When it comes to getting healthy the idea of intense workouts, hours of food prep, and giving up some of your favorite “treats” can be off-putting.

Adopting a mindset of what you can’t do and shouldn’t have, cheating with food, and being “bad” can make anyone want to run in the other direction.

But, what if none of that had to be a part of getting physically healthy?

In fact, what if that mindset was actually stopping you from even trying to do the things you want to support your physical health?

In this episode, I’ll offer you some new ways of thinking about treating your body well.

You’ll hear about finding balance and dropping the ”all or none” mindset for the “something is better than nothing” and “what will work for me today” mindset.

Check out this episode and get a new perspective on how getting healthy can work for you without being a chore.

Referred to in this episode: 

Better Than Before Breast Cancer Life Coaching Membership 

Read the full transcript below:

Unknown Speaker 0:00
You're listening to the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm a Certified Life health and nutrition coach, and I'm also a breast cancer thriver. If you're trying to figure out how to move past the trauma and the emotional toll of breast cancer, you've come to the right place. In this podcast, I will give you the tools and the insights to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer. Well, let's get started.

Unknown Speaker 0:33
Hey, friends, welcome to another episode of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I am your host, Laura Lummer. And thank you so much for being here and downloading this show today means the world to me, and thank you, for those of you have been leaving reviews and ratings for the show. I used to say subscribing to the show, but I think it's follow now I think Apple changed when they became apple from iTunes, whatever, whatever. But for those of you who follow and if you're new to the show, and you find something today, or here's something today that you enjoy, please do follow, subscribe, whatever it is on the platform you're listening to and leave a rating or review when you have a moment, because it's very helpful for others to find the show if you do that. So I appreciate that. I know. It takes time it takes intention. And I do really appreciate you for taking the time to do that. Alright, let's jump into the show. So we are in June, this show will come out I think it's going to be June 3, so the beginning of June, the beginning of summer. And even though I'm 58 years old still, for all the women I work with the friends that I have. And for myself, when summer starts rolling around, we start thinking about all wearing shorts and you know getting a 10 and wearing a bathing suit and what's it going to be like? And how do I get this body into shape during the summer. And I want to talk a little bit about that. Because one of the things that has been so important to me in my journey of healing my body and learning about and studying healing in coaching, looking at the way that we think, and in working with all of the people that I do work with is the way we think about our body. And the power we give away when it comes to what we want for our body. By kind of giving our power away to outside sources, we give our power over to food, right? We say food does this, we give it away to exercise. And we tell ourselves most often that getting into shape that feeling and doesn't even necessarily be fit, because everybody has a different idea of fit. But being fit, being healthy, and treating your body with things that are healthy. So so so so much resistance, so many ideas, and a very prominent idea being deprivation come up when we start to think about this. So for me, I have done a tremendous amount of exploring in this area. Now, if you have been around me for a while followed for a while, you know that in my programs, and in my coaching, I talk about the four pillars of breast cancer recovery. And I created those pillars because as I was going through my process, as I began coaching others through their process, I started to see this pattern. And I started to see four main areas where if we really focused and we really did the work and evaluated where everything was that in these areas, that tremendous transformation could take place. And the more I worked in those pillars, the more I realized that for each of those four pillars, there's what I call like an anchor, there's an anchor deejo, it's kind of like when you take those Easy Ups out to the beach or the park and you've got the long legs on the sides that will post it up and hold everything up over you. But you got to weigh it down or the winds gonna come along and blow it away. Right. So when you have the pillar and my pillars are released, Renu regroup and revive. Each of them has a very important anchor. And when we look at these anchors individually and examine where we're at within each of these, we strengthen the foundation of that pillar. Now those four anchors for me and this has kind of evolved as I have dug more and more into my own healing. And those four anchors are spiritual, physical, emotional, and clinical. And I'll tell you just briefly about each of those four but I'm really going to focus on today is that physical anger and the way we can have so many conditioned thoughts about this area, and those thoughts in and of themselves will prevent us from actually taking care of ourselves this wild, kind of a thought loop we get stuck in but in the the anchor of spirituality. It is really deep

