Forget The New Year, New You

by | Jan 18, 2023 | Breast Cancer, Inspiration

The miracle that is your body deserves your love and respect. It is exactly this miracle that will get you through. 

New year, new you.

For the last couple of weeks, ads for health clubs, diet plans and detoxes have flooded airwaves, social media and your mail box.

Companies behind the ads are on a mission to unearth the NEW YOU. You know the one. The woman just beyond the extra pounds, unhealthy diet and deconditioned body.

But this year’s different.

This year you’re somewhere on the breast cancer continuum; newly diagnosed, in treatment, survivorship, or living with metastatic breast cancer. 

You already are a new you, and you’re not happy about it. 

You want the old you. The woman you were every previous New Year’s Eve who vowed that her out-of-shape body, destructive eating habits and nightly wine pour were behaviors destined for change at the stroke of midnight.

Your resolution list probably looked something like this:

Lose weight. Start exercising. Dine out less. Cook more. Eat better. Cut back on the booze.

How myopic that feels in comparison to now, right? 

The idea of changing to a healthier lifestyle used to feel so daunting. Now? You’d give your eye teeth to have no concern other than how to make a healthy dinner your entire family will eat. Or decide which diet you can stand for more than 24 hours. 

The new year is barely underway. You’re looking at days filled with unknowns. 

You don’t know how you feel about what’s happening with your body. You struggle to make peace with it. Truth? You don’t like it at all.

A Different Approach

I invite you to welcome the New Year with a different perspective. 

What if you celebrated your body in all its forms?

  • Your time-of-diagnosis body, which you now distrust because you did your best to treat it reasonably well.
  • Your in-treatment body, perhaps reeling from side effects, surprising you daily with its endless changes.
  • Your post-surgery and/or treatment body, fighting to regain strength, flexibility and freedom from pain.
  • Your living-with-mets body, with its neuropathy, crushing fatigue, nail and skin changes.

Especially if you’ve been at war with your body for years, this may be a leap. But is it possible to at least acknowledge that you HAVE a body, one deserving of love in all its forms?

I’ve come up with a list of things to celebrate your body for. Can you imagine what it would feel like to acknowledge its power for the following? 

  • Its ability to heal and recover.

  • Its raw strength, even on days you may not feel particularly strong.

  • Its power to get you off the sofa and into the kitchen for a nourishing snack.

  • Its miraculous digesting and metabolizing of food for energy and curative properties.

  • Its tendency toward balance in support of normal blood pressure, heart rate and rhythm, blood sugar levels and kidney function.

  • Its signaling, subtle and strong alike, that alerts you to feeling hungry, full, cold, hot, so you can respond in kind and keep yourself safe.

  • Its ability to bounce back from surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, medication. Perhaps not looking or feeling as it did before, but here, solidly on earth, participating in the messiness and reality of life.

I could go on.

The miracle that is your body deserves your love and respect, because it is exactly this miracle that will get you through, regardless of what that looks like for you.  

The world as you know it has been upended. 

But your body is still here for you, doing its best to rock steady and rock on. What do you say to helping it along, now and in the new year to come? Let me know your thoughts in the comments – I’d love to hear your take on this! xx

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Thanks for reading my blog post!

Most survivors of hormone-positive breast cancer get anxious when they think about what to eat after finishing treatment, so I’ve created the Peaceful Plate program to help survivors eat with peace, not panic. 

When you eat with peace, you feel free to enjoy your food again.

Ready to eat with peace? 

CLICK HERE and grab your FREE copy of The Five Foods Survivors Should Eat

CLICK THIS LINK and watch my 2-minute Peaceful Plate program video!

Follow me on Instagram @hormone.breastcancer.dietitian

This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult your dietitian or doctor for guidance specific to your needs.