In this episode, I reflect on a deeply meaningful milestone—four years since my stage four breast cancer diagnosis.
It’s an emotional and powerful moment, not just because of the survival but because of the transformation that came with it. I share how, at one point, I thought my life was over, only to decide that I wasn’t ready to give up. That decision changed everything.
I dive into the incredible importance of embracing a metabolic approach to health, not just for cancer management but for overall well-being. You'll hear about my experience on a national panel for Metabolic Health Day, where I had the privilege to speak alongside pioneers in the metabolic health movement. These are the people whose stories once gave me hope, and now I’m paying that hope forward.
This is an episode of hope, empowerment, and love—about changing the way we think about healing and thriving, no matter where you are on your journey. If you're ready to reclaim your power, this one's for you!
Referred to in this episode:
Work with Laura
Podcast Interview with Dr. Thomas Seyfried
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Read the full transcript:
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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 on the insides 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 there. Welcome to episode 381 of better than before breast cancer. Today is a super special day that I'm very excited about today, the day this show comes out, is Friday, October 11, and this day is four years to the date since I received a diagnosis of widespread stage four cancer, and yet, here I am four years later, without widespread stage four cancer, but with just active cancer showing up in one lymph node that I'm working on right now. And I got to tell you, actually, probably if you've had a cancer diagnosis, I don't have to tell you, but I'll say it anyway, that these cancer bursaries, for lack of a better word, are just really meaningful milestones in a life. Right to think that four years ago, I was sitting at a kitchen table and literally thinking, this is the end of my life, and then making a decision to change that thinking and to not only be here, four years later, doing great, progressing, but I've learned so much. And you know, as I sat there four years ago thinking, My God, this was the diagnosis my brother got, and he was dead six months later. This is it for me, and then to be here looking back and saying, Wow, that started me on a journey that ended up with yesterday me sitting on a panel for your national metabolic health day with some of The people that I saw on docuseries like radical remission and other summits and things that I started investigating when I first got this diagnosis, and I looked at these people, and I would would see them, and I think that Person healed from stage four cancer. So can I that Person healed from stage four cancer? So can I and they are the people who gave me hope and inspiration, and yesterday, I had the honor of participating with them on a panel talking to 1000s of people about how to support their bodies and their body's ability to heal. And I say support their bodies, because hopefully a lot of people who have never heard the words you have cancer were on that event, and watching national metabolic health day and learning for themselves that prevention and and focusing on our metabolic health is so critical. But for those of us who have had that diagnosis, it means so much to me to be able to put this show out today and hopefully give hope to people who need it. And I think also something that's really mean, and I don't think I know something else that's very meaningful to me is to change the paradigm we have about a cancer diagnosis, because when we get a cancer diagnosis, it's very scary, regardless of what stage it is. Then when you hear stage four cancer, that's something that people dread, right? There's a lot of dread when it comes to that diagnosis. Even if you've had a diagnosis before and you're worried about a recurrence, when it comes to hearing stage four, there's a lot of fear, and I think that also in the standard of care world, that's a very fear based diagnosis. You know, I'm very fortunate that in the standard of care world, I found an oncologist who is extremely supportive, and I definitely credit in a great part of me being here today, half of it is my focus on my terrain and improving my metabolic health, and being very focused on the modalities that could support me, and half of it is the excellent treatment I've gotten through standard of care and the great care and the wonderful doctors like I hope that the message of Integrated Wellness can grow and grow and grow like we're hearing so much more about it, especially with Callie means and her book good energy, Naisha winters and her training now of all kinds of standard of care and naturopathic practitioners learning the metabolic approach to cancer. This one of my wonderful clients shared a podcast link with. Me this week, and I'm sharing it here in the show notes of this episode as well of Dr Thomas Seyfried, who's an incredible catalyst and a pioneer in metabolic in the metabolic approach to cancer, but in looking at cancer as a metabolic disease, and this podcast he was on just it makes my heart glow because of the knowledge that we're putting out there so that people who are getting these diagnoses can understand that they do have power, that there is a role they can play in supporting their own health and healing, and that that changes the paradigm, that we don't have to start thinking that or keep thinking that I have to choose this way or that way, but that we understand that all the tools in all the toolboxes can work well together, and you get to always make your own personal choice on what is best for you. But I think that I hope with my story and the stories of others that I hear being shared out there that other people can manifest hope in their ability to create the lives they want, in their power to influence that life. And I've got to share a story with you. The story might be a little triggering for some, so there's just a warning, but because I talk about cancer being so