Seven Dietary Changes After Cancer

Just hearing the words, “You have cancer,” prompted me to make changes in my diet. I knew something needed to change and diet was a great place to start. It took me a while to research and make these changes. But I’m now convinced, these were the best changes I made to prevent my cancer from coming back. From someone who started as “The Junk Food Queen,” I’ve come a long way baby to get where I am today. So here are the seven dietary changes after cancer I made to prevent my cancer from coming back.

Junk and highly processed foods to whole foods. It took me years to make this transition. I kept getting knocked down by my diet choices. I’d rationalized that a hamburger and French fries with lettuce and tomatoes was a healthy meal. I removed high levels of sugar from my diet when diagnosed with severe hypoglycemia back in high school. Then I stopped drinking diet soft drinks which are nothing more than chemical drinks. After my father’s diagnosis with Alzheimer’s disease and my husband’s diagnosis with prostate cancer, we were gradually adding more vegetables and fruits to our diet. After my cancer diagnosis, I increased my vegetable and fruit intake to 10-13 per day and cut processed foods out of my diet—no additives, no preservatives, no artificial colorings, no processing—only whole foods in the way God created them.

Conventional foods to organic foods. My cancer diagnosis prompted me to eat organic foods as much as possible. I remember a friend cautioning me about buying those 99 cents a pound red grades from Mexico because they were loaded with pesticides and herbicides. But I just could not pass them up due to the price. “Well, if they have chemicals, my body seems to be handling it just fine,” or so I thought. NOT so, I discovered. I now buy from local farmers, shop the outer aisles of the grocery stores looking for organic produce, and I buy grass-fed beef, organic chicken, organic grains, and wild-caught salmon and seafood. My husband says that he is organic, and I need to pay him more attention! My daughter-in-law gave me a wooden sign that says, “But It’s organic!” My family loves to tease me!

Meal replacement with a smoothie each day. I now believe that a smoothie a day helps keep the doctor and cancer away. My daily smoothie usually contains 2 cups of organic greens, one cup of blueberries, plant-based protein powder, Sauer kraut, yogurt, almond or coconut milk, a banana, half an avocado, flax and hemp seeds, broccoli sprouts, and spirulina, green tea powder, etc. It’s nutrient-dense, gut-building, cancer-fighting, and brain-boosting, This video on how to make this smoothie will be referenced below. My husband and I love the chocolate, blueberry, and banana flavors, but there are many different flavors that can be made. This smoothie allows me to get seven to eight fruits and vegetables in and adds rich fiber and two probiotic foods to my day. It’s easy to make, and we enjoy drinking it.

FDA food pyramid to a nutritarian diet. I was raised on the FDA food pyramid which contained many processed foods and was heavy on starches. I now eat a more Mediterranean diet or what Dr. Joel Fuhrman calls “a nutritarian diet” filled with foods high in nutrients and low in calories. What a difference! The old food pyramid allowed a burger with cheese, lettuce, and tomato with French fries to cover the four food groups. No more! The more we eat of the seed-bearing plants that God created in Genesis 1:29 for us to eat, the healthier we will be. These plants include fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, beans and legumes, whole grains, and herbs and spices. Modern science can now tell us each phytochemical, antioxidant, and amount of rich fiber contained in each of these and that these all promote healing in our bodies.

I eat five cancer-fighting foods each day. Every plant that God created has cancer-fighting potential, but I partake of the top cancer foods each day. They are broccoli sprouts, cruciferous vegetables, blueberries, flax seeds, and dark leafy greens. These plants have the most research backing their cancer-fighting power. And it’s due to the antioxidants and phytochemicals found within. My video on these top five foods and the research behind them will be referenced below.

Store-bought grains to milling my own grains. Quite honestly, this is the most recent change I’ve made. Several people had encouraged me to do this, but I didn’t see the value until recently. When I learned that wheat itself freshly milled contains 40 of the 44 nutrients our bodies need to be healthy, that got my attention. The store-bought flour has been stripped of the germ, bran containing most of the fiber, and most of the nutrients. Now I understand why Jesus called himself, “The Bread of Life.” By using my own home grain grinder, I can mill whole wheat, corn, and many other grains thereby retaining those nutrients. And it’s not hard to do with your own grain mill.

Here’s where you can buy your own grain mill – www.nutrimill.com/UNLEASH and use code UNLEASH to receive $20 off

Here’s where you can buy whole organic grains – www.countrylifefoods.com/GINNY and use code “Ginny” for 10% off

I do intermittent fasting 2-3 times a week. By doing this, it balances my blood sugar, keeps my weight down, and extends the time my body is in autophagy. Autophagy is the body’s way of cleaning out damaged cells, to regenerate newer, healthier cells. And this includes cancer cells. So if I eat dinner at 6 pm and don’t eat again until 10 – 12 am the next day, it extends my normal hours of autophagy from 8 hours to 14-16 hours. Overnight is the best time to extend autophagy because we normally sleep 8 hours each night, so we just extend it by increasing the number of hours that our body is in a fasted state. My video on autophagy and the doctor who discovered it will be referenced below.

Our diet is one of the most important ways to prevent cancer, help our doctors fight it, and prevent it from coming back. We truly are what we eat and I learned that in the cancer journey. But the beautiful thing is that changing our diet improves our prognosis and also prevents heart disease, dementia, and many chronic diseases and autoimmune disorders. I now determine what I eat by what it does for my body. I call this in my book “Unleash Your God-given Healing”—Using food as medicine!

How many of you choose your food based on what it does for your body and not just taste?

View this message on YouTube:

Seven Dietary Changes After Cancer

Top Five Cancer-Fighting Foods

Six Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

For Your Health,

Ginny

** Links in this post to grain mills and organic grains may pay a small portion back to this ministry to help support it.

Ginny Dent Brant is a speaker and writer who grew up in the halls of power in Washington, DC. She has battled cancer, ministered around the world, and served on the front lines of American culture as a counselor, educator, wellness advocate, and adjunct professor. Brant’s award-winning book, Finding True Freedom: From the White House to the World, was endorsed by Chuck Colson and featured in many TV and media interviews. Unleash Your God-Given Healing: Eight Steps to Prevent and Survive Cancer was released in May 2020 after her journey with cancer and was recently awarded the First Place Golden Scrolls Award for Memoirs, a finalist in Serious Writers Book of the Decade, and Second Place in both Selah Awards for Memoirs and Director’s Choice Award for Nonfiction at the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writer’s Conference. It recently received the Christian Authors Network’s (CAN) Gold Award for Excellence in Marketing for reaching 62.5 million people with a message of cancer prevention and survival. It was written with commentary from an oncologist and was featured on CBN’s Healthy Living Show, Atlanta Live, and CTN’s Homekeepers along with over 75 media outlets. Learn more and cancer and wellness prevention blog and book information at www.ginnybrant.com. Ginny is on YouTube