1. When shopping for produce at the farmer’s market look for a rainbow of colors, like the picture of the peppers above. Colors usually signal nutrition.

2. Walk at least 30 minutes each day (we get our exercise around the farm for sure) and do weight bearing exercises twice a week.

3. Strive to include 5 servings each day of fresh fruits and vegetables. Also, include a handful of raw almonds or walnuts each day.

4. Drink 5 cups of green tea (hot or cold) if okay with your doc. Drink plenty of water daily.

5. Strive to attain 8 hours of sleep each night. Lack of proper rest ushers in big health issues.

6. Be a food detective. Read labels and avoid anything that contains trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, enriched flour, or words you can’t pronounce or you don’t know what it is. If a food requires a label to tell you how nutritious it is…think twice. Super foods don’t come with labels.

7. Eat a cooked tomato product with a healthy fat each week. Lycopene, a powerful antioxidant, is more readily absorbed when heated with oil. Its health giving properties are not just for men either.

8. Drink a 4 ounce glass of chilled pomegranate juice each morning. It’s a potent anticancer and antioxidant combo.

9. Don’t guess about supplements. Ask your health care professional or nutritionist what you need to include in your daily repertoire that you may be lacking.

10. Cruciferous veggies are simply loaded with antioxidants. My favorites include kale, broccoli sprouts, broccoli, collard greens, cabbage and yes…brussel sprouts.

Email me for some fantastic recipes to change your mind if you are turning up your nose. I can turn you!

It’s not too soon to start thinking about your winter garden. Start your seeds in August.

Broccoli
Kale
Collards
Spinach
Lettuces
Oriental Greens
Carrots
Swiss Chard

These veggies will be grown in a large raised bed, and as frigid weather approaches will be covered by white transluscent plastic over short and wide plastic hoops.

Your taste buds are malleable and can eventually change to appreciate new and different flavors. When you switch highly processed, fatty, salty, and sugary food for healthier fare, it can take one to two weeks before your taste buds acclimate. Don’t expect to love new flavors right away (and certainly don’t expect your kids to). Just keep serving the new dishes, and soon neither you nor your palate will recall what all the fuss was about.

Our older daughter, Meredith, gave me another amazing book by Donald Yance, entitled, “Herbal Medicine, Healing, and Cancer.” His chapter on “Spiritual Focus” is especially enlightening and inspiring. He quotes the great Medieval mystic, Meister Eckhart, “If the only prayer you say in your whole life is thank you, that would suffice.”

Cancer is by definition radical. Most changes we make in life are incremental and even unconscious with stumbling starts and stops. The focus that cancer brings to the need to change has been life-changing, and in hopes of not sounding trite – a splendid gift.

Here are some specifics we have incorporated into daily living:

We walk briskly for 40 minutes – 6 days a week. (Saturdays are heavy gardening days for us)
We measure our waistlines instead of watching the scale.
I have a very much loved organic herb and veggie garden which I gather from each day, and recently, we have incorporated some berry bushes.
Our meals revolve around fresh and varied vegetables, fruit and foods that have stellar nutrition.
We prepare almost all of our meals at home, rarely eat out, and avoid processed foods with empty calories.
My refrigerator and pantry consist of nutrient dense foods.
Our friend teases us about our carbon footprint by going faithfully every Saturday morning to the Farmer’s Market and going out of our way to hit other markets when we are traveling. Our menus revolve around what is in season- particularly disease-fighting super foods.
We avoid white sugar or any kind of artificial sweeteners or white flour products in our food preparation. Trans fat, fructose, or anything harmful to eat is banned from our kitchen. We have come to appreciate that we are all hard-wired to crave sugar, fat and salt, but you can re-wire your brain after a time for these cravings to significantly subside – it’s consistency that is the key.