"How you love yourself is how you teach others to love you."
​-Rupi Kaur

What is self love?
Self-love is a state of appreciation for oneself that grows from actions that support our physical, psychological and spiritual growth.

How can we practice self love?

• Talking to and about yourself with love
• Prioritise yourself
• Giving yourself a break from self-judgement
• Trusting yourself
• Being true to yourself
• Being nice to yourself
• Setting healthy boundaries
• Forgiving yourself when you aren’t being true or nice to yourself

We can increase our ability to practice self love by tuning in to our physical, mental, and emotional needs. This requires increased self-awareness. We can increase our self awareness for the physical needs of our bodies through regular exercise, our emotional needs through meditation, and our relationship with others through setting healthy boundaries. 

When you practice self love, you are loving yourself and your body and this will help you become the most authentic version of yourself.

Many breast cancers are found by women when they notice a lump or change in their breasts. Monthly self-checks can help you familarise yourself with what is normal for you, and help you detect and treat breast cancer as soon as possible. Self-checks, combined with screening mammograms every two years, from the age of 50 play an important role in early detection of breast cancer and increased survivorship rates. Check4cancer is a UK based initiative who has a great resource for self-examination. Please follow the six steps below each month. 

As a breast cancer survivor I can't help but feel a sense of gratitude each October. Many people now associated October with a pink ribbon. October has for many years, been a month dedicated to breast cancer awareness and raising money to support breast cancer research and resources for those affected. For survivors, it's a moment to pause, reflect, and celebrate life. Breast cancer has transformed into a chronic disease for many women, in large part due the the rapid advances in early cancer detection and the development of new treatments.

Here are three ways to celebrate breast cancer awareness this October:
-Support ongoing research by donating to the National Breast Cancer Foundation.
 - Join us for our free webinar  October 16th at 4pm where we will be focusing on breast cancer awareness and self-exam. 
-Are you between 50-74years old? Have you had your screening mammogram some time over the last two years? If not register today for a free mammogram at one of the 750 locations in Australia.  

Optimists are people who expect good things to happen to them while pessimists are considered people who expect bad things to happen to them. Researchers have found that optimism has a profoundly positive impact on an individual’s physical and emotional health.

​In fact, more than a hundred studies have found that overall longevity, survival from a disease, heart health, immunity, cancer outcomes, pregnancy outcomes, pain tolerance all improve with optimism.
 
How do you become more optimistic?
 
Follow these tips suggested by the University of Rochester Medical Centre:

• Think positive thoughts about yourself and others. 
• Consider limiting your online use of social media sites if you tend to compare yourself with others who post on those sites.
• Stop comparing yourself with others in a competitive way. Each person has unique and special talents that are to be valued.
• Try to find the good in every situation, even at difficult moments.
• When facing a challenge, focus on achieving a positive outcome, rather than expecting defeat. 
• Explore your own beliefs about the meaning and purpose of life, whether they are philosophical or religious.
• Strive to improve your physical health through exercise, a healthy diet, and good sleeping habits and hygiene. The better you feel, the brighter your outlook will be.
• Challenge your mind every day by learning something new, including learning about yourself and your family history.

In recent years a lot of emphasis on the psychological and wellness fields has focused on the concept of resilience and increasing resilience. Initial research focused on defining and measuring resilience.
 
Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioural flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.
 
A variety of factors impact how well people adapt to adversity.
 
These include:

• the ways in which individuals view and engage with the world
• the availability and quality of social resources
• specific coping strategies

 
Let’s be clear, being resilient doesn’t mean you won’t experience life stress difficulty. It just means when life gets difficult managing and moving on from hardship will be easier.
 
The good news is that resilience is not a personality trait that only some people possess. Resilience can be learned, cultivated and practiced.
 
Researchers have found four key areas in your life that you can concentrate on to cultivate your resilience.
 
