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Showing posts from November 10, 2019

20 Lessons learned from cancer

Whether you have been given a life-altering diagnosis or you were/are a caretaker, friend, family member or significant other affected by a disease/illness, it can be difficult to find gratitude in such a painful situation. Looking for the good in such a sad scenario can feel nearly impossible. Everytime I hear of the passing of an individual with cancer,  I am taken back to my dad's 10-month battle with a rare cancer that metastasized to his spine. Even though it's been over 5 years, I still struggle every day and wish he was still with me. My dad didn't like to talk about his cancer. I respected his decision to keep his cancer diagnosis silent but it was also very difficult for me to not let others know that he was suffering.  O thers  have choosen to be more open and vocal about a current health situation and find positivity in such a challenging and difficult scenario. There's no denying that there's a great level of frustration, anger, worry, sadness ...

Is processed food good for you?

In our latest weekly newsletter that arrives to your inbox every Wednesday morning at 7am EST (it's FREE and you can sign up here ), I talked about the evil words that are rarely spoken about in a "clean eating" diet..... processed food.  When you think of processed food, potato chips, cereals and snack foods (such as Cheez-Its and animal crackers) may come to mind. Processing may sound like a scary term but not all processed foods are not necesarily bad. For certain foods to be edibe and digestable, they are changed, semi-prepared, frozen, fermented or packaged. You may be surprised to learn that most foods are processed - in some way - before you eat them. Interestingly, these changes can make a food equally or more nutritious than it once was before processing. Therefore, when viewing a processed food as "nutritious," consider the level of processing the food undergoes before it becomes a purchasable food source. While you are encouraged to shop t...

Lessons learned through injury

I went through a rollercoaster of emotions this summer with my back/hip/glute injury. Although this injury was nothing new or unfamiliar to me, it had been a good six years since I've had a run-related setback. Thankfully, my stubborn past self taught me a lot about how to best mentally and physically overcome an injury. While I felt like I handled it the best I could from learning from my past and being optimistic, there were certainly some moments when I wanted to give up on myself and count myself out of my two Ironman events. Just to backtrack, 3 weeks before Ironman Canada I felt some lower back soreness on my left side on the 3rd day of our endurance training camp. I contributed to a lot of twisting while riding my tri bike to look at the other campers. The next morning, I felt stabbing pain in my lower back after bending over to put on my socks. My training was modified over the next 6 days and I felt like I had escaped a possible injury but a week after I experienc...