#333 Caring For Your Health After Breast Cancer Without Ovewhelming Yourself
During or after a breast cancer diagnosis, you have a lot on your mind.
There’s life and then there’s life before and after breast cancer.
So, how do you rearrange your life to take better care of yourself when the mere thought of it overwhelms you?
In this episode, I will give you some help with that.
In my practice, one of the things I do is help my clients let go of thoughts and practices that overwhelm them.
Yep, it’s not the things that are overwhelming friend, it’s what you tell yourself about all the things and why you have to do them all and you have to do them all perfectly.
Sound familiar?
Then you need to check out this episode to hear more about the tool you can use to support yourself and how you can apply it to your life without overwhelming yourself.
Referred to in this episode:
Books:
The Metabolic Approach to Cancer
Follow me on Social Media:
Read the Full Transcript:
Laura Lummer 0:00
You're listening to better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills and the insights and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis. If you're looking for a way to create a life, that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started. Hey, friends, you're listening to Episode 333. And I'm your host, Laura Lummer. And today is our Tuesday terrain talk. All right, I'm gonna jump right into this talk, because we've got a lot of good stuff to cover. Now, if you've been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, you know that for the last Gosh, has been a year and a half now, I trained with Dr. Nisha winters in the metabolic approach to cancer. And that has changed my life in so many ways I can't even explain to you in one podcast episode, it's been amazing because it's opened my eyes to so many things that I have power over to do to support my body's ability to be healthy. Some of the things seem like a lot, this is the response that I'll often hear. So first, let me back up. What I direct people to do is to take the basic assessment that you'd find in the beginning of the metabolic approach to cancer, the book and I'll link to that book in the show notes here. And right off the bat, a lot of times people go to take the train 10 And there's like I'm overwhelmed, I'm confused, I don't understand. And then we step out of it. And I am trying to address that, because I know the value of it. I know what it means if you can get through the terrain 10 You can look at it and you can understand how to apply it to yourself in ways that don't overwhelm you in ways that support you in ways that help you feel good and help you feel empowered. In. So I think it's really important to break it down. So one, I put out their link, go and take the terrain 10. And then when you do that, and I'll post the link again in the show notes here. When you go and you take the train 10 You get a series of five days of emails from me, well, somebody said something to me. And I recently went back and I looked at those emails and I went, Okay, yeah, they're kind of a lot. There's kind of a lot of information in those emails. So then if you were already overwhelmed, that might have overwhelmed you a little more. So I thought, Alright, how do I make this more simple, because again, I know the value of this tool. So I created for my members, this five day each day was a new handout, looking at areas of the train 10 with a little kind of a worksheet to help you figure out parse through it and simplify it even more and see what one simple step you might be able to do to apply this part of the true intent to you and your life, if it applied to you if it was something that you want to work on. And then, at the end of those five days after all of those handouts had gone on, we had a q&a to dig into what what is your train 10 look like? A bigger than that? What does it mean to you? What do you do with it? Why is it valuable? And how can it help you. And I recorded this q&a, and I did some editing to parse it down to just the most important pieces and to protect everybody's privacy. And I'm making it available to you. Because I really think there's a lot of value in it. I know there's a lot of value in it. And I think when you can hear other people's perceptions of it, and then hear their questions and my answers to those questions, then maybe it'll simplify it even a little bit more for you. So you can get access to that replay. And the guide that I created to go with it at my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash replay. And you will also find a link to it here in the show notes, whether you're watching this on YouTube or listening to it on your favorite podcast channel. But I want to go into a little bit about
Laura Lummer 4:19
