Roslina Manaf, 47, is what we’d call a determined individual, whose confidence in the natural healing powers of a healthy diet, particularly the Keto diet, helped her get through some of the most trying times of her life.
As a cancer survivor, she is somewhat adamant that people should try and break away from their comfort zones when it comes to kinds of food we like to eat, and turn things around for themselves. Read on for her story.
The wife and mother of three children ages 20, 17 and 15, lives with her family at Bukit Jelutong, She is an accomplished human resources professional with 21 years of experience in the fields of manufacturing, IT Services as well as in the oil and gas industry. With an expertise in Performance Management and Workforce Transformation, Lina, as she’s effectinately known, has successfully lead several projects in different organizations. She’s also a certified DISC behaviour Analyst from the Institution of Motivational Living, USA, as well as a Certified Practitioner in Neuro-Linguistics Programming (NLP) and Timeline Therapy.
“My mom, almarhumah Ma’chik Rabiah, as she was fondly called, was a fantastic cook. Like most Asian families, being eldest meant that I was expected to help in the kitchen. Many of my keto version recipes, such as the masak lemak cilipadi, sambal cabbage with prawns in coconut broth, pickled maman etc, are from my childhood memories growing up in the small town of Temerloh, Pahang,” Lina explained.
Way before she took any interest in ketogenic recipes, somewhere in 2015, Lina felt a sharp discomfort on her right breast but dismissed it for a few months. Then, during her yearly medical check up in Nov 2015 at Pantai Hospital, a 1.5cm solid lesion on her right breast was discovered via ultrasound. “It was categorise as BIRADS 3, and required further evaluation, hence I was referred to Dr Patricia Gomez in Pantai Hospital,” she told NH in a recent interview.
It was decided that Lina should undergo a biopsy to examine the tissue sample. Following that incident, she actively advocates regular medical check ups as a MUST for women..
The Diagnosis
The biopsy that year confirmed that it was an infiltrating ductal carcinoma on Lina’s right breast. It was described as Stage 1 HER-2 Positive Right Breast Cancer.
Although the growth was at Stage 1, it was also classified as Grade 3 (in terms of aggressiveness). Lina went for a second opinion at Subang Jaya Medical Centre and finally decided to proceed with surgery conducted by Dr Patricia Gomez (Breast Cancer Surgeon) at Pantai Hospital – she had a lumpectomy on right breast.
From January to December 2016 Lina underwent Chemotherapy, Radiation and Hormone Therapy to completion, and from 2017, she is now on her fourth out of five years of daily Tamoxifen and bi-annual medical check up.
Lina revealed that her check up so far is clear and recently, a previous cyst on her right breast is now reduced in size by half. “While waiting for my next appointment, I will continue to eat clean, healthy, unprocessed food to further reduce or even eliminate the cyst completely,” she said with conviction.
The Self-Healing Capabilities Of Our Bodies
The foods we eat influences our health – that’s what Lina truly believes and her experiences and successes with diet changes has also proved to her that food is our medicine. “As we become more aware of the self healing capabilities of the body to heal itself through food, that is when we become more selective of the food we eat. I believe now in eating wholesome, natural, unprocessed home cooked meals, free of any forms of sugar, seasonings, msg as well as other fillers and starches.”
“From personal experiences, while undergoing Chemo, I stop taking sugar and dairy and was limiting carbohydrate intake, as eating all these consistently resulted in my body shutting down/ food coma. I would have body aches, lethargy and sleepiness after meals. After switching to low carbs and eventually to the Ketogenic Diet, whenever I was on ketosis*, I felt better, more energised. The most important positive indicator was finally having a sense of clarity and no more brain fog and body fatigue.
“For example WHO/FAO Expert Consultation on Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases published a joint report titled “Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases” to examine the science behind the relationship between diet and physical activity patterns, and the major nutrition-related chronic diseases. Amongst the key findings on obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer were:
Obesity: the imbalance between declining energy expenditure due to physical inactivity and high energy in the diet (excess calories whether from sugar, starches or fat) is the main determinant of the obesity epidemic.
Diabetes: Excess weight gain, obesity and physical inactivity account for the escalating rates of type 2 diabetes, worldwide. Diabetes leads to increased risk of heart disease, kidney disease, stroke and infections.
