Did you know that certain natural foods and spices may actually help your body fight cancer—and that the words you speak to yourself every day may be just as powerful?

In this episode of Better Than Before Breast Cancer, we explore both sides of healing: the physical support of anti-inflammatory, antioxidant-rich spices like turmeric (a staple in Ayurvedic medicine and now supported by clinical research), and the emotional impact of how we view and talk about ourselves.

You’ll learn how to begin incorporating healing foods into your daily routine without stress or confusion—and we’ll talk about the importance of shifting self-critical thoughts that undermine your confidence, self-worth, and joy. Because true wellness goes beyond what’s on your plate—it’s rooted in how you see and care for yourself.

This episode is for you if:

• You’re curious about natural ways to support your body during or after breast cancer

• You want to learn how to work healing spices into your meals simply and meaningfully

• You struggle with self-judgment or body image and want to feel more empowered

• You're ready to model self-love and confidence for yourself and other women in your life

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Read the full transcript here: 

0:01
This is Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm a healthy lifestyle coach, a clinical Ayurveda specialist, a personal trainer, and I'm also a breast cancer survivor. In this podcast, we talk about healthy thinking and mindfulness practices, eating well, moving your body for health and longevity. And we'll also hear from other breast cancer survivors who have reengaged with life, and have incredible stories to share. This podcast is your go to resource for getting back to life after breast cancer.

0:38
Hey, I'm Laura Lummer, and you are listening to Episode 21 of the breast cancer recovery coach. Today we're going to talk about self compassion, loving yourself in order to support your health. But before we get started and get into that, first off, I want to thank everyone for listening and downloading this podcast. And thank you for subscribing. And if you enjoy this podcast, and you have the opportunity to go to the iTunes Store, and leave me a positive review, or subscribe to the podcast, please take the time to do that. Because the more subscriptions we get, and the more reviews, the easier it will be for other breast cancer survivors who need to hear this show to find it. So thanks for all of your support, I really, really appreciate it. Now before we get into talking a little bit about self compassion, and how that impacts us, I want to talk about a little cancer prevention health tip. So we often hear about different foods or super foods or supplements that help to prevent cancer. In fact, we hear so much about them that it can be completely overwhelming to figure out how to incorporate the elements into our diet, which often results in people taking no action at all because of the lack of clarity or because they don't really understand what the benefit is of this product or how it works. So I want to address a highly recommended spice for cancer prevention. And this spice is recommended in both Western science and in Ayurveda. And you probably heard a lot about it recently, because more and more Western studies are confirming the benefits that are your VEDA has known about for centuries. So this spice is turmeric. And if you're not familiar with tumeric, it's the spice that gives curry that beautiful golden color. Tumeric is a culinary staple in India. And your VEDA views the medicinal effects of cooking with spices like tumeric, in the same way that we would say in the West, let thy food be thy medicine, you use the spices and understand the healing properties that they have. And then you just incorporate them into your daily routine. So the most studied and talked about element in Tumeric is curcumin, which is also where Tumeric gets its beautiful golden color. I'll post some links to some informative studies in this episode's show notes page so that you can look more into it and discuss the safe use of Tumeric with your physician, especially if you're currently in chemotherapy treatment. Because even though it's a spice, it's regularly consumed, it's super, super safe, of course to eat, you probably eat it all the time and have throughout your life. But there have been some studies that show that Tumeric may block some of the effects of chemotherapy, especially breast cancer chemotherapy. So before you're if you're in treatment, and you add anything that's not already normally in your diet, you also always definitely want to check in with that. But I want to touch on a few properties that make this spice so worth adding into your diet. In both Iveta and Western studies. Tumeric is a powerful anti inflammatory and antioxidant. In animal studies, tumeric has been shown to protect animal kidneys from toxins, and in lab tests. It's also slowed the replication of tumor cells. In our event A Tumeric is also viewed as a strong natural antibiotic and vulnerary which means that it supports the healing of wounds. It improves digestion and metabolism and it's said to be good for all tissues in the body. Tumeric can easily be added to rice dishes sauces porridge is egg dishes, and you can stir it into warm milk. And you can actually buy pre made golden milk powders now pretty much anywhere. And those can be mixed into hot or cold milks and doesn't have to be animal milk it can be nut based milks. golden milk is a combination of tumeric and a few other spices usually ashwagandha which is an incredible restorative or cardamom, which has its own healing properties and is this lovely sweet kind of floral flavor, some type of natural sweeteners, sometimes palm sugar, and it also has a touch of black pepper because Tumeric is more easily absorbed in the body when it's used when it's taken with black pepper.