what I heard on the q&a and how I might be able to help you in a couple of aspects. So when we get a diet, you know what either were diagnosed with breast cancer, bam, we are automatically automatically overwhelmed. I mean, a diagnosis of cancer blows your friggin mind. Okay. So you got a diagnosis of cancer or you're at a stage after diagnosis after treatment, maybe even a few years out and you think I'm really ready to do something now. Maybe you've gone through all the things you needed to go through processed a lot of the emotions or you realize you need to process but wherever you're at you're at A space, right, I'm ready. And that in itself, when we're ready to make a lifestyle change in this world today, with all the marketing and all the labels and all the things available to you, that in itself can be overwhelming. And so you say, Where do I even start? Okay. One of the things that's really important to me, one of the things I should say drives me bananas, is when someone promotes a program that makes you dependent on them long term to make any kind of change in your life. The whole point, I believe, in teaching people and coaching people about healthy lifestyle coaching is empowerment. And empowerment means to me, I don't take your power, but I show you how you get more power. And I show you how to apply steps to your life. So at some day, even though I would miss you, and I hate to see you go, you break up with me, you're like, I got it, I know what I need to do, I got it. Or, like so many of my clients, you know, no matter how much you get, there's always more to get. And so you know, but either way, my goal is to watch your evolution, your transformation, your growth, and for you to feel more confident and more empowered. I truly believe that's what the terrain 10 does, if you understand how to use it. And you understand how to apply it to yourself. Because it can actually be a very dynamic assessment, you go in, you answer these questions. And I'm going to address something on this podcast that I heard at the q&a. Some of these questions you address, you're like, Well, I can't change that, you know, I can't change I was born through C section, I can't change whether or not my mom breastfed me, I can't change whether or not I took birth control for X amount of years of my life. And that's true. It isn't about having to change those things. This assessment is about just getting a full picture. And there's no blame in it. And there's no shame in it. And no one's at fault. Everybody did the best they could. What it is, is a document that brings together a full picture of your life and your body and what your body's been through. So that you have data to help you understand more of what you're experiencing now. So if you see something in a terrain, and you know, like, I can't change that, and then you just go berserk. They're like, well, this is dumb, I can't even change anything. And And now, it's going to be my fault. That's not at all what it means. It's just like, Okay, this happened or it didn't happen. It's just a piece of data. Maybe you don't know the answers. Maybe you're adopted in any question about your family? You have no idea. It's okay. Right? It doesn't have to be every single answer every single question that's not about perfection. So I want to walk through that and talk about that. Because in the moment, when you're deciding to make a change, or in the moment, when you're deciding to go deeper into supporting yourself, the last thing I want for you to feel overwhelmed. So can you have a lot of information and not be overwhelmed? I think so. But I think what's important is that you don't tell yourself, you have to take in all the information at once. And you have to do all the things at once. So the beautiful thing about the terrain 10 is that it's going to give you a score on your categories, when you take it, it's online and actually used to not be available to be taken outside the United States online. But all of the internet laws have been taken care of by the metabolic Training Institute of Health. And now you can take it globally, so it's available online around the world. So when you take it, it's going to give you an automatic score. And what I suggest is that when you look at that score, you look at the top three areas that you scored in. And by giving you those top three areas, you're able to see, these are three things that are having a major impact on my life right now. And then I don't suggest you take on all three of those things. I suggest that you look at them and you say, is there one thing in this top three that I feel ready to take on right now? And the answer to that may be no. And that's also okay. It is so important when you're creating a healthy lifestyle to meet yourself where you're at, to look at all of this report and save yourself. You know what, I only feel ready to take on this one here at the bottom, the lowest scoring one. Because your body is not operating in any kind of silo, your body is completely integrated. So