Fit Fridays with Antwone Muhammad: Eating to live

By TJ Armour
Oct 24, 2014
6:56 am

(Photo credit: Tito G Photography)

Being diagnosed with Breast Cancer or any Cancer makes a person come to terms with a lot of things in life. I know it definitely made me look at things in my life with a much more critical eye. One thing that I asked myself is “Why do I regularly eat things that I know are not good for me?” When I go to the grocery store or a restaurant, what are the triggering thoughts or impulses that influence my purchase? Do I ever buy anything solely because it is providing my mind and body with what it needs to function at its best? Before my diagnosis, my answers to these questions were those of someone who appreciates and values the gift of life, in my opinion. I wasn’t the worst with food choices but I was so far from being the best. I mean I was the poster child for things like Gyros, Italian beef Sandwiches, fried chicken and nearly any pastry in creation.

Often times when a person is diagnosed with an illness like Cancer, we look at it as some type of plague that has been placed upon them.

While it’s a given that no one really knows what causes cancer, we never consider things like the choices we made in our lives that contributed to arriving at this destination. I will offer I will offer that diet plays a serious role in creating the condition that our bodies are in. If you constantly put bad gas or oil in a car, wouldn’t it eventually effect the way that the car runs? Well, we never consider this when it comes to eating and the food we use as fuels for our bodies.

Since my diagnosis, I have become much more conscious of the thins I eat and drink. Policing my diet has helped me tremendously during my chemotherapy and during my recovery process. I used to only eat healthy in small bursts due to a diet or something I may have been doing to lose weight. Now, I practice a healthy diet to fuel my life. I’ve purchased a Nutri-Bullet and embraced the idea of juicing and eating more raw vegetables and fruit. I drink a half gallon of celery juice every 3-4 days and I heavily regulate the amount t of processed sugar I take in. I try my best to stay away from processed food overall because you never know what goes into food that someone else prepares. When I do eat cooked food, it is prepared at home and the only water I drink is alkaline water with a PH of 9.5 through 11.

The difference in the way I felt regularly before and after making healthier lifestyle choice is like night and day. I feel as though I am of a brand new mind, body and soul, which in a sense I am because I have new cells as a result of recovery from chemo. The food we eat should be our life source as well as our medicine to an extent. I double dare everyone reading this column to try eating healthier to see how it effects you. Eating healthier has helped save my life, so I don’t eat because I’m hungry or because it tastes good, even though we all love tasty food. I eat to live and preserve the life I have.

If you’re in the Chicagoland area, pleasure join me this Sunday (Oct. 26) at my Different Shades of Pink event for Breast Cancer awareness.