Unknown Speaker 5:00
Burning that connection to your belief system, your life source. And that means if you believe in a God or you don't believe in a God, whatever you believe is your kind of morality, your reason, your purpose for being here to me, that spiritual that connection we have, with every other human being this force that animates us and gives us life. That, to me is the spiritual sense. And for me, part of my healing has been deepening my spiritual connection to myself and to what I consider that divine source. And I find that connecting to that part of me, and really being open to the connection with others, is very healing for me, and also helps me to get a bigger picture of life from a, I'm a part of this big experience this huge expanse, and it helps me to feel more connected less alone. And I could go into that for hours. But that's how we're going to talk about today. Okay, then there's the emotional anchor, obviously, we have emotions, learning to understand learning to accept learning to allow all of them emotions, in examining the thoughts that create them, the thoughts that get me stuck in them, the thoughts that make them stronger, the thoughts that make them weaker, the thoughts that cause me to resist them. How do you have a healthy, balanced relationship with your emotions? And balance? Think about it balance doesn't mean how do I just walk steady down this line constantly, and there's no ups and downs, a lot of people think that, right? They think, oh, I just can't find balance, I just can't find balance. Well, think about it, think about someone standing on one of those balance beams, and they do gymnastics on. And let's not think of a professional gymnastic, let's think of me standing on a balance beam, I'm not going to be perfectly balanced, right? Especially if I have one foot on the balance beam, think about that one foot on the balance beam, one foot up in the air, there's going to be a constant adjusting a constant maneuvering, trying to stay on the beam. So balance isn't a static stationary place to be in life. Balance is constantly evolving, moving, flowing, allowing. And when it comes to that anger of emotions, that's really where I see the power here is being in the flow, understanding, acceptance and processing of emotions, not trying to sort some out not trying to weed some out not saying I'll only take these ones, but those ones No way, Jose. Okay, so finding balance there. And clinical, the clinical anchor for me, because I do believe in western medicine, I have a lot of faith in western medicine, I have a lot of questions about Western medicine, I have a lot of doubts about Western medicine, it is an imperfect system. But for me, the clinical anchor then is seeking out that balance within that imperfect system. It's advocating for myself, it's listening, it's finding physicians that I trust to listen to listening to those physicians, doing my own research, understanding how whatever it is they recommend, as far as treatments will affect the quality of life that I want from me. And whether or not I'm all in. And not, I never would just discard the clinical piece of it. You know, I don't believe that any of these systems have anything perfect. Everything is constantly in flow, everything is imperfect. And that actually releases a lot of emotional tension to when I don't go into the clinical piece of my treatment, my recovery and supporting my health. If I don't go into that with the idea that this is perfect, this is all knowing this is omnipotent. Anything that comes here, I need to do anything that comes from this space, I come to it with a very open mind. And I come to it with an understanding that there are tremendous benefits that can be had. And there are also tremendous side effects that can be experienced. And there can be dangerous things also. So all of that is taken into consideration in the clinical piece. How does the clinical piece of this, any of these four pillars fit into my life? And what am I open to understanding and advocating within that anchor? And then finally, there's the physical, the physical anchor. Now, when I say physical, most people think diet and exercise I have to eat right, I have to move more. And I just wish that we could unlearn that, you know, can we just unlearn that piece? Because as soon as you hear, eat better, exercise more, oh my God, here comes the shame. Here comes the stories here comes the guilt. And when those emotions come up, we go right back to sitting on the couch and

Unknown Speaker 10:00
I don't know, eating a cream puff. Right? Nothing productive comes from that. We can look around at our world, we can look around at the United States, are we listening to this from any other country, you can look around us and see that we've been told for how long eat less exercise more. And obesity rates continue to climb and cancer occurrence has continued to increase and heart disease continues to increase. So clearly, that message is not effective. When it comes to the physical piece, for me, in what I've learned for myself, and what I coach others on,

