Maria Kang built her career around fitness, healthy eating and helping other moms . But despite believing she had done “everything right,” the California mother of three was blindsided by colon cancer.
Kang, now 46, said the diagnosis completely reshaped her understanding of what it means to be healthy.
She became an internet sensation in 2013 after a photo of her sculpted physique alongside her three young sons sparked a global conversation about fitness and .
The viral image â captioned “Whats your excuse?” â led to her being dubbed the “No Excuse Mom” and inspired the launch of hundreds of wellness communities around the world.
More than a decade later, Kangs world was turned upside down when she learned that she had stage 4 colon cancer in November 2023.
“It was definitely a complete shock â because I was the healthiest person I knew,” she shared with Fox News Digital. “I wanted to blame the food, but I didn’t eat bad food. I filtered my water. There was no excuse why I had this cancer.”
Looking back, Kang said she had experienced persistent digestive problems since adolescence, including chronic constipation and bloating that worsened .
“It didn’t matter how many fiber pills or laxatives, it just took a long time to go,” she said. “So that’s been an ongoing journey throughout my life.”
Over the years, Kang said, she convinced herself that her digestive problems were just something she had to live with.
“One thing that I realized is that we normalize problems, and we think it’s OK, but its not OK,” she said. “Digestion should be like breathing. It should be like inhaling and exhaling. It should be simple. But it wasn’t simple.”
After a tumor was detected through a biopsy after colonoscopy, Kang said she initially pursued holistic approaches for 12 weeks, but the tumor did not shrink and may have grown slightly. She then began FOLFOX â a combination of used to treat some gastrointestinal cancers â in 2024.
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After one treatment, Kang went to the emergency room when her colostomy stoma retracted, and a scan reportedly showed that the tumor had shrunk substantially. She then asked to stop chemotherapy and proceed with surgery.
Kang later underwent to remove the tumor and about a foot of her colon, along with multiple reproductive organs and her appendix. She temporarily required a colostomy and later an ileostomy.
Today, Kang says her MRIs have shown “no suspicious mass detected.” She gets regular blood screenings and scans every six months.Â
“Much of what remains appears related to postoperative healing and inflammation,” she shared. “Because of my history, my doctors continue surveillance, but I have not been formally declared NED (no evidence of disease).”
An estimated 158,850 Americans will be diagnosed with <a href="https://foxnews.com/category/health/cancer" target="_blank" rel="noopener
