3 Steps to a Sustainable Anti-Inflammatory Diet

When it comes to breast cancer, one of the easiest and most effective ways to support optimal cellular function is by lowering inflammation in your body through good nutrition. A great place to start is by reducing sugar, dairy and gluten.

These are the three main pillars of an anti-inflammatory diet. 

But here’s the thing. Diets don't work long-term because they are inherently rooted in restriction, fear, and lack. Since like attracts like, making nutrition choices from this mindset only brings more of these emotions into your life.

Making the choice to remove sugar, dairy and gluten from your nutrition plan sustainably requires a different approach. 

Understand How Food Affects Your Body on a Cellular Level 

I never tell you to avoid something without providing context. If you understand the why behind reducing sugar, dairy or gluten intake, it makes the decision to avoid it so much easier. 

Knowledge is the precursor to experience. So I always want to teach you why something matters so that the choice for you to take action and turn it into a consistent and effortless lifestyle change becomes so much easier. 

The goal is to make these changes become effortless and habitual. And that doesn't happen when you approach your nutrition with the diet mentality.

In episode 2 of the Breast Cancer Thriver Podcast I do a deep dive into how gluten, dairy and sugar affects your body on a cellular level and contributes to breast cancer cell growth. 

Repeat Mantra: It’s Not Restriction; It’s an Act of Self-Love 

Instead of viewing the choice to reduce sugar, dairy and gluten as restriction, think of that choice as an act of self-love. 

Diets are rooted in restriction and control. When you make food choices out of fear or lack, you experience the rest of the world through that lens. 

Like attracts like and continuing to make decisions out of fear, restriction, and stress only attracts more of that into your life. 

These shifts that I'm talking about become effortless and habitual when you are able to make them not from fear or lack, but out of love and reverence for yourself and your body.

That's the key to this whole thing. You need to be able to make the choice from a place of love and not fear.

It’s not a restriction; it’s an act of self-love. 

Check In With Your Highest Self 

This part is so fun and although it might take some getting used to, once you cultivate this habit, it becomes effortless. 

Every week on our group coaching call, I have my clients share a win from the week and I legit love when their wins are about how easy it's become to conduct this check-in with their highest selves. Because once you get into the work we do in BCT, this check-in goes way above and beyond just nutrition.

This check-in is like rocket fuel for your personal growth and development and facilitates your transformation.

When it comes to nutrition, you have to know that everything is available to you at all times, but because you understand how certain foods affect you, you have the power to make a conscious choice to eat something or avoid it. 

Let me give you a personal example. 

I'm very aware of how sugar creates inflammation and contributes to breast cancer cell growth. 

But I am not sugar-free. 

I love dessert. I love it so much, but I also love myself and my body and my life. 

Because I understand on a cellular level, the impact that sugar has, I make the informed, conscious, and empowered choice to avoid sugar. 

Most of the time when the opportunity to have sugar comes up, I will check-in with myself and ask, “Hey, Lauren, do you really want this right now?”

Is this going to nourish the highest version of me? If the answer is yes, I go for it with zero guilt, and zero stress because all I'm doing is making a present moment choice that honours the highest version of me in that moment. 

That's the beauty of this and why I think it's so fun because how you feel in one moment can be entirely different than the next time you do this check-in and there is no right or wrong. 

Sometimes when I check-in, the answer is no. What I really need at that moment is rest or connection.

Learning to use this check-in to discern what you really want and what will be in service to the highest version of you is key. 

When you make a choice from a negative, fear-based intention, such as thinking sugar is bad, and I can't have it ever, it’s never going to be sustainable because it's rooted in fear and lack. 

When you make choices from a positive love-based intention, the change becomes effortless and your way of life, because it's rooted in freedom, conscious choice and empowerment. 

The Bottom Line 

Making the choice to remove sugar, dairy and gluten from your nutrition plan sustainably requires three things. 

It requires an understanding of how these foods affect your body on a cellular level and contribute to breast cancer cell growth. 

It also requires using this understanding to enable you to adopt the mantra it's not restriction; it's an act of self-love. This is a really powerful paradigm shift that will allow you to fully implement and integrate step three, which is knowing that you always have the freedom of conscious choice, and you can perform a quick check-in with your highest self and make present moment choices that honour her.