regardless of where you start to work on change, it will affect the rest of your body. So you don't have to take on something that's overwhelming. You don't have to take on something you're not ready for. And in fact I I love it. When a client says to me, I'm not ready for that. That's so good. Because you know what now we can look for what you are ready for. And you can set yourself up for success. Because if you take on something just because it's the highest scoring like augert Now I got to deal with stress and bio rhythms, oh my god, I'm stressed just thinking about dealing with stress. That's not for you, that's not going to help. So we want to look at it and say, Okay, what are all these areas because God knows, we can all make some kind of improvements in our lives, right. And so you choose something that you say, this speaks to me. And I feel like I can do something about this. Now, the rest of the information is still gonna be there. And when you're ready, you can go back to that information. When you've worked on one area for a period of time, and you feel like I think I've done really good at this, then you could go back. And you could take that assessment again. And you can see if your scores have changed, right, because it's dynamic, your body is dynamic, some things in life, we're going to be what they are, because they're in your past, and they happen, you can't change some things we're doing now. And as your life evolves, and your lifestyle habits evolve, you'll see your terrain 10, evolve. And even in the areas that don't change the areas where something has happened in the past, that can't be changed, that contributes to where you're at now in your life. That's okay, too, because and this is the second part of it that I'm going to talk about. When we're looking at a complete metabolic blueprint. We're looking at what your terrain 10 says. But we're also looking at what your labs tell you. And we can also look at what your genetics tell you. So there's three big pieces to this puzzle. Now, you may hear me say that go here we go overwhelm again, and it's okay, stop. You don't need to have all those components, because they all tie in together. Now the more you have in, the more you're ready for awesome, the more we have to work with. But if you're not ready, I would rather see you take the smallest step towards change in supporting yourself than to do nothing at all, because you're in overwhelm. All right. So if you take a terrain 10 assessment, and you see there's area for improvement, doesn't really matter what your genetic, say, you already know, there's room for improvement. So let me give you an example. There's a common genetic variant that I see when I work with people on their nutrition genome. And it's called the MTHFR mutation. I'm, I've talked about it before on the show. And this mutation can depending on a bunch of other factors can be a contributing factor to our ability to detoxify the body, among other things. If you don't know that you have this mutation, but you do know that you scored high in this area on the train 10. And you do know that you feel like even though your lab work, and I know if you've gone through breast cancer, you're getting lab work, even though your lab work says hey, my B 12 levels look good, that you're tired all the time. And maybe you have really high homocysteine levels. Maybe you have a higher HPA once your glucose right or your long term HPA one sees what we look at for your blood sugar over the course of three months. And maybe that's high, and you can't figure out why. Because you feel like you've got a really good lifestyle. Well, I don't need you to have a genetic report to see that there's something going on here that may be affecting your gut and your ability to detoxify. And so we address that, right. And we can look at your labs, we can say here's more proof of it. But even without all that stuff, just knowing yourself. Just taking that assessment and looking at that assessment and saying, Wow, look what this is showing me. Where do I notice this in myself? What am I experiencing? That is enough to work with right there. That is more than enough to work with to start to make change and to start to support yourself. So the more you're ready for the deeper you want to go find there's always more pathways, there's always more tests, there's always more that can be done. But why not start with simple because what I find is that if we don't start with simple wood, then we just don't start. And what I want for you is to start to start to understand the power you have. You know, again, I want to be really clear on this. I am not anti standard of care in any way, shape or form. I believe in an integrated approach to health and to medicine. That's my personal belief system. I think both the naturopathic world and the standard of care world have a tremendous amount of value to offer.
