Healthy Progress

Good news, the strict fruit and veg diet is workng well - innards are coping OK and I have lost a whole stone since the week of my operation .. which is good news ..

I am now seriously trying to eat the anti-cancer diet. I feel like I've been blessed with a second chance that hasn't been given to the friends I have made with advanced colon cancer who are still in treatment for secondaries. Now the treatments are fading into a memory I am committed to doing as much as I can to keep a re-currence at bay ..

On the other hand, I feel quite strongly that it's a kind of health facism to talk about life-style as though it is all your own fault if you get a serious illness, "you've had too much of this, too little of that" type of thing. I feel I was never any worse in my habits than most ppl I know of my age .. we all drink too much! And for many years I have been a lot "better" than many in terms of always riding my bike, eating a low meat and high fibre diet and taking my spiritual and mental health seriously ... .. but all of this wasn't enough to stop my cancer ...

That's not an argument for not trying to sustain those "good" things, and to keep up my life-long battle with my weight, and tackling my on-off love affair with cocktails! It is just a statement of frustration with the blame mentality which you met in every magazine article and public discussion about cancer and healthy living that you see each day.


It's not our fault we get cancer, OK?

Reversal

Having an ileostomy reversal opens up the world of fibre eating again .. and I have decided to let the newly re-connected colon know who is in charge round here, and get it used to a healthy diet right from the start, while it is learning everything else ..

I guess this was a bit of a gamble, some ppl recommend a low-residue diet, but since my innards showed signs of settling down I thought I would risk it, and I am getting on great with a really full-on fruit and veg diet plan.

It's the one in the Super Foods book that B and I really like, and which we did in the Summer two years ago. Of course it couldn't cure the massive tumour, then, but it did make me very healthy in other ways before the treatment programme started ... and I am feeling great on it now ..

I am hoping to start up a bit more exercise again toot sweet .. so hopefully things will work and I wont have to fork out more and more on even bigger clothes!