I am focusing each day on practicing gratitude. I am keeping a journal to jot down a few things each day that have made me happy that day. I am doing this at night to go to sleep with happy thoughts.

Each day in my gratitude journal I write that I am healthy and cancer free. Do I know this is true? No, not really. Do I believe this is true, yes and I will unless God forbid I am told otherwise.

I try to think this way every day but some days, it is hard. Some days, I get a headache that lasts too long and I think, “Oh shit.” Some days I get back aches and/or other weird pains and think, “Oh shit.”

Sometimes, someone stops to ask me about my experiences, someone who is an acquaintance and means well and I tell my story and for a bit afterwards, I think about how I am a G#D-D@mned super hero that I am cured and still standing and kicking ass and all that - then about an hour later, I am thinking, “Damn, that person does not have cancer, never had cancer, and wow I am sick and so unlucky and blah, blah, blah....”

I do my best to just shake it off, though, and continue thinking positively, not because it will cure me but it sure as hell can’t kill me. 

On another note, I am at goal weight and have stayed there since mid-November the-weight-of-a-breast.html. I weigh what I did in high school people (137 pounds). Way back when I weighed this amount last, I thought I was HUGE and OVERWEIGHT because I was a typical insane teenager (and I quiver with fear thinking about how soon my kids will be teenagers and think these crazy things but I also look forward to it and plan to be here for it and if I complain then, hit me and remind me how I had / have cancer and shouldn’t complain lol).

This is my routine/eating style post integrative medicine doctor meeting at Sloan (integrative-medicine-clinical-trials.html) that led me on the 10 day green smoothie challenge that I believe kick started my metabolism and also taught me how much food I need to eat vs how much I “wanted” to eat.

For instance, pre challenge, for breakfast I used to have a full smoothie with kale, spinach, fruits and water AND a yogurt with granola with dark chocolate and now I just have the smoothie. I am full and not at all hungry and cannot believe how much extra I was eating before versus now.

I eat breakfast 13 hours after I had my dinner; this is some kind of intermittent fasting process that is supposedly good for your body.**

After breakfast, I have my green tea - 2 cups of it, usually in a to go container so I can drink it on the road.  A few hours later, I have snacks with me ready to go. I have ziploc bags with apples, unsalted nuts, almonds and rice cakes. Yes, rice cakes. Some people think they taste like cardboard but I love them. I use the whole grain sea salt ones. They are delicious.

For lunch, I have salad or a smoothie or a 1/2 of sandwich (meaning, I go to the deli and get a wrap and it is the size of my ARM so I cut it in half and save it for the next day’s lunch). Between lunch and dinner, I have more nuts and fruit again. Dinner is whatever my family eats but we are all trying to eat “clean”.  I also have like 3 days a week oven roasted veggies to snack on throughout the day, too.

During the day, I am also moving and grooving usually doing at least 10k steps a day with 4k of them as a cardio workout.

As part of my de-stress routine, I listen in the morning to my hypnosis app by Seth Deborah called “Victory over cancer” and I meditate as well. I also pray and think about all of the things I am grateful for, as I mentioned in the beginning of this post.

This is how I try to stay sane and focused and grounded. I cannot worry or wonder every day about what is going on inside my body so instead I smile and zen myself into oblivion while job searching, taking care of the house, kids and puppy oh and husband oh and my dad, too. Can’t wait to find that job! Oh and of course, updating this blog and sharing my story, in the time between.... 

**I am not a doctor so please check all of this information out with your medical team before following along with me.**