5:00
If you want to read a little more about golden milk actually wrote a blog about it some time ago. And you can find that on my website under blogs. You can also find both tumeric and curcumin capsules sold online, or in pretty much any supplement aisle even I think in your grocery store or regular drugstore at this point. So check out as much information on Tumeric as you need to be sure that it's safe for you to consume if you're not already using it in your cooking. Okay, that's today's health tip. So let's move on to talking about self compassion. Though I was inspired to do a show on this topic after having a conversation a couple of weeks ago with one of my sister's neighbors. This is a lady who is 87 years old, and she was reminiscing about a song she liked when she was young. The song was performed by Doris Day, I don't remember what song it was now, oddly enough. And as she told me about the song, she remembered how beautiful Doris Day was. And she was also remembering how beautiful she was at that time in her life. And then she said to me, had I known that I would look like this at this age, I would have chosen to die young.

6:08
Well, at first I thought she was joking, because you know so many of us joke about how our bodies change as we get older, and the different things we experience are surprises. But when she went on to talk about how she felt about her appearance, now I realized that she wasn't joking at all.

6:25
I thought about this a lot after talking with her. And it really got me thinking about my own perception of myself. And the things that I hear from

6:35
other women that I work with, or our friends of mine, how much judgment we place on ourselves because of our physical attributes. And let me just say that it's a lot of judgment, a lot of heavy judgment, based on how we look how we compare ourselves to how we used to look how we think we're supposed to look. So I remember sitting with a friend of mine, and she was having chemotherapy treatment for a recurrence of breast cancer. In her first bout of breast cancer, she had undergone a bilateral mastectomy. And because of some really serious complications from her surgeries and her treatment, she was no longer a candidate for reconstruction. And as we sat there looking through Instagram posts of mastectomy tattoos as she was having her chemotherapy treatment, she told me that she was open to anything because she wasn't at all concerned what someone else might think of her new tattoo. Because no man would ever want her anyway, the way that her breasts look now.

7:33
Now, I'm pretty sure that you could hear my heartbreak out loud at that very moment. And not because no man would ever want her. But because that's what she thought of herself. She was without question, one of the kindest human beings I've ever known. She was smart, she was very successful, she was more forgiving than I can probably ever even comprehend. In my lifetime. She was a wonderful mother, a friend, a sister, and she discounted all of those fantastic attributes that she had, because of a breast. And now I'm not judging her feelings, because I get it. And I've certainly had to come to terms with my own breast reconstruction and other changes in the appearance of my body since having cancer treatment and going into menopause as a result of cancer treatment. So I understand why she had those thoughts and why anyone would have those thoughts. But the important thing is to begin to catch ourselves thinking this way. And then to stop that judgment, and turn it in to treating yourself with the compassion that you deserve.

8:43
And human beings are sexual creatures. And we ladies certainly like to feel good about ourselves and our appearances. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with putting your best foot forward, dressing nicely, et cetera, et cetera. And the problem doesn't come in until we place our value and our sense of self worth on the superficial appearances of our body. So as a personal trainer, I receive an industry journal from the American Council on Exercise. And this month, the Journal had an article about body image and how fitness professionals create and respond to the expectation that they should learn to look a certain way. So there was one particular female trainer who was highlighted in this article. And her story really resonated with me as it speaks to the topic of this podcast. This woman was well educated is well educated, and she's an experienced fitness professional. And yet she pulled her online presence offline, because she was so discouraged by people making negative comments about what they perceived as her less than perfect quote unquote physique.

9:50
So on one hand, I can understand why she would do this because who likes being judged and criticized no one? And I also have that personal experience of feeling

10:00
very vulnerable and putting a public image on the internet, and in social media, because you never know what judgments are going to come at you. And for myself and others who do this kind of work, it feels like it's worth the risk of the criticism, to follow our own passions, to be supportive to be educating and empowering others. But it can also be very uncomfortable at times. So back to this article, when I read this, I thought, what a shame, and potentially what a huge loss to someone else who might have identified with this woman because she wasn't again, quote, unquote, perfect.