Laura Lummer 14:51
But being a cancer patient and having been a cancer patient and having approached that diagnosis, very different Ways two different times, I can tell you that the first time when I thought that my future depended on only standard of care treatments. And what I was told to do, felt more powerless to me than the second time, when I had access to standard of care treatments that were very valuable to me. And I knew I had things I could do to support this side of it, my immune system, my healthy body, my tissues, there were things I could do to create a healthier environment in my body. And that made me feel more powerful and empowered, because I felt like now I'm approaching my ability to heal and be healthy from two different ways. I'm turning to my doctor, and my doctor is doing his thing to kill cancer cells. And on this side, I'm doing my thing to support the healing of my body, two very different things that come together and have a synergy. So when we are looking at something like how to support your metabolic health, I think that it's so important to just realize that if I could just start doing simple little things, I'm gonna feel like I have more power. Like, I don't just have to wait around for the next doctor appointment, to see what's going to happen to me to hear what's going to happen to me. But I can actually take steps every single day, in my own life, that are simple, that are meaningful to me, and that I feel the need for that I'm noticing in my body, I think I need this. And that in doing that. It is supporting the whole other aspects of what your body's doing to get healthy, which is this terrain, this, this immune system, this mental balance, right, our ability to process emotions and deal with emotions, holy cow, is there a lot of work to do in that area? Right? I think every single human being just like we have a GP, we should have on staff, either a therapist or a coach for our own support for mental wellness, and to get us over this ridiculous campaign that we have to do things on our own and be some friggin Amazon warrior to get through cancer. I would say if if you asked me about my own experience, and I would tell you something of value, it would be I didn't do it alone. Oh my God, I feel like I get choked up. I think about the love and support and just amazing outpouring of care that I've had in each diagnosis and through my life, and then realize through that how much more I wanted to give to these relationships and how much I deeply believe in my heart that that supported healing. So even in that even if you look at something, you're like, I am so not ready to change anything in my diet. Cool. Can we work on connection? Can you get more connected to people? Can you build more love? Can we drop some anger, this can be so simple. So I wanted to circle back today on this terrain, talk and share with you a little more information to help you connect more to yourself and ask yourself what you need. But also, you can hear from some lovely women who are sharing their insights very frankly, sharing their perceptions of how the terrain 10 First impacted them. But then also asking really good questions that we get to get to the bottom of and something I love in this talk is the simplicity of just filtering water. You know, we'll talk in it a little bit about this one change that can be made like using a good water filter, doesn't have to be a whole house system doesn't have to break the bank. I know our human brain goes straight to all the things and perfect and top of the line. But it can be the next best thing for you. And in doing that, how much it can decrease your toxic burden. So simple steps you're going to hear in this conversation include something like that, like a simple water filtration system. But it also deals with the fact that we live in a toxic world, in toxic burden is just going to be around us. And we can't freak out about it. Like we can't let it again, overwhelm us and stop us from doing anything. And I hear this kind of talk, right I can't everything's toxic. So what's the point? There's a lot of toxicity in the world. This is true. There are toxins in the clothes we buy in the personal care products we use and all the things which is a fantastic opportunity, isn't it? Because if there's that much toxicity in your home, in your neighborhood, in your water in your house and your clothes in your closet, then there's that much opportunity to start to reduce that toxic load then there's that much opportunity to change one small thing at a time. And each time you change that small thing, you've just taken another step towards lowering a toxic burden. So do I need to have someone come to my house and say, Wow, we need to use all repurposed materials, we need to get rid of anything in your house that was shipped from China, because there's some kind of chemical originally in it, you know, do I need to have a compostable toilet, like, I don't need to do all of that. I just need to do simple things, to take as many steps as I can, that I'm ready to take to reduce my toxic burden. That's one thing. And if you look at the terrain tenant, and you see toxic burden, as a high scoring area, know that that thought of this is so overwhelming, can be exchanged with Oh, I wonder what small things I can do to start to reduce that, you know, I like to suggest that we look at our thoughts about things and we think about how can I have fun with this? You know, how can I look at this as a fun challenge? How can I look at this, like a scavenger hunt? Like what things can I look for in the terrain 10 That I can address? Which one can I take on now? Which one will I think I'd be ready for next? And we just give ourselves some grace? You know, people asked me often, in my experience with breast cancer survivors and with