What Are You Feeding
Your Cells?

After my cancer diagnosis, I stopped looking at food in terms of calories and started looking at it in terms of biology.

Every time you eat, you're creating a biological response. Blood glucose changes. Insulin changes. Hormones and signaling pathways respond. Your gut microbiome is affected. You're supplying your cells with fats, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and thousands of naturally occurring plant compounds.

So when someone tells me diet doesn't matter, I simply don't agree. The science tells us it matters.

That doesn't mean food alone treats cancer. It means diet is one of the most consistent ways we influence the environment our cells live in every single day.

That's why diet became one of the five pillars of my approach, and it's an area of my health I don't compromise on.

Start by Getting Rid of the Food That Isn't Food

If I could change one thing about the American diet tomorrow, I would dramatically reduce ultra-processed food.

This isn't based on opinion. In a large prospective study of more than 100,000 people, every 10% increase in ultra-processed food in the diet was associated with approximately a 12% increase in overall cancer risk. Other large studies and reviews have connected higher ultra-processed food intake with obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other poor health outcomes.

So this is where I start: eat real food.

If it came from the ground, grew on a tree, swam in the water, or had a mother, we're generally moving in the right direction. If most of the ingredient list requires a chemistry lesson, I don't want it making up the foundation of my diet.

You don't need a complicated protocol to understand that.

Your Terrain Matters

This is also where terrain theory becomes important.

A tumor doesn't exist in isolation. It exists inside a person, and that person has a metabolic state, nutrient status, immune system, microbiome, inflammatory state, hormones, circulation, and an entire internal environment surrounding those cells.

That's your terrain.

Diet has the ability to influence many of those factors. We know dietary patterns affect insulin sensitivity, glucose regulation, body composition, cardiovascular health, the microbiome, and inflammatory markers.

Cancer Has a Metabolism

This became particularly important to me when I began studying cancer metabolism.

Nearly a century ago, Nobel Prize-winning scientist Otto Warburg observed that many cancer cells consume large amounts of glucose and rely heavily on glycolysis even when oxygen is available. Today we call this the Warburg Effect, and altered cellular metabolism is now recognized as one of the important characteristics of cancer biology.

That does not mean cancer is simply a sugar disease. Cancer cells can be metabolically flexible, and different cancers behave differently.

But it absolutely means metabolism deserves our attention.

That's one reason I chose a therapeutic ketogenic diet. I restricted carbohydrates aggressively, incorporated fasting, and actually measured my glucose and ketones because I wanted to know whether I was achieving the metabolic state I was aiming for.

I wasn't "doing keto" because it was popular. I was using ketosis as a targeted metabolic strategy.

Keto Is Not for Everyone

This is where I see people make a mistake.

They hear that I used a ketogenic diet during my cancer journey and assume they should do the same thing. I don't believe that.

If you're going to use ketosis therapeutically, you need to understand whether you're actually in ketosis. Simply eating bacon, butter, cheese, and fewer carbohydrates doesn't automatically accomplish that.

If you're eating a high-fat diet but regularly producing enough glucose or consuming enough carbohydrate to keep yourself out of ketosis, you're not necessarily achieving the metabolic state you intended.

There are other concerns as well. Some people with cancer are already losing weight or muscle. Others may have medical conditions, medications, treatment-related nutritional needs, or metabolic circumstances that make aggressive carbohydrate restriction inappropriate.

So I wouldn't blindly recommend keto to every cancer patient.

Use the strategy that makes sense for your biology, and measure what you're trying to change.

That's also one of the reasons I'm such a believer in <u>personalized testing through Be Resilient</u>. I would rather make decisions using information than guess.

If You're Not Doing Keto, Look at the Mediterranean Diet

For someone who isn't pursuing therapeutic ketosis, a Mediterranean-style diet is one of the first dietary patterns I would look at.

Why?

Because unlike most trendy diets, we have decades of human research behind it.

The Mediterranean pattern emphasizes vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, seeds, extra virgin olive oil, fish, herbs, spices, and minimally processed foods while limiting ultra-processed foods, added sugars, and processed meats. It closely overlaps with nutrition recommendations from major cancer organizations.

It also naturally delivers something I think is incredibly important: a huge diversity of biologically active plant compounds.

Polyphenols, carotenoids, flavonoids, fiber, minerals, healthy fats, and countless other compounds interact with human physiology in ways we're still working to understand.

You don't get that from an ultra-processed diet.

I Intentionally Eat Anti-Angiogenic Foods

A solid tumor cannot continue growing beyond a certain size without developing a blood supply. It needs oxygen and nutrients, so tumors can release signals, including VEGF, that stimulate the formation of new blood vessels. This process is called angiogenesis.

One of the strategies in modern oncology is anti-angiogenesis, or interfering with the signals tumors use to develop that blood supply. This is established cancer biology, and there are FDA-approved cancer drugs designed specifically to inhibit angiogenesis.

Nutrition is where this became particularly interesting to me. Researchers have identified naturally occurring compounds in foods that demonstrate anti-angiogenic activity in laboratory and preclinical research. These include compounds found in foods such as berries, cruciferous vegetables, green tea, garlic, tomatoes, herbs, spices, and extra virgin olive oil.

That's why I intentionally incorporate many of these foods into my diet. I want foods that are nutrient-dense, support my overall terrain, and contain compounds being studied for their effects on biological pathways relevant to cancer.

I want as much of my diet working in my favor as possible.

What I Would Do First

If you're overwhelmed by all of this, don't start by trying to recreate my diet tomorrow.

Start by removing what we already have good reason to limit.

Get ultra-processed foods out of the foundation of your diet. Eliminate sugary drinks and added sugars. Limit processed meats. Start eating real, nutrient-dense foods.

Then add intentionally.

Eat colorful vegetables and berries. Eat cruciferous vegetables. Use extra virgin olive oil. Include herbs and spices. Get adequate protein so you can maintain muscle. Eat foods naturally rich in fiber and phytonutrients.

From there, get more personalized.

Look at your glucose. Look at your metabolic health. Understand your nutritional status. Determine whether a Mediterranean-style approach makes sense or whether there is a reason to discuss a more targeted strategy such as therapeutic ketosis with your healthcare team.

But please don't make the mistake of thinking diet doesn't matter simply because diet isn't a cancer treatment.

Those are two completely different statements.

Food changes biology.

We have overwhelming evidence for that.

I can't control every variable in my health, but I can control what I put on my plate multiple times every day. After my diagnosis, I decided I wasn't going to waste that opportunity.

I want to eat in a way that supports metabolic health, provides the nutrients my body needs, minimizes unnecessary processed food, and creates the healthiest terrain I reasonably can.

That's how I approach diet today.