Cardiovascular diseases: They are the major killers worldwide, and to a great extent are due to unbalanced diets and physical inactivity. Risk of their main forms, heart disease and
stroke, can be reduced by eating less saturated and trans fats, and sufficient amounts of (n-3 and n-6) polyunsaturated fats, fruits and vegetables and less salt. as well as by increasing physical activity and controlling one’s weight.
Cancer: While tobacco is the number one cause of cancer, dietary factors also contribute significantly to some types of cancer. Maintaining a healthy weight will reduce the risk for cancers of the oesophagus, colorectum, breast, endometrium and kidney.
Early 2016, while still on chemotherapy, I bought a book called “The Cantin Ketogenic Diet – For Cancer, Type 1&2 Diabetes, Epilepsy and Other Ailments” by Elaine Cantin who healed herself from breast cancer and her son from type 1 diabetes through the Ketogenic Diet. At the same time, I was also advised to consume a low carbohydrate diet by my gynaecologist She would gave me links, book suggestions and reading material and it lead me to the works of Dr Mercola (www.mercola.com) and eventually to other versions of Ketogenic Diet and Intermittent Fasting. I followed many Keto gurus like Dr Eric Berg, Mindy Pelz as well as Dr Jason Fung among others.
Getting To Know And To Love Healthy Eating
It was hard for Lina in 2016, as most Ketogenic recipes available were based on Western diets. She couldn’t sustain and keep falling out of it because of cravings for local favourites like nasi lemak, mee goreng and other Asian food. Lina didn’t give up, however.
“After acquiring a deeper understanding of what Ketogenic Food really is all about, I decided to continue doing so, but I came up with Asian versions using local recipes and fresh local ingredients. This is the heart of @asianketo, embedding our culture, traditions and food memories into ways of eating and food stories. I try to make it appealing for people to eat by using flavours that are close to their heart,” she said.
To date, the Ketogenic Diet has contributed immensely towards Lina’s ever improving health. It has reduced her dependency on prediabetic and high blood pressure medicine, and has helped her recover from brain fog caused by repeated chemotherapy sessions, states of confusion, loss for words and forgetfulness. She also has more energy now, enjoys more stabilised mood throughout the day, and is no longer bogged down by body fatigue or food coma after eating.
“Healthy eating has also reverse my high serum insulin intake from 11 in 2016, to 7 in 2017 and 2.9 in 2018. Keto food curbs food cravings so weight-loss was inevitably an after effect – I weighed 78kg in 2016, 75.5 in 2017 and now I’m happy to be maintaining my weight at 60kg,” Lina quipped.
Challengers That Beginners May Have To Overcome
There are obviously challenges to overcome when one first starts out on the Keto Diet, especially here in Malaysia, due to the fact that our local food is just too tasty to forgo! Hence, food cravings may pose a big problem. In this regard, Lina has this to say, “For any diet or way of life to be sustainable, it should include our culture and food traditions as a part of our new way of eating. For Malaysian, it’ll be more appealing for people to eat healthy keto food if they’re in flavours that are close to their hearts like Masak Lemak Cilipadi, Agar Agar Lumut, Lontong Keto etc.”
“The reason behind so many failures when Malaysians try to make dietary changes is, we try to ape the Western recipes instead of creating our own food identity. We should be eating keto, but our own way – the Asian way.”
People sometimes even back out after trying out a Ketogenic diet, thinking that it is very restrictive. Lina puts that to rest in her Keto coaching sessions where she teaches not only what a Keto diet really is all about, but also how to cook keto dishes and what are the ingredients replacements so we can still enjoy foods like desserts, mee goreng mamak, chicken rice, lasagna and many others that are prohibited in their original versions.
On eating out while on a Keto diet, Lina warns that most foods served at restaurants have sugar, artificial taste-enhancers or starch fillers. Some searches around showed though, that there are restaurants these days with Keto menus – so if we’re really serious about changing our diets, and consequently our health, we’ll have to do some homework on this.
Intermittent Fasting 3-4 Times A Week.