These include:

• connection
• wellness
• healthy thinking
• meaning

 
Over the next four weeks we will be focusing on one of the four elements that are vital to cultivate in your life to increase resilience.

I’ve struggled with my weight my whole life. Most recently, I’ve struggled to lose 30kg after gaining that weight from steroids I had to take during chemotherapy for cancer. I thought if you got cancer it meant you’d get skinny. Boy was I wrong!

I’ve also seen my patients struggle with their weight, and trying to lose weight to improve their health. I’ve always been open with my patients about my own journey to maintain consistent habits of healthy eating and exercising as I advise them to also adopt these habits to improve their health. I suppose we are in the trenches together fighting the battle of the bulge! 

​

Five Truths To Embrace to Help You Develop Better Exercise Habits

1. Accept that it must be a part of your life if you want to be healthy, happy, and well.
2. Remind yourself every day that the decision to exercise on that day is not a burden but an act of self-love.
3. Your beauty and self-worth is not tied to your weight, or your ability to perfectly follow your wellness rituals. 
4. We are all unique, imperfect people, living in a messy imperfect world. When you lean in and fully embrace your weaknesses and imperfections and accept them without judgement you create space to grow, evolve, and improve.
5. Regardless of the past, there is always hope for a better tomorrow.

Wherever you are in your journey just keep going. Never give up on yourself because you are worth it. 
May all your days be filled with joy. ​

​There are so many diets and healthy eating plans out there. I find it very confusing! Even when I talk to nutritionists I refer patients to it’s become very clear that there are different thought camps on how to approach healthy eating and weight loss. The attitude seems to always be I’m right, they’re wrong. You have to do what I say to lose weight and be healthy. There’s no other way. 

Having been overweight most of my life, I’ve tried nearly every diet. I’ve done low carb/keto, raw vegan, plant based, intermittent fasting, I’ve had weight loss surgery, I’ve had healthy meals delivered to the house, I’ve done commercial diets like weight watcher and Jenny Craig. I’ve done a 5 days juice cleanse and a 48 hour water fast. I’ve had colonics and used detox tea. I’ve lost and gained HUNDREDS of pounds. 

I thought when I went to medical school I’d learn everything I needed to know to be thin. I was extremely disappointed when I learned that there is a lot of conflicting research about nutrition and with time new studies come out that dispute past studies. Many of the research studies aren’t necessarily done rigourously. 

Despite the above confusion I had managed to maintain a 40kg weight loss for a number a years with the help of weight loss surgery and then diet and exercise lifestyle modifications that varied year to year.  That was until I got breast cancer and gained 30kg from the steroid loading, lack of physical activity due to fatigue and eating mainly a high carb diet as that’s all my body could keep down due to nausea.
​

When I entered the survivorship phase and first met with a plastic surgeon about breast reconstruction and he told me I had to lose 30Kgs to get breasts again. I was devastated. I thought here we go again! He also told me that I would have to maintain that weight loss for life or could have problems with my surgical scars. I felt like after all I’d been through over the last year of fighting for my life, I didn’t know if I had it in me to start another weight loss journey. I also doubted my ability to maintain a normal weight as I hadn’t ever done it long term before. But I knew being obese increased my risk of breast cancer recurrence…substantially. I knew the stakes were high so I had to try to lose weight. ​

In the end I combined weight watchers with intermittent fasting, lowered my carbs, and ate a mainly plant based diet with some occasional chicken or fish. I embraced the principles in the dietary research that were undeniable (fruits and veggies are vital, avoid processed foods) and listened to my body to guide the rest of my choices.  This has been my journey.

I hope you have the courage to chart your own path, get informed, listen to your body and do what’s right for you.  Over the years I’ve learned from my personal experiences and the experience of my patients who have shared their weight loss journey’s with me. ​

In this video I recorded a few years ago I talk about the concept of walking in beauty.  Here's a link to the related podcast.

Want to learn more about walking in beauty? Check out this great article by Patricia Anne Davis and the Navajo Nation Justice Department.