Unknown Speaker 10:36
is how do you learn to love your body? How do you get to really truly know and understand your body? How do you give it what it needs? How do you challenge it enough so that it continues to grow and training, right? Physical training is always the next challenge. Overload is one of the principles do a little bit more and a little bit more. And that's how the body gets stronger. And the cardiopulmonary capacity gets better. So how do you find that balance, and I'll share a story with you where this is concerned. So I've said many times before, I love to exercise, I have always loved exercise. I was an athlete, as you know, in high school, and doing five K's and triathlons and things like that, in my private life, were always fun for me, I love exercise. And I had to really evaluate that three different times in my life, because I did hold myself to this really high standard where, when it came to exercise, I had to start at the elite level, right, I had to do the hardest thing take on the biggest challenge. And many times I injured myself doing that. So my ego got in the way. And I just decided I'm gonna make this body be this way. And it never worked out. Well. When I did that. Then I had my first round of cancer and cancer treatment, and it changed my body tremendously. The treatment itself. I went through a lot of anger and frustration because of the joint pain, the neuropathy, everything that I had that was long term, until I finally changed my mentality around that and started saying, Okay, what does work for me? Instead of focusing on what doesn't work for me, instead of pushing myself and hurting this body? What does work for it? What will help support it because 100% I'm a believer in exercise as medicine, exercise is critical for our health for our mental health, our physical health, everything in this body works better when we move it on a regular basis. No question about that. So I did start to find exercises that worked better for me that were lower impact. I didn't run any more. But I was really good at lifting weights. And I've always loved lifting weights. And then I got a diagnosis of stage four metastatic cancer in my hips and my spine in my pelvis, which is the structural support system of my body, right, I really need that part of my skeleton, when I'm doing weight bearing exercise. And I was told, No more heavy lifting.

Unknown Speaker 13:12
was crushing. So hard,

Unknown Speaker 13:15
really hard to process that I'm kind of it kind of happened did happen during the pandemic. So I guess I was, maybe it was this nice little buffer for how strong my emotions were around it, that it happened in a place where all my gyms were closing down. So it didn't have so much FOMO. But anyway, I had to reevaluate, again, I found spin classes, I still love yoga. So I would go to yoga, then spin classes started to create a lot of pain, a lot of pain in my hips and a lot of pain in my low back. Because I like to do the intense 45 minutes between classes, right? And that just wasn't working. And I would find myself in a lot of pain. And so I had to cut back on that. And I have to say, Okay, what's going to work for this body, I've got to find something that's going to work for it. I won't just give up. I won't just stop. I'll keep exploring. And I'll keep testing until I find the sweet spot until I find the balance right? Back and forth, back and forth. We go until we figure out what works for us in our life. But it starts with being open to the idea of what will work for me. Instead of rooted in the idea what can I have and not have? What can I do and not do? Right? I want to find a way to move my body every day in a way I enjoy in a way that challenges me because that's part of my healing right continued to have weight bearing strength bearing resistance exercise increases bone density that's very important to me and my healing. And I incorporate and mix up my workout so that I have flexibility training in there as well as all that other piece

Unknown Speaker 15:00
says write, strengthen the lungs and heart, strengthen the muscles and flex the body and keep it open. Now, sometimes, even though I want to exercise every day, sometimes I don't, sometimes I'm very tired. Or sometimes I'm having a little more pain. And I don't want to push myself. Again, I'm seeking balance here. And in those times, if I can go for a jump to walk, I will, if I need to take a nap, I will. And here's why I'm sharing this with you. Because the most prominent frame of mind that I hear, when I'm working with women who are very concerned about their physical body about this anchor of finding balance in this physical realm is an all or nothing approach. I mean, I can coach women who I have who are in their mid 60s Or even older who haven't exercised in a very, very long time. And their belief system is, you know, I have to go to some like f 45, or some intense workout where I'm flipping tires across a gym five days a week, for an hour at a time. Otherwise, what's the point?

Unknown Speaker 16:17
And on the nutrition side of that, we go straight to Okay, well, I have to go to eating all kinds of plants and eating raw food. And being vegan from a meat and potatoes person who likes cheese sauce on all of it, right? I don't want a piece of broccoli unless it's got cheese or Hollandaise on it. And that's just not realistic. And so it's the very thought about what taking care of our physical body means that stops you from taking care of it. If the thought is I have to get up and do intense exercise for an hour a day, five days a week, and I have to eat a bunch of raw vegetables and blanched nuts. That does not sound like fun.