myself, and they'll ask me, like, what's one thing that you would tell someone if you just met them, and they were newly diagnosed with breast cancer. And what I would say, is, give yourself a freaking break. Be gentle, Be easy on yourself for maybe the first time in your life, start to listen to what you actually need. And no, you deserve to have that. And that means stop putting so much pressure on yourself. You know, I thought about this today. Today was my first day back in the gym since 10 days ago, I came down with COVID-19. And I was back in the gym today. And I was doing a reformer class, which I absolutely love Pilates reformers. I was doing a reformer class because it's gentle, but it's it's You need strength. But it's easy. There's no impact. And they always start off at the lowest level, right? So here's the move we're going to do. And if you want to advance that do this. And if you want to events that do this, and they'll give you these steps to advance. I used to be the person that no matter what, no, if there was a class there was like, oh, there's a beginners class and a level three class and I'd never done it before in my life. I started at level three. If I go into a class, and they're like, here's where you start, but for advanced do this, I always did advance. I hurt myself, I injured myself. I'm not proud of it. I mean, it's true. That's who I was. I don't know why I was driven by that kind of competitiveness that went over the top to the extent that I actually would hurt myself. I mean, there was a fitness boot camp, I went to one time and it was like you start and you do this one assessment. It's kind of like an obstacle course. And then you go through their 10 weeks of their boot camp. And then you do the obstacle course, again, to see how much stronger faster you are all of that. And during that reassessment. After the 10 weeks. It was raining this morning. It was like do like kind of sprinkling in the morning. And there was one thing we had to do where you hold on, it's kind of like a gymnastic thing where you lift your body up and you're just holding your body weight up with a metal bar on either side of you. And then you walk across the bars with your hands, right, so your feet are off the ground, you're elevated with the strength in your arms, you're just walking across this bar assess as you can. So like an obstacle course race. Well, when I was doing it, because it was so wet outside, I slipped in the side of my body hit one of those bars. And I immediately knew I cracked a rib or more. It hurt. It was loud. And it was maybe a quarter of the way through the obstacle course.
Laura Lummer 24:04
And I finished the damn thing. I pushed myself I could barely breathe. I thought it was gonna throw up that in my head. I had to finish this course invest my time because I just invested 10 weeks in this boot camp. I was unable to lay down for weeks at asleep sitting I was in horrendous pain. What did I do that to myself. So today, I'm in this class, and they're offering all of these advanced moves. And I've been in bed basically for 10 days, right? This is my first day out my body went through hell, it was really hard. I felt like shit. And I was just so happy to be in that class doing what I could do. Noticing if I felt too tired. Noticing in my arm with lymphedema if it felt like that weight was too heavy, and I would take it down a notch and I thought to myself, I'm so happy that I can enjoy exercise and enjoy taking care of my body and not feel like I have to push myself just because there's an option to push myself. And so I say that to other survivors. One thing I see in women I coach all the time is this mentality, of besting themselves. Comparing themselves this idea that we've got to be perfectionist, we've got to go all in, we've got to do all the things, we've got to be the best, we've got to, you know, motivate everybody else, inspire everybody else. And in doing so, we're so hard on ourselves. And so, I would encourage you, even when it comes to the next step to support your wellness, don't do that. Don't be so hard on yourself. Be gentle. Treat yourself honest to God, like you are a person you love the most in the world. And if you love you the most in the world, ask you what are you ready to take on? And then listen to yourself, have your own back, don't second guess yourself. And don't just do nothing to take care of yourself. Because you tell yourself it's got to be all or none. Even this thought, and I hear this often? Well, I can't do that. Because I'm an all or none type of person. Friends, that is just a thought. That is a story. It is a thought you had a lot of beliefs behind it. You think it means something, and there's your work? What does it mean? Why do you tell yourself that? Why is it important? Why does it matter? Who does it matter to? Is it important to you, or important that you think people think that of you? And why? Like these are great questions to ask yourself again, questions without judgment, without shame without blame. Just questions to explore. So you could start to see, huh? I don't know why I say that to myself, because I don't know. It causes me to do things that hurt me. I don't want to hurt me anymore. How about that? How about we stop hurting ourselves? We start loving ourselves. We start taking small, gentle, meaningful steps forward to support ourselves. All right, that's how we started to build a healthy terrain. Alright, let's you can listen to the replay the q&a replay and get the guide book that I wrote which is called Simple Steps to nourishing your terrain. You can get all that at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash replay or click on the link right here where you're listening to or watching this podcast and I will talk to you again very soon. Take care