10:38
What if that person, some other person that would have seen her would have been motivated to become more active, to improve their health, because of being able to relate to her and not feeling like they had to meet some perfect expectation, or maybe feeling like they were more capable of exercising someone who had a similar body type to them, and knowing she could not only work out, but that she was an experienced personal trainer. So who knows how many opportunities were lost because of the judgment of these ignorant individuals. But it's important to remember. And I want to point out here that being fit and being thin, do not always go hand in hand. And I've talked about this on the show before, in fact, the Archives of Internal Medicine published a report in 2008. And they were talking about the results of a study of 5440 adults, this study examined their metabolic fitness in relation to their weight. So basically, they looked at normal people, overweight people, normal weight people, sorry, not normal people, normal weight people, overweight people, and obese people as defined by your BMI, which is nothing but the ratio of your height to your weight. So they were looking at these to see how metabolically healthy these individuals were. So they were looking in their blood for signs of heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, insulin resistance, this type of thing. And what they found was that among us adults, 20 years and older 23 and a half percent of normal weight adults are metabolically abnormal or unhealthy, showing signs of disease. Whereas 51.3% of overweight adults, and 31.7% of obese adults were metabolically healthy, had no signs of disease in their blood. So this led them to the conclusion that, among us, adults, there's a high prevalence of metabolically unhealthy, normal weight individuals. And there's also a high prevalence of overweight, and obese individuals who are metabolically healthy. So don't judge a book by its cover. And don't think that just because somebody's thin, that they're healthy. So you really have to understand that health and bodyweight are two separate things. And I'm not encouraging being overweight or being obese. I'm just encouraging non judgement. I'm encouraging self compassion and self acceptance, at any size, at any age, at any color, ethnicity, and any other category that exists out there. Because if you don't start by loving yourself, by being kind and forgiving to yourself, then how in the world are you going to put in the consistent effort and the hard work that it takes to take care of yourself? I mean, you're not going to do it, think about it, think about things that are really important to you think about something that not only maybe you just might have around the house, that's not pretty much meaningless, or something that you might have around the house that came from your mom, and her mom and her mom before that, and you take such care of this item, because it's, it's important to you, it's meaningful. And if you do not look at yourself with value and importance, you're not going to invest the time and the energy it takes to really be healthy and take care of yourself and to treat yourself well. If you lead an inactive life, if you feel low on energy, you're feeling heavy and uncomfortable just moving around. If you eat too much, if you drink too much, if you said too much, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever you're doing too much of and you don't feel good about yourself because of it. You might turn to disguising that by saying, Oh, well, this is, you know, the one thing that I do treat myself. But that's not actually true. Because it's making you feel bad. And then you're excusing, feeling bad and covering it up by saying you're treating yourself and this is an ugly downward spiral. And until you stop and recognize that you're worth the effort until you accept yourself as you are and you recognize you're pretty cool.

14:55
Why are you going to bother to do something good for yourself?

15:00
So I think that a big issue here is that we, as women need to change our own culture, the culture of our gender. I think that changing this perception of women being valuable if they're beautiful, and have a perfect body begins and ends with us, it starts with women dropping the judgment of other women and of themselves. This is the culture we've created for ourselves, ladies. And we're the ones who have to turn that Titanic ship around.

15:35
So I was looking at some statistics, and the US Census Bureau estimates that more than 38 million people in this country in the United States are female baby boomers. So that means women between the ages of 53 and 71.

15:51
And also, the statistics tell us that 95% of all breast cancers occur in women over 40. So we have a lot of baby booming breast cancer survivors out there. And we are a force to be reckoned with, we may be menopausal. And we may have a little more of us to love and go around, we may be missing a breast or two, we may be sticking our heads into the freezer a little more often than most. And I don't mean to get ice cream, you know what I mean? If you've had to do it, but here we are. And we're beautiful, and we're worthy. And we are not invisible. And we have to set the example be the role models for generations of women who are going to follow us generations of women who are going to help us lead this world. And we all have to accept ourselves and understand that we are way more than a set of boobs.

16:48
And that the question is not will a man ever want me now that my breasts are gone? Or they're shaped weird, or whatever they are that bothers you. But the question is, why would anyone want to be with a partner who valued your worthiness as a human being based on your breast.

