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Cait Lowry felt stunned when her doctor told her she had breast cancer. She was only 38 years old, and she had been diagnosed with a benign cyst six months earlier. That lump, the size of a pea, quickly grew to the size of an apricot. And it turned out it wasn’t benign.
“All of a sudden, I had to go through a bunch of appointments with specialists, and I got the news that I had breast cancer. I was completely taken aback. My life changed with just a phone call,” she tells TODAY.com.
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Treatment for the stage 2 advanced cancer began right away. Lowry needed weekly chemotherapy infusions and several surgeries over the next year, including a double mastectomy.
“I took it one appointment and one infusion at a time, and I listened to what my body could do. I tried to maintain a positive attitude, even though it was so trying. It takes a certain amount of mental fortitude to get through it,” she says.
Her treatment was successful, but it left her drained: “It really takes such a toll on you physically. It just zapped my energy. I lost a bunch of weight. I felt very weak. It was almost like an out-of-body experience — it didn’t feel like my body at all. Day-to-day, it was a struggle to get up and to keep going.”
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She has a physically demanding job as the owner of two coffee shops in the Washington, DC, area. She’s on her feet all day and has to lift and move cases of milk and bags of coffee. After treatment, she couldn’t do the things she used to do.
After Lowry finished breast cancer treatment, she felt adrift
When Lowry was being treated for cancer, her team of doctors and specialists gave her meal plans, tips for handling chemotherapy symptoms, exercises for after surgery and connections to support groups. But in November 2021, once she was finished, she was on her own.
“I felt alone and isolated. It was almost as if I was just released back into the wild, without any direction,” she says. “I saw these people every week for a year, and then I finished my last infusion, and I was expected to go back to normal. But there is no going back to normal after that.”
At first, she wasn’t sure what to do. “There was no list to help me get back to eating properly, improve my energy or help with the brain fog or the insomnia,” she says. “I didn’t know where to start. Should I go the yoga route? Should I do Pilates? Should I start cardio? I spent a year after treatment feeling sluggish and aimless. It took that long to realize I couldn’t live like this.”
She finds support in a fitness community
Lowry’s physical struggles in her job made her realize she needed to make a change. She didn’t want to simply get back to her old strength. After everything she had gone through, she wanted to feel strong in her body.
“I thought, ‘Maybe this is a great opportunity to use this as a transformative experience.’ I wanted to develop healthy habits, build muscle and build strength. I wanted to transform my lifestyle,” she says.
She recognized the value of the support she had during cancer treatment, and she wanted something similar in her post-cancer recovery. She knew someone who was a trainer at Ultimate Performance Washington Dupont Circle and decided to try it in July 2023.
“I didn’t have weight I wanted to lose. I wanted to gain weight. I wanted to gain strength. So, I was a little intimidated. But there was no template. It was all about me and my goals. I felt welcomed and supported,” she says.
She appreciated that when she was working out, cancer didn’t define her: “When I started training at U.P., I was no longer ‘Cait the Cancer Patient.’ That was such a big part of my identity for over a year with my friends, family and acquaintances from the coffee shop. I don’t want to be ‘Cait the Cancer Patient’ or even ‘Cait the Cancer Survivor.’ I now think of myself as a ‘cancer thriver.’”
She works out twice a week for an hour each time: “You don’t need to spend hours in the gym to get results. It’s about quality, not quantity.” She focused on strength training and starting with heavy weights, not the light weights she expected she would use.
“Sometimes, they would load up the weights, and I thought they were crazy. They believed in me and saw something in me that I did not think I was capable of. I did so much more than I thought I could do. Heavy weights made such a difference in terms of overall strength and in the speed at which I got into shape. That was a real game changer for me,” she says.
By the end of 2023, she felt like she was back in control of her body and her life. She says, “I’m stronger now than I was before treatment. I’m probably the strongest I’ve ever been, even stronger than when I was an athlete in my 20s. And it’s all coming from the magic of weightlifting. When I look at the mental and physical changes in myself, the results speak for themselves. The results that you can get within a short amount of time are just incredible. I feel like now, at 42, I’m in the best shape of my life.”
Lowry increased her protein intake to help build her strength
During cancer treatment, Lowry’s healthcare team stressed how important it was to eat a healthy diet and live a healthy lifestyle. “I’d eat more fruits and vegetables, but something that wasn’t stressed a lot was upping my protein intake. It was a part of my diet during treatment, and I knew it was important to rebuild myself, but I fell off a little bit,” she says.
“When I came to U.P., my trainer told me how important it was to have protein to build my strength, and my protein intake changed dramatically. The effects of that are just incredible. It goes beyond having your servings of fruits and vegetables. Making sure you’re having protein with every meal is so important — it really improves the speed with which you see results,” she says.
Lowry is physically and mentally stronger than ever
Lowry can list the ways she’s increased her strength with weightlifting:
- She’s gained seven pounds of lean muscle.
- At first, she couldn’t do a pullup. Now she can do 8.66: “I count doing one just over half the other day.” Her goal is to get to 10.
- She can do 25 pushups, hack squat 200 pounds and Romanian deadlift 175 pounds: “Getting into those higher numbers has blown me away.”
- She has less knee and back pain and better posture.
- She’s building strength in her chest muscles, which is helping with the tightness she has due to scar tissue after her double mastectomy: “Strengthening that area has helped get everything almost back in line.”
- At work, she can carry two cases of milk instead of one: “Forget the pullups. How many pounds of coffee can I lift?”
- Strength training helps her maintain her bone density, which is important after chemotherapy.
- She’s noticing definition in her muscles: “Even though I haven’t done any situps, I have a six-pack! I was looking in the mirror the other day, and there it is!”
She says, “The difference between the end of my treatment and now is huge. My body has been through a 100% turnaround. I came in feeling weak, and I couldn’t do anything. I’m doing things I never thought I’d be able to do and have never done before. I never thought it would be this much of a transformation. I feel really empowered. I have control over my body again. I’ve blown past what I thought I could achieve. It’s surprised me what I’m capable of, and I’m still going!”
Rebuilding her strength has also helped her in other parts of her life, including her business. “Taking control of the physical transformation in my body has helped me create an overall healthy lifestyle that is so important,” she says.
And she’s not taking her health for granted: “I understand that I have this one body for this one life. I want to take care of it because it took care of me and helped me to come out the other side of cancer. I owe it to myself to stay strong, feed my body, nourish my soul and chase my goals.”
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
