Chasing Kris

When I went down the ketogenic rabbit hole last year, it was because of the revelation that I had breast cancer and needed to do something about it.  There's a whole story around that experience, obviously, but for today's purpose let's just say it was a great motivator to find a way that my diet could fuel my recovery. My thought at the time was that with every bite of food I was either killing the cancer or helping it.  And I was not going to help it one bite. The cancer scare is gone now.  I've dealt with it and now I wait to see if my body will learn to better identify future cells and have the energy to kill them.  Everyone has rogue cells (cancer cells) every day.  The body has mechanisms to find them and destroy them that work great as long as there aren't other stresses like environmental factors or physical challenges that distract the immune system and let the little rogues set up shop. So the cancer threat was dealt with and ...

In the carb-centric dietary world, there are many factors to consider.  Should you be low carb?  How low?  All the way down to strict ketogenesis?  What's the difference and how do you choose? I'm not a scientist or a dietician, so I gather my information from multiple sources to understand multiple opinions and hear some of the science behind it all.  In layman's terms, my understanding is that "low carb" typically means a daily carbohydrate intake of 80-100 grams.  "Ketogenic" diets are more strict because the goal is to get the body adapted to creating ketones and fueling the brain from that source, so ketogenic diets are much lower in carbohydrates -- all the way down to 30-50 grams daily. One loaded up leafy green salad with some cucumbers, bell peppers and some shredded carrot could be your entire carbohydrate intake for the day on ketogenic diets! How you choose really depends on you.  What's your goal?  Are you just trying to...

It was a little more than a year ago that I was writing about my fight against breast cancer and how I used a ketogenic based diet to help my treatments be as effective as possible.  The learning curve to going ketogenic is a long arc!  Along the way, I've taken in and incorporated enough information to effectively change the way I see food and the things I feel are acceptable and unacceptable for me to eat.  But I'm not actually ketogenic now.  I'm not even low carb anymore. The process has forever changed some of my base notions about food.  It used to be that my husband would bring home donuts early on an occasional weekend morning as a treat for the kids.  He always remembered to grab an apple fritter for me, because that's a treat I love.  Now, that donut run just seems pointless.  Why bring home something that is going to cause stomach upset for one of my kids who is gluten sensitive, and give a massive sugar bomb soaked in oil that ...

There are those people who began running as kids, maybe in a sport that involved some element of running like soccer or baseball.  They either really liked the excitement of going fast, or they felt they were faster than most and it made them feel good, or they just liked the exertion of it.  Others maybe picked it up as teenagers in high school track or in college to avoid the added weight that comes with their freshman year. I am none of those examples.  I am an accidental runner.  In truth, I did do track my seventh grade year in junior high school.  I liked the high jump and the long jump because I'm tall and it gave me an edge.  I liked the relay because I was very fast for a very short distance.  Most important to me: I could grab a decent amount of First Place ribbons while only exerting myself for very short bursts at a time.  Track was mostly about hanging out after school and goofing off with my friends.  My biggest goal of trac...

My First Year of Running, (that's how I think of it, like it's a title) included a 7 mile race and two half marathons, with another half marathon relay (that's a quarter marathon, which sounds less impressive).  I was finding my happy pace that year, chugging along toward my first half marathon. To be blunt, it stunk.  It took all my secret dreams of a smooth and easy race and crushed them.  I walked the last 2 miles. Afterward, I dragged my stiff self home and figured I could do better.  So half marathon number two came up and I aced it.  That's a personal definition, as there were so many people who did it "better" than me in terms of time, or energy left over, or really fun outfits.  But for me, I accomplished my goal of proving that I could actually run, with no stops for walking, a half marathon.  But I lost three toenails as a result and took a month off to recover.  That seemed pretty excessive, even to my untrained, newbie runn...

This little cancer boob nugget of mine has caused me quite enough grief lately.  In deciding what to do about the diagnosis, the prevailing thought was that the first step was to carve it out.  I'm someone who asks a lot of questions and doesn't always go with the conventional wisdom, but all roads seemed to turn to the chop shop on this one. I scheduled my lumpectomy for the end of April.  Despite the fact that it is full on surgery, complete with the tube-down-the-throat complete suite of anesthesia, this did seem like a pretty routine procedure.  Certainly, my doctor seemed well qualified to perform the task and I had no doubt all would be well. I reported for surgery at 7am.  In the paperwork process, they want to know things like whether you have a healthcare directive or a living will.  Let me just say, this is not the most comforting thing to bring up when someone is presenting themselves for what they believe is to be a routine procedure! Afte...

I'm about six weeks into my cancer journey now.  On one hand, this has been such an unexpected path to pop up in my life suddenly, and on the other it sounds like a long time ago.  Six weeks to accept the diagnosis, six weeks to choose the attitude I intend to go forward with in the face of this beast.  Six weeks to really understand that I have cancer. Cancer is such a broad name for this disease, because it can mean so many things.  There are important additives to that word.  The stage of cancer, the location of cancer, the size, the intensity of its growth are all add ons that clarify and quantify the threat to life.  In my case, I have the luxury of saying mine is stage 1, it's breast cancer and it's not near my chest wall, it's small and I appear to have had it detected before it starts to take over.  These are great things; and yet, it is still cancer.  There is still the potential threat to my life.  Certainly, it has already affec...