A Year of Transformation
By: Kitty Ireland
Tags: Health, Cancer, Weight Loss, Self, 2020

It has been quite a year. I know this is true for most people, and for me it has turned out to be a year of transformation amid a global pandemic.

Just because you’re stuck inside and nothing’s open doesn’t mean you can’t get your life together. In fact, in some ways it is the perfect time to get your life together.

In 2020, I overhauled my diet, lost weight, essentially quit drinking alcohol, developed healthy habits, and beat breast cancer. I became a daily meditator and an early-riser. I started a Bullet Journal and a daily writing practice. Who says a pandemic has to ruin your life?

How to Lose 50 Pounds without Leaving the House (Much)

I knew I needed to lose weight at the beginning of the year, and I’d put diet and exercise on the top of my priority list before the pandemic was even a thing. I stopped drinking alcohol and started an elimination diet to test for food sensitivities, so January began with a very clean eating regimen. No dining out, no packaged foods, no sugar, no grains.

Toward the end of 2019, my husband purchased and installed a Peloton bike in our downstairs office. I was a bit skeptical about indoor exercise equipment, but I figured if that big, pricey machine was going to take up space in our house, I should at least use it. I bought some new bike shoes and started doing beginner rides. It was hard at first, but as my body acclimated to being on a bike again it started to feel really good.

Then the pandemic swept in. I was sent to work from home in mid-March and haven’t been back to the office in 2020. I realized that staying in my house all day was going to put a dent in my physical and mental health unless I did something about it, so I started taking 30–40 minute walks around the neighborhood daily.

My daily walk became a keystone habit. I always felt refreshed and re-energized after I got back, so I made it a non-negotiable habit. The only exceptions so far have been wildfire smoke, surgery recovery, and torrential rain. I now walk at least three miles every day. I do a Peloton ride three times weekly now, too.

My diet changed in January, when I discovered a sensitivity to gluten. It changed again after I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. All of this has led to nearly fifty pounds of weight loss in 2020, and I’m within 15 pounds of my optimal weight now.

How To Survive Breast Cancer During a Pandemic

The timing wasn’t ideal…or maybe it was. I went for my first-ever mammogram in February and was called back for a closer look at my right breast in March. At that point, everything was getting canceled, so it was weird to be going to an appointment.

The cancer itself was a tiny thing. Stage 1, only 1.1 mm in size, not metastatic. Exactly the breast cancer you want to have. But because there were a few spots of DCIS (Stage 0 pre-cancer) in the same region, a pretty big hunk of flesh would need to be removed. Then a month of radiation treatments, and five years of Tamoxifen — an estrogen modifier.

It was a lot, and I didn’t even have a bad cancer, as such things go. Once the initial shock had passed, I just took it one step at a time.

I had large breasts, which meant that there was leeway to take out a chunk of flesh and then do a reduction and reconstruction. The upshot is I now have the mid-sized, perky breasts I had when I was 18. It’s like a mid-life boob reset.

During the summer I had two breast surgeries, about a month apart. I kept up my daily walks except for when I had drains hanging out of me. During that week I did indoor laps up and down the stairs every few hours.

I worked with my naturopath on supplements and diet. We agreed that the best diet to fight cancer it the Ketogenic diet, so in August I leveled up from just Gluten-free (GF) to GF and low carb. No more rice or beans or chocolate bars.

September was the month of radiation treatments and wildfire smoke. For a full month, I commuted to Swedish every weekday to be zapped. It was tedious — especially when the air quality was Very Unhealthy — but it wasn’t too traumatic. It’s just something you get through.

At the end of the day, I am cancer-free and have new, perky boobs as a bonus.

How to Get Up in the Morning and Transform Your Life

The morning routine has always been my nemesis, especially when I was drinking a lot. I always stayed in bed as long as possible and did the absolute minimum to get myself out the door.

Back in February, I signed up for an online program called Sea Change from Zen Habits founder Leo Babuata. The program is about transformation through building healthy habits, starting with small steps. The practices use meditation as a foundation, and small groups for accountability. Despite a fair amount of resistance, I joined a small group and started attending twice-monthly Zoom meetings. This has turned out to be invaluable during this strange, isolated year.

The first habit I added was meditation. I’ve always thought of meditation as something I’d like to practice, but I never made time or space for it. In March, I committed to meditating daily. I worked through all of the beginner content on the Headspace app and 10 Percent, then I developed my own practice using breath-counting and the Insight Timer app. I’ve missed a day here and there, but for the most part I have been meditating daily since March. During the summer I did rooftop meditations at dawn.

