“Weight has been a struggle my entire life. I was at my annual exam, and my doctor said we need to do something about your blood pressure. Hearing that was the tipping point for me. I knew what I had to do. In 2014, I ended up losing 85 pounds. I felt so good. I was doing workouts I had never done before. It was going really well. But then, in October of 2015, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was a total shock. I found out during my annual mammogram. I had a mammogram 11 months prior and found nothing. It was really tough because I was the healthiest I had ever been. I wondered how can this be? After that, I went through the how? Was it how I dieted? I lost the weight working out and doing a program that was all soy based products and there’s a lot of information regarding soy and breast cancer. I’m not saying it caused the cancer, but if there was cancer there that was forming, did that feed it? Did that make it grow? I had surgery in November, and afterwards, I fell into a little bit of depression, because it wasn’t making sense to me. It was totally random. I started eating comfort food and stopped working out. Of the 85 pounds I lost, I’ve gained back about 25. But recently, I’m back to working out and it’s making me feel so much better again. I didn’t realize how good working out made me feel until I did it all the time. I need to get back on track with eating. I do find that when I’m working out, I eat better. What I really want to do, is try to live the healthiest lifestyle I can and hope that that will keep the cancer from coming back. I feel great. I’m in a really good place mentally. It just takes time. I am really focusing on getting back to where I was, but doing it a different way, through food, and not supplements. Every 4 months is when I go to the doctor to get checked, and I want to make sure I always leave with a clean slate. With the blessings of my family, they just know, my health has to be a priority. It’s tough sometimes being a full time working mom, but it has to be a priority.”