17:09
When you love yourself, ladies, when you know, in your heart of hearts, your true value, your individual beauty, you glow with confidence. And Self confidence is one of the most beautiful things ever. Confidence attracts everyone to you. It's wonderful to be around. And it's a feeling that I want each and every one of you to be used to and to be comfortable with. So funny story. As I'm making notes and outlining this podcast. Before I started recording it, I took a break, I went to the movies with my husband. And one of the trailers that we saw was for a movie called I feel pretty, starring Amy Schumer. And basically, she plays the role of a chubby woman who has low self esteem because of her appearance. She's not happy with the way she looks, she's not happy with her weight. And then she has an accident, where she bumps her head. And when she comes to she has a whole new perspective of herself. Suddenly, she thinks she's beautiful and irresistible. And she carries herself just oozing with confidence like she had never had before. And so of course, people begin to perceive her differently. Nothing changed, but her own perception, she started to treat herself with compassion. So of course, I took this as a sign that this was the right topic for me to be talking about today. Because I don't think my husband would have gone to a movie outside of streaming something into the living room in like two years. So I felt like I was meant to see that trailer. So what next? How do you begin practicing self compassion? How do you see yourself for as beautiful as you are and cut yourself some slack without having an accident and getting hit in the head and coming? Becoming conscious as a different human being? So ask yourself, do you treat yourself lovingly? Do you give yourself slack? Do you cut yourself some slack when you mess something up? When you're clumsy? You make a mess? You forgot an important appointment? You ate more carbs than you think you're supposed to? Do you beat yourself up for that? Are you able to laugh at your flaws and accept that they're just a part of you? And I'll share with you. I mean, if we're going to talk about clumsy, I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be on the Olympic clumsy team because I dropped stuff all the time. And especially after having chemo and having some neuropathy in my hands. I can't even tell you but you know what?

19:37
I just know that about me. My husband knows that about me. My kids know that about me. So what are you going to do? That's just how I come use more plastic right? So think about do deprive yourself of the simple pleasures in life like treating yourself to new pair of shoes just because getting a manicure taking a nap scheduling a day of just complete rest

20:00
And do you skip those things because you're concerned, someone else might judge you for being good to yourself. One of the things I love when I hear, somebody will be looking at something they want to do or talking about something they want to experience so badly, or maybe something they want to buy that they can easily afford. And then they follow up that desire with this statement. Maybe I'll do that for myself on my birthday, or put it on the list for Christmas.

20:26
And I think, ladies, do you remember that one day that you had a perfectly normal life? And the next day, you were fighting to save your life? Because I remember, I think about it every day. And I know there's no promise of tomorrow, not for anyone ever. So what are you waiting for? And why would you treat yourself with anything but the most love you could ever even muster?

20:56
So I happen to be a fan of the show survivor. And if you are to then you know, in the early seasons of Survivor, I think they still do some now, but I don't see it very frequently. They used to hold survivor auctions. And you were given a certain amount of money the survivors out there and some of the items were secret, some were not. And you had to decide, are you going to bid on this item, most of the items are food. And these people were literally starving on the show. But so many of them that fascinates me, will not bed, they see the food, they're starving, but they won't bid on the food. They're waiting for something else to come along. And you know what happens to those people.

21:40
They go back to camp hungry.

21:44
Ladies, I don't want you to leave this game hungry. If you're not treating yourselves with compassion, dig into the reasons why. And then cut yourself some slack and allow yourself to create and enjoy the healthy life that you deserve. When you get your head in the game, and you allow your heart to be light, and to have fun, and to love yourself, you're going to be amazed at how much easier it is to treat yourself. Well. If you already know you're a rockstar, and you treat yourself with compassion regularly, I'd love to hear about it. So find me on Facebook at Laura Lummer and post about the things you do to treat yourself with compassion, how you practice self compassion with yourself. And be sure to listen to the March 3 episode of the breast cancer recovery coach because I'm going to be talking with Betty Alterman. She's the founder of pink ribbon plus, and Betty is going to be talking with us about mastectomy bras, breast forms and skin care before, during and after treatment. And what better way to practice self compassion than to treat yourself to beautifully perfectly fitted bra, or a breast form that makes you feel good in anything you put on. And we talked about some pretty cool stuff in that show. So I think you'll really enjoy it. And I think it lends itself and especially with Betty's enthusiasm and her compassion towards survivors. She just wants you to feel good about yourself. And I want you to feel good about yourself. So listen into that show and learn some cool tips for things that are available to you that you may not be aware of, because I certainly wasn't aware of a lot of them before I met Betty. So if you haven't downloaded my free ebook, The six habits of healthy happy breast cancer survivors, please go to my website and download it today. That's on Laura lummer.com. And I want to thank you again so much for listening for giving me your time, which I know is short and valuable. And so I really really appreciate your support. So listen to it on March 3 And until then, be good to yourself and let your lifestyle be your medicine voices in your head. You've put your courage to the test laid all your doubts

24:02
your mind is clearer than before your heart is full and wanting more your futures

24:13
given all you

24:15
know

24:18
you've been waiting on

24:25
this