Unknown Speaker 17:02
So an important thing when we're talking about this physical anchor of wellness, this physical piece of healing our body is what does it mean to us? What do we really believe that health is physical health

Unknown Speaker 17:22
is physical health, merely the absence of disease is physical health, the ability to move your body in a certain way is physical health, all about the way that you eat. I think it has different meanings to different people. It's really interesting. As I'm saying this, I'm reminded of a conversation I had recently with a client of mine. And we were talking about limiting labels. And she was saying how she's limited by this label of sick and thinking of herself as sick, even though now she's a couple years out of treatment. And she has no evidence of disease. Because she didn't know she had cancer going in her until she got the diagnosis. Her thought is, at any given time, something can be inside of me that's not healthy. And I don't know it yet. So that's really fascinating. Now, flip the other on the other side of that coin to me, who I know I have metastatic breast cancer. And I only think of myself as healthy. I never think of myself as a sick person.

Unknown Speaker 18:31
For me, I like to operate from my future version of me. And that future version of me is a woman who has healed from stage four metastatic cancer. So when I wake up every day, I say what does a healthy person do? And I do what a healthy person does, because I am a healthy person in my eyes. So it's so interesting to get that perspective to first understand where you're at now, if you're saying to yourself,

Unknown Speaker 19:01
I don't like the way my physical body is feeling, the way it's moving, the way it's acting, the way it's looking any of those things that you have control over changing, right? It's different if we don't have control over it, if I had my breasts removed, I'm not going to regrow them, right. So that's something we have to process and work through. But if I'm 1015 2040 100 pounds overweight, and I don't move my body on a regular basis, or spend time doing things to take care of it, then you have control over that. But we've got to stop first and see what your thoughts are about that. Now, another common train of thought that I hear is I can't do anything about it because of cancer. Because I'm on these medications. These are the side effects of these medications. And so I'm just stuck here. Now, I want to share a story with you. This reminds me of this story that I

Unknown Speaker 20:00
Just heard, it's kind of it's a little disturbing, because it's about an animal study. And even though we have in science come up with some really fascinating information from animal studies, I do think it's a little upsetting to hear some of these stories. So if you are triggered by scientific animal studies, you might want to fast forward this for a sec, there's a study where a dog was taken and put into this cage. And the floor on the side that the dog was on was given a mild shock. And when the dog felt the shock, he would jump to the other side, where there was no shock. And so this happened several times. And then a barrier was put in that cage in between the two sides, and the dog was shocked. And as he tried to jump, he couldn't get anywhere, you would just hit the wall and still land on the side that they were shocking him. And that happened enough times that when those scientists then came back, and they removed the barrier, they would shock the dog, and the dog wouldn't move.

Unknown Speaker 21:02
The dog was conditioned into helplessness, the dog was conditioned to believe this is just gonna hurt, and there's nothing I can do about it.

Unknown Speaker 21:11
And I think that going through breast cancer and breast cancer treatment, can bring us to that state of condition helplessness, of learned helplessness, because there's no question that when we get a diagnosis, and we go straight into treatment, which is a whirlwind in and of itself, it often feels like a very powerless, very hopeless place. I recall so often thinking, I mean, what is this doing in my body, here's my poor body. And I've got, there's nothing I can do, I'm helpless, like it's getting poisoned, is getting caught is doing all these things, I don't have anything I can do about it. But that really wasn't true. And I learned that with my second diagnosis, and the medications I had to go back on. And I decided, I'm going to think differently about these medications, I'm going to think differently about what they do to my body and how they treat my body. I've talked about this on previous shows, I'm not going to take these medications, with the helpless thought process of what is this going to do to me, I'm going to take these medications, with the belief, this is healing me in it completely shifts. And I gotta tell you, I know women who are on medications, the same ones that I'm on, who really struggle have a hard time with the physical side effects of these. But I decided when I went on these medications, I would think about them differently. And I would continue to move my body and definitely support myself with healthy whole food nutrition. Now, of course, there's times when I've slipped back and forth on that, because again, it's all about seeking balance. And I'm not saying someone's doing something wrong, everybody's bodies are different. And people have different side effects from the same meds depending on their bodies to there's that aspect. What I'm offering is just to check in with yourself and say, Am I doing all the things I can do to support this physical anchor in my life to strengthen it? And am I telling myself, it has to be so much that it's too much, I can't even begin to think about it? Or can I open myself to just day by day, being in the process of understanding what my body needs? Being in the process of saying, how does that make my body feel? Will I make the choice to have that anyway? Or will I make the choice to do something else, because it's always your choice. It's always a choice, what we choose to put in our body no matter what it is. So we have to decide what we're thinking about it. It's always a choice, whether we want to move our body or sit still. And the stories we tell ourselves about why we can or why we can't. So I would encourage you to look first at what health means to you what physical health means to you, and how you view physical health and then to explore what does physical wellness mean to you? What does that look like to you? What are you telling yourself? It has to be to be physically fit? What are you telling yourself you have to eat? How are you telling yourself you have to move? And are those stories you're telling yourself in and of themselves blocking you from doing what you say you want to do to support your health and healing. It's such a fascinating anchor to go into because there's so so so many thoughts around it and then we're bombarded with information constantly about what we should be doing for ourselves physically. And so it can easily feel overwhelming and leave us sitting saying I'm in pain. I am tired all the time. I