fear based which it is, it totally is right. People hear the word cancer. It's scary. It's got a terrible reputation. They don't hear cancer, and some do. Some hear cancer and say, Oh, you can try this and you can try that. But even when that's offered, oftentimes people are very fearful of trying things that are outside of the box of standard of care. And I understand that, because the messaging isn't clear, and there's just too many voices competing for attention. I think, I think that there's between standard of care and integrative medicine. People are very rooted in their own beliefs, and changing that paradigm to open both sides to thinking more about fully integrating everything to support people wherever they need. It is so important, and I want to share a story with you about something that happened to me here recently. It didn't happen to me, something that happened around me. So there was a man that I know, he was a mutual acquaintance, and his mom had passed away from cancer when he was young. So he's triggered by this, right? He's got he's traumatized by his experience, understandably, and when he heard that I had a diagnosis, every time he saw me after that, my nose only from kindness of his heart was, oh, how are you right? The sadness when you first heard about it, it was shaking and said, Oh, God, no, stage four, Oh, I'm so sorry, right? As if I already had one foot in the grave, and I would always respond with, I got this, like, you don't have to be sorry. I don't want pity. I don't want sympathy, right? I want people's good thoughts flowing to me and just ask me how my healing is going. And this is the thought process that not a lot of people are familiar with or used to or know how to respond to, but it's an interesting thing when we get a cancer diagnosis, how people think we're next in line to the pearly gates, right? And I don't think that way. And just this week, that gentleman who I shared the story with you, who's about 10 years younger than me, unexpectedly passed away.
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And he passed away from metabolic health conditions, right from reversible things that were happening in his body that were all a result of lifestyle choices. And I think it's fascinating that we look around us in this world today and we see so many metabolically broken people, so many people with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, a high blood sugar, metabolic syndrome, obesity, and we don't look at them and think that's scary. Your life is on the line, your health is being threatened. And we look at someone who's had a diagnosis of cancer, and we do think that. And there's many people that I work with, there are many people that I work with or talk to who share their labs with me, and they've never had a cancer diagnosis. And hands down, I am metabolically healthier than those people, right? And so that's why I think that this shift to magnifying the message of metabolic health, of spreading the message of hope, to just kind of quell some of the fear, and not to say the cancer isn't serious, and not to say that we don't need to address it with some urgency. That's not at all what I'm saying. But I'm saying that there are other things also that if we could focus on, maybe we'd hear a lot fewer cancer diagnoses, and that's why I'm so passionate. About what we did yesterday with metabolic health day. And I'm so passionate about sharing this information and working with people on understanding their own specific bodies, because I think just like we all have a choice of what kind of treatment is going to work for us, right? We get a diagnosis of cancer, and you're faced with a lot of choices, and you have to decide what of those choices work best for you, what you feel most comfortable with, what you believe the most in, what you feel the most secure about. This is the same with understanding your very unique body, right? Your body is unique. You don't need to be confused about all the things people are offering to you you can understand the actual needs of your body and then take steps to tune in more to that and understand it and also to respond to it and let your body be your guide to optimal wellness. So as I stand here today, four years after this diagnosis, and as I have in my mind, it's interesting, because just this morning, I was writing out my future version of my life. I think it's very important for us to be future focused and very intentional about what we want to create. I think that's an important part of healing as well. So I spent some time this morning looking at what my life is going to be when I'm 65 because I'm 60 now, and I look at 65 and I write out where I want to be and what I want to be doing. And I truly believe that it is that focus every day, that future vision of the life I'm creating that supports my ability to love myself enough to make healthier choices every single day that's leading up to that right because if I want to be the person who's standing on a TED Talk stage by the age of 65 then I better make the right choices today to help me get there. I think that has been a huge part of my transformation in the way that I support my healing from the belief so many people have and will often say to me, like, you're so disciplined. My mom said this to me the other day, which was actually kind of cool. She said, You know, she has some health choices that she has to make. And she says, You know, it's hard, but I say to myself, You know what, Laura is doing this, and if Laura could do this, I could probably do this too. Wow. I did not expect to hear that from my mom, and even though that means a lot to me, I don't think of myself as disciplined. I think of myself as someone who's in love with life and someone who's looking forward to creating a lot more life ahead for me that helps me to change my mindset when it comes to making tough choices and managing cancer for years, on end by lifestyle decisions, dietary decisions, supplement decisions, treatment decisions. Takes a lot of work and a lot of energy. And some days it's really hard. In some days I check out. Sometimes I check out for a week. Sometimes I check out for two weeks, but