It has been a long standing belief in our community that we should not keep our stomachs hungry for prolonged periods of time. However, there are millions of exceptionally healthy people worldwide who make fasting a regular habit. Lina is an advocate of fasting and she does what’s known as intermittent fasting (IF). “I start with a meal around 11am or would delay that first meal up to 2pm (if I’m not hungry) and I’ll have my last meal latest by 7pm. You’ll find that the IF practice comes naturally once we’re on a ketogenic diet as the cravings and appetite diminishes. I used to eat five times a day, then reduced it to three main meals and now I’m on two meals or sometimes even one meal a day.
If you’re wondering what are the benefits of IF, there are many. For one, it Increases the leptin levels which in turn helps to curb overeating. Insulin sensitivity will also be raised and so will the autophagy process (for cellular clean up and anti aging). Your levels of human growth hormones (HGH) also raises when you fast, and that promotes life longevity, reduced heart risks and enhanced weight loss. Fasting lessens the risks of inflammation of the guts and joints. It also decreases insulin and Triglycerides while lowering the risks of metabolic diseases as well as heart disease.
“I like what Dr Jason Fung (writer of The Obesity Code) says about Intermittent Fasting. – Life is Intermittent. There are good days and bad days. There are days to celebrate and days to dread. That’s life. Your diet also needs to be intermittent. There are times to eat a lot and celebrate. But just as surely, there needs to be days where you fast, to make up for it.”
“As a breast cancer survivor, IF is another way for me to heal by activating autophagy for cellular clean up where our body eats up our own broken cells and stimulate growth hormones. So tremendous are its positive effects that the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Yoshinori Ohsumi for his discoveries of the mechanisms for autophagy.”
A Continuous Learning And Discovering Process
For all of us who are tinkering with the idea of going Keto and yet, have second thoughts due to the fear of having to forgo local favourites, we’re fortunate to get to know Lina (check out her social media pages listed at the end). “I am still learning about the ketogenic diet and I decided to Keto-fy local recipes according to how my body response to certain food. For example Keto Lontong is one of my favourite dish. It’s made from caulirice Impit (in lieu of nasi impit), and vegetables, prawns and coconut milk. It is a delicious, dairy free recipe, and one that’s very close to my heart. Another favourite of mine is Oxtail Bone Broth, which is flavourful and is full of collagen goodness. It nourishes the body with easily absorbable electrolytes and minerals – calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur and others.
Lina is, at the moment, halfway through with an online Keto & Intermittent Fasting Training Program by Dr Eric Berg. “I’m learning so much everyday.” she said. “I will continue to share ideas and tips on adapting a ketogenic lifestyle as well as keto recipes on asianketo which all of you can follow on Facebook, Instagram and Youtube. Like we did last year, we will continue conducting Wellness Programs for our corporate clients and look forward to work with various NGOs for CSR activities to bring awareness on healthy eating habits.” Lina is also very excited about the release of her asianketo recipe eBook which is due out in June 2019. The project she’s most excited about, however, is the asianketo Cookbook, which will be out in July 2019.
My Wellness Journey
From personal experience, the road to wellness isn’t just about physical recovery from an illness, but also adopting a holistic approach via the mind, body, soul and spirit. Being a wife, mother and a working woman, I harboured feelings of guilt of not being able to be ‘perfect’ in my life. Here are the steps I took to overcome it:
- I went through a ‘mind-healing’ process of forgiving myself and others
- I started to count my blessings and felt gratitude for having a disease that is still treatable, and that I can continue to live and heal
- I feel grateful to have doctors, family and friends who are so supportive of me. My husband walks with me every morning and took on an extra role to ensure that the children were taken care of and the household ran in good order. My family and friends have been fundamental in my healing journey, offering mental and emotional support to me all the way
- I kept within a very small circle during my treatment period, minimised visitors and focused on positive stimulants such as reading self-empowering books, watching comedy shows, and praying. I kept stressors at a minimum.
- I started off on a clean, natural food diet, followed by a low-carbohydrate one and now, a ketogenic lifestyle.
I believe that anyone who wants to embark on a new diet or lifestyle needs to do some research to see what suits them best. We are all unique and our respective diet requirements and how our body responds to certain foods differ from one another. I encourage you to always make a well-informed decision when it comes to your health, and not just follow the crowd.
* Ketosis is a metabolic process where the body, when out of sugar for energy, burns stored fats instead, resulting in what is known as ketones within the system. A low-carbohydrate and high- fat diet, called a ketogenic diet, encourages this to happen.