Unknown Speaker 25:00
I can't do anything about it. Because we've been conditioned, these things will do this to us. And we are now helpless to help ourselves. But I promise you, you're not helpless. And exercise is one of the most important things even when it's challenging, because you got to really get your head into it some time and say, I'm just gonna go for that walk, I'm just gonna go for that swim. It can be gentle, it can be low impact. It can be shorter periods of time, I love riding my spin bike. So now I do 15 minutes at a time, instead of 45 minutes. I also realize I can't do it every day. Because if I do it every day, it hurts my back. So I can do it about three times a week. And I do because I love it. And I gotta tell you, they just started like there are classes you can do when you're on the spin bikes. And they just started this one and it's like a video game on the peloton, you're riding your bike, and you're getting charged up and you're hitting these little, I don't know, neon lights and getting points and scoring. It's kind of like being in a video game. And I absolutely love it. It's really fun makes the time go by fast. But finding ways to enjoy yourself and enjoy your workout, but honor your body at the same time. One of the most important aspects of healing is honoring your body, learning about your body, appreciating and learning to love it. I saw a t shirt the other day a woman was walking around the t shirt. It was all I could do. I wanted to stop her and have a conversation with her. But the the t shirt said, don't judge me You have no idea how hard it is to fight your body every day. It was a fight your body go to war with your body with something like that. And my heart fell for her. Because yeah, that is hard. We were fighting desires, and urges and our body and we're telling ourselves, I'm fighting this body, I'm fighting this body, I'm fighting against everything. It's exhausting, I need a nap. But when we start to look at and see those ideas and change our perspective and say, I'm loving this body, I'm learning about this body. I'm learning what heals this body. I'm learning what helps me feel more energetic. It's not an all or nothing. It's and this next step, and the balance, and I fell off the balance beam and how I'm going to step back onto the balance beam and see what I can do a little bit better. Right? So when we think about the four pillars of breast cancer recovery, I want you to consider this anchor, what are you really telling yourself, about your body and wellness, and about what you have to do to get to where you want to be. And maybe you need to just edit that story a little bit so that it becomes supportive and works with you rather than working against you. Now if you need help with that, you can come and find me the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash life coaching, join the better than before breast cancer life coaching membership, where you can go to my website and schedule a private one on one coaching sessions with me. I love this stuff like I love coaching but I love talking about the physical aspects of healing. I am a health coach in addition to a life coach, I am a Nutrition coach. I have a long list of personal trainer and wellness certifications because this is my jam. I love this stuff. So if you feel like you need some support, some help some help with the way that you think about renewing that physical aspect of yourself thinking about yourself from a physical way. Come and find me and I would love to work with you. I will talk to you again next week and until then from Please be good to yourself. Take care

Unknown Speaker 28:51
in your head. Use courage to the test laid all your doubts

Unknown Speaker 29:00
your mind is clearer than before your heart is full and wanting more your futures