then I circled back right, and I circled back because I've given my brain enough time and enough space to say, like, Okay, I have the energy to focus back on this now. And so I even think that sometimes taking those breaks is an act of self love. You know, when everything just becomes a lot, it becomes too much, and you find it affecting your mood or your mentality. I think it's important to take a break. So I look at my journey not as one of discipline, but one of work, and work that I do for something I love. I guess we would call it a labor of love. So when I'm making dietary choices and my husband is having a delicious burrito with homemade tortilla from this fantastic Mexican restaurant by us, and I get everything in a bowl without the flour tortilla, I could look at it and say like, oh, there's such a bummer. I miss the flower tortilla. And sometimes I do, sometimes I do think that. And I say that I know how I'll feel, and I know that this is supporting my healing. And I'll tell you something that often happens when I go to bed at night and I'll lay there, and I like to think about what I like to dream about. For me, I think the last few impressions of things that happen in the evening. I'm a vivid dreamer, and a lot of times those seep into my head. So I have a practice of when I lay down, I think about what I want to create in my life, and I think about the good things that I have in my life before I go to sleep. And I'll often lay there and I'll think, Gosh, it feels so good to feel a healthy body going to bed. It feels so good not to feel alcohol in me when I go to sleep, right? Because I don't like the feeling of alcohol when I'm trying to go to sleep. I don't like the over the feeling of being overtired the next morning when I get up to work out. And so I'll often just kind of go through this checkbox of all the good things I did for myself and how they lead me to feeling well. Well in that moment, and that's how I just kind of back up that practice of self love and self compassion and motivation to keep making what are often challenging choices to make, right because of the society we live in, the culture we live in, in the way we've been trained to think, you know, the podcast that I mentioned a minute ago, that I'll link to here with Dr Thomas C freed, he says something in that podcast that I love. He says a lot of things in that podcast that I love, but one of the things that he says is he was down at the San Diego Zoo here in California, and he asked one of the zookeepers, so do you feed these? I think it was monkeys he was referring to. But whatever animal it was, do you feed them pizza, donuts, fast food? And the people were like, No, that would be animal abuse. I mean, their systems aren't built for that. That's not good. We feed them food that they need to be healthy. His response was like, that's what we need to be doing as human beings too. We're feeding our body food that our systems were not created to use properly, and it's making us sick. And so when I think about the metabolic approach to health, I think about how far I've come in these last four years, how much I've learned, and really how I'm living my best life now, and how cancer and that diagnosis was a catalyst in creating that for me. And I do think about what I'm putting into my body as this is what my system was made for. And when I look at processed foods and high sugar foods and things that I know don't work well for me, then I look at those and I just think that will make me sick. So for me, that's not discipline, that's self love, and it's honesty too, right? It's not looking at something and like putting a negative bias on it. It's actually true that food eaten consistently over long periods of time would make me sick. And so that's why I make a choice not to not to say I never have a bowl of pasta, not to say I never have an old fashioned or a glass of wine, but it's not a consistent part of my lifestyle, and I don't look at that as a reflection of discipline, but a passion for healing and living a life that I love. So here I am, four years after stage four diagnosis,
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celebrating life, this podcast hopefully sharing that message of hope and tools of empowerment with the 1000s of people who download this podcast, getting to be on the metabolic health day panel Yesterday, and just really getting that message out in the happiest and most joyful way of helping people understand that you can take charge of your health now. You can change the direction of your health, wherever you're at, and you can do it from a place of joy and love for yourself. You can enjoy it. It can be fun. It doesn't have to be discipline and deprivation. So out of all the messages that I could give you today and all the things I've learned over the last four years and done and traveled to and seen, the one thing that's most important to me that I would share with you is that we have so many options and so much power and so much space for hope, and taking these steps and taking a metabolic approach to your life, I think, is the foundation of that. So really, in this month of breast cancer awareness, in this month of metabolic health, in this month of me celebrating another year of life. You know, it's an interesting thing, because I really look forward to getting older now, right? Getting 60 is a treat. Becoming 61 is a treat. I look forward to every single year that I get to celebrate another birthday, and every day I'm going to do something to support my health so that I can do whatever is within my power to make sure that I get there, and that sounds good to you, and you want to dig in more. You want to learn more about yourself, your needs, your body's requirements. Come and find me at the breast cancer recovery coach.com Come and check out my metabolic health coaching programs, or join my better than before breast cancer membership and get the guidance and the support and the care that you need and deserve. All right. So thank you for being here and being part of the celebration of another year of life, and I'll talk to you again next week. Take care.
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