Guest Author - Carolyn Chambers Clark, ARNP, EdD
Breast cancer risk during and after menopause increases if you're overweight. This is a good time to lose weight and reduce your risk of breast cancer. If this is a tall order, read on for easy and safe ways to begin. First, let's take a look at why weight loss is important.
A new study conducted by the American Cancer Society provides food for thought (no pun intended) about what you weight and what you're eating. In one of the largest studies of weight and breast cancer to date, researchers found that older women who gained 20 to 30 pounds after high school graduation were 40 percent more likely to get breast cancer than those who didn't gain weight.
Risk of breast cancer is doubled if you gain more than 70 pounds. This study, among others, shows that breast cancer is strongly dependent on what you weight. Even modest amounts of weight gain lead to an increased risk of breast cancer.
Why is this? Fat tissue makes estrogen and estrogen can help breast cancer grow. (Weight gain is the second leading cause of all cancers, so if you're overweight, find a program that works for you and slowly lose weight. Keep it off by exercising daily.)
Lean post-menopausal women who didn't take hormones had the lowest cancer risk.
As the link to breast cancer and overeating strengthens, think about losing any extra pounds. Cut out unnecessary calories and non-nutritional foods such as fried anything, candy bars, cakes, pies, highly-processed cereals and foods. Build your menus around vegetables, olive oil and soy products and you'll lose weight. Make your snacks fruits. Twenty minutes of daily exercise will help, too!
If you want something sweet, have a juicy pear or peach or a sweet apple. Not only will you satisfy your craving for something sweet, you'll gain antioxidants (that protect you from cancer and heart disease), but a ton of fiber (that also protects you from cancer and heart disease and other chronic ailments, too.) If you must have something sweeter, a baked apple or banana are good ideas. Once you wean yourself off food products to which artificial sweeteners (including sugars) are added, fruit will taste very sweet. If that doesn't help, have a handful of raisins---just about the sweetest thing around, but full of iron and fiber and other good things.
What's a good way to lose? Stop eating grains for a while and you'll lose ten pounds right away. Although I have no research to support it, I think it's because cereal, pasta, bread, rice, etc. are hard for our bodies to digest and so it is turned into fat. It could also be because these foods soak up fluid and are retained in a holding place in the body. Grains were the last food items to be adding to the human diet. They weren't eaten until people stopped migrating around and settled into farms where they were around long enough to grow grains.
Once you cut out grains, you'll have to find other sources of B-vitamins, vitamin E and fiber, but you'll feel lighter, more energetic, less fatigued. Try it!
If you don't feel full after a meal of 5 vegetables and a soy protein source and a big mixed green salad with olive oil, vinegar (I like plum vinegar---heavenly, but only available in a health food store), and plenty of spices like oregano and basil to help you digest, eat a tablespoon or peanut butter or have a handful of nuts (not the salted and roasted kind). If that's not enough, have a handful of sunflower or pumpkin seeds.
Also, eat 4-6 small meals a day. Eat a piece or two of fruit or a slice or two or three of soy cheese in between your regular meals. That will keep your energy up and your metabolism churning. You have to feed your body in order to lose weight, otherwise it goes into starvation mode and you don't lose weight. So, don't skip meals, add a few more.
Happy weight loss and happy eating for wellness!
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