cancers and that ER- cancers are more aggressive in nature than ER+ cancers, well, then, you see, my eating properly and exercising consistently can really make a life and death difference.

You'd think that would tip the scales, so to speak, but I just haven't been as mindful as I should have been.  I think that the lessons about visualization are what finally turned the tide for me.  Instead of seeing changing my diet as an annoyance and a deprivation, I changed my mindset to appreciating how much healthier and happier I will be if I'm eating the way I should.  I visualized a cornucopia of a luscious, tempting rainbow of fruits and vegetables.  Intensely red cherries, dusky blueberries, carmine raspberries, mindnight-purple blackberries, sweet orange-fleshed cantaloupe, cotton candy pink grapefruit, sun kissed tomatoes, forest green spinach, kale, collards, ruby red-veined swiss chard, earthy potatoes ... You get the picture.

It's been really hard for me to get all those fruits and vegetables into my day in the past.  Today, I ate yogurt with blueberries, pineapple and papaya, sardines with a salad of yellow and orange tomatoes and yellow and red peppers, a granny smith apple, kasha, an omelette with fat-free mushrooms and a lentil, cucumber and onion salad.  Pretty darn healthy.  And I managed to stay away from coffee, wheat and corn syrup, total energy-sappers for me.  I haven't been able to bike, 'cause my knee's acting up, so I walked a couple of miles and danced for about half an hour.  I really feel great.

Even though I'm not overweight, if I lost ten pounds, I wouldn't be underweight. I'm visualizing myself looking amazing, trim, with elegant clothing that drapes beautifully over my fit, healthy body.  I have astounding, vibrant energy that glows from the inside out. Yeah. I can live with that. I can do that.

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Tags: health, change in attitude, Visualization