The second habit I added was journaling. I’ve done Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages off-and-on, but I decided to start with a shorter practice. I set a timer for 10 minutes and typically write about one full page in a spiral notebook. Not only does this help me clear my head in the morning, but it has also created a daily record of this weird year.

After my surgery wounds mostly healed, I added a short yoga practice to go with my meditation. I now do between 10 and 30 minutes of yoga daily, depending on how much time I have and whether it’s a Peloton day or not.

I now consider meditation-yoga-journal non-negotiable parts of my morning routine. I’ve created a sequence that more or less runs on autopilot: meditate-yoga-exercise-shower-dress-coffee-supplements-journal. And then I start my day. I avoid looking at news or social media until after I’m through that sequence.

Having a solid morning routine is helped a lot by getting up early. I need a couple of hours at least before I have to start work or go anywhere. As I’m no longer drinking alcohol regularly, it is easier for me to start getting ready for bed around 9 p.m. It turns out the key to a solid morning routine is a solid bedtime routine.

I’m now focusing on sleep. I’ve never been the best sleeper, and I tend to get by on less than 7 hours, but I have come to realize that sleep is the key to everything else. Get a good night of sleep, and you will be more productive and present during the day.

How to Quit Drinking Alcohol Without 12 Steps

For years, my relationship with alcohol has been diminishing my life. I’ve taken breaks and made forays into “moderation,” but I always tend to slip back into drinking more than I really want to.

In 2019, I took a 100 day break from alcohol at the beginning of the year, and reduced my overall intake to probably half of what it had been in 2018 over the course of the year. I was taking days off from drinking regularly and waking up more and more often without a hangover. At the beginning of 2020, I quit completely for two months while I worked on my elimination diet. My plan for 2020 was to have two dry months for every drinking month, which would be a reduction from my 2019 level of drinking.

So, in March I drank on the weekends. Sometimes a bit too much, but it was only a few days during the month. Drinking helped ease me into the new pandemic world and working from home, but at the beginning of April I quit again as planned. Then I got a cancer diagnosis.

Alcohol most likely played a role in my breast cancer. It is a known carcinogen that changes how estrogen is processed. Drinking is highly correlated with estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer, which is what I had.

The smart choice would be to quit drinking completely and forever. But I’m not that smart, and I was a bit stressed with the cancer diagnosis and pandemic, so I gave myself permission to drink in May — until I started surgeries and radiation treatments.

For over four months, I did not drink at all. I got through the two surgeries and the month of radiation without touching alcohol. I didn’t even want to. But when it was done, I celebrated, and I gave myself a single weekend to drink in early October. A drank again on my birthday and Thanksgiving in late-November, then quit again. The plan is to stay sober until our wedding anniversary in late April.

I know this is not the tidy, triumphant story of a drunk finding total sobriety. That’s the story we hear all the time, but it’s not the only way to change your drinking. A couple of years ago I would not have considered a five-month break from drinking, but now I’m one month into it and it is easy. I don’t even want to drink over the holidays. I will toast the new year with fizzy water for perhaps the first time in my adult life.

How to Celebrate a Weird Year

I understand the impulse to get away from 2020 and never look back. I’ve heard the year called a “dumpster fire,” but for me it was one of the most positive years on record. I am so much healthier and happier now than I was a year ago, it’s almost hard to compare. My clothes don’t fit anymore, and that’s a cause for celebration.

I’m celebrating not only the transformation of my health and body, but also the quiet and solitude that has come with a year spent mostly in my house. I love staying home! Sure, I’d like to take a trip and eat in a restaurant and see friends, but I’m also really OK just staying home.

I’m celebrating the fact that I’m still gainfully employed and able to work from home. I know many are not so lucky. I celebrate the options for delivery of groceries, medications, and pretty much anything else. I celebrate being done with cancer for the foreseeable future.

I celebrate long walks and cute face masks. I celebrate the new pets my friends have adopted, and the photos they post on Instagram and Facebook. I celebrate the spirit of those who are willing to sacrifice what they want in order to protect others from a deadly virus. I celebrate the scientists who developed vaccines in record times. I celebrate the myriad ways we have discovered to stay in touch and get together from afar.

There’s a lot to celebrate. Even if 2020 was a terrible year in some ways, it was beautiful in others. What will you take into 2021 with you?