#387 Letting Go of Perfection After Breast Cancer - How to Embrace Progress in Your Healing

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Are you holding yourself to impossible standards when it comes to your health? Many breast cancer survivors feel the pressure to get everything “just right”—the perfect diet, exercise routine, or lifestyle habits.

But what if that pursuit of perfection is actually holding you back from true healing and peace of mind?

In this episode of Better Than Before Breast Cancer, we’ll explore why the all-or-none mindset can sabotage your efforts to create a sustainable, healthy lifestyle. You’ll learn how perfectionism often leads to burnout, frustration, and feelings of failure—and why consistency, not perfection, is the real key to lasting progress.

I’ll unpack how embracing small, manageable habits can bring a sense of calm and empowerment to your daily life.

Imagine being able to navigate holidays, weekends, and even vacations with a routine that flexes with you rather than breaks under the pressure of rigid expectations.

Whether you’ve struggled with finding balance or feel discouraged by the idea of starting over, this episode will inspire you to shift your mindset. You’ll gain practical strategies to approach health with kindness, self-compassion, and a focus on progress.

From creating “non-negotiables” to resetting quickly after a slip-up, you’ll walk away with actionable steps to simplify your health journey and truly enjoy the process.

If you’re ready to release the guilt of imperfection, reconnect with what feels good, and build a lifestyle that supports your healing without overwhelming, this conversation is for you. Tune in now and take one step closer to embracing the beautiful progress you’re already making.

Don’t miss this opportunity to rethink how you approach your well-being. Your health doesn’t have to be perfect to be powerful—it just has to be yours.

 

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0:00
You're listening to better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach, I'm your host, Laura Lemmer. 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.

0:33
Hello friends. Welcome to episode 387,

0:37
of better than before breast cancer. I'm your host, Laura lummer, and we are coming up on the last What's it? I think even less than 45 days now, like the last 40 some days of the year, holidays. Next week is Thanksgiving, and at this time of the year, we have a tendency for the wheels to come off of of taking care of ourselves when life gets busy, one of the first things that go by the wayside is our own self care, and especially our health. And I often hear from my clients a struggle with this idea of maintaining perfection, and in thinking that they have to maintain perfection, feeling deprived, feeling resentful, feeling fatigued at trying to sustain healthy lifestyle habits. And this can go from health to any other area in the relationship, just showing up for yourself. And I often hear I'm a perfectionist, or I hear I'm all or none person. And I want to say to you today that that just doesn't work. I want to talk to you today about what does work, what hopefully will help support you, not only during the holiday season, but vacations, weekends, special occasions, whatever comes up in life. And I mean, help you in a way not to deprive yourself and stick to the plan 100% of the time, but to be compassionate with yourself, to give yourself a break and to understand some simple basic skills, tips, tricks that will help you to carry through with your healthy lifestyle, practices consistently while indulging and enjoying life. All right, so let's get into this, because it's a very important part of life. One in my belief, happiness heals. We gotta have joy. We've gotta connect to people. We've gotta have fun, and we can't beat ourselves up for it. So I I'm so honored to get to share this time with you. And I want to start off by saying that just by you showing up every week to listen to this podcast, just by you listening and like literally going through the effort of logging on YouTube, to watch it on YouTube, or go into your podcast app to check in that says to me that you're showing up for yourself and that you're taking a simple step to prioritize your health, and I just want you to give yourself credit for that, because it's not a small thing. Every little thing we do is a step towards a healthier lifestyle and towards transformation, and just showing up and doing that consistently

3:27
elevates your awareness. And when we have elevation of our awareness, that is the beginning of change. So we're going to unpack this together, and by the end of this episode, I think you're going to walk away with some actionable steps to make consistency your new bestie. How about that? So let's talk about some real things that happen when you aim for perfection. And what I mean by that is things like, Oh, if I can't eat completely clean, I might as well just go have some french fries every day I miss my workout today, so the whole week is a waste. I can't start working out because I can't work out every day, and it's pointless if I don't do it every day. Okay? This kind of thinking is all or none mindset. It sneaks in when we're trying to make change, because our human brains really don't like change, but especially after something as life changing as a breast cancer diagnosis has happened to us, it's very tempting to think that if I'm not doing everything perfectly, I'm failing. There's a lot of blame that I hear that comes after a breast cancer diagnosis. What did I do? What did I do wrong? And you would think that when we say those kinds of things for ourselves, that would mean that people are motivated to do more. But it isn't because shame never works. So holding yourself to an unachievable standard that results in shame will never get you to a better place in life. Perfection does not exist, and chasing it can actually prevent you from.

5:00
Creating the lasting habits that support your health and your vitality. Now, there's a big difference between chasing perfection and being committed to making yourself better, right? There's a big difference, because one is just like this unachievable standard, what in the world is perfection? Who could define perfection? Maybe someone would tell me that perfection is exercise every day, eat, clean, weigh and measure your macros and all the things that go with that. And someone else would tell me perfection is balance, and someone else would tell me perfection is gentleness and self love, and who knows, right? So, because there isn't a definition, and there isn't a definition because it doesn't exist, it's so much healthier if we come back and just say my goal is to support myself in taking better care every single day, to just getting better at being good to myself. Because not only are you not perfect, you're never going to be and I'm not perfect and I'm never going to be. Life isn't perfect and it's never going to be unexpected. Events will happen. Energy levels will fluctuate, and you need to have routines that can move, that can be flexible, that can change with life, that can fluctuate with the holidays and special occasions, and that they just don't break the moment things aren't perfect. When you set the bar too high, when you aim for perfection, is super easy to feel discouraged and to just give up entirely. This cycle of starting and stopping, you know, like, if I can't do it all, I won't do it at all. So we don't do it at all, then we come back, we say, I've got to do it all. This cycle of starting and stopping and holding yourself to this unrealistic standard is exhausting and it will keep you stuck. You know, they refer to it as yo yo dieting, right? I just kind of call it yo yo health mentality, like we're in it, or we're out of it, and we got to get back to it, or I haven't done it in a long time, but if we just stay consistent, it's a whole different experience. This, idea of perfection, all or none. It drains our joy. It becomes a chore being healthy. It becomes really heavy and burdensome instead of a source of empowerment. And let's be honest, we are always more likely to stick with something that feels good and that's fun, rather than something that feels like punishment. Who likes to be punished, who likes to be disciplined, who likes to be shamed, who likes to feel worthless and who likes to feel like a failure? No one. So we will avoid anything that has the potential of resulting in us feeling that way. So what if we said, what brings me joy? You know, one of the free downloads that you can find on my website is how to eat without fear and guilt after breast cancer, because when it comes to our health after cancer, there's so much fear. What's right, what's safe, what's good, what's bad, so many labels, so many diets, so many choices and so much fear. And so I created that free download so you could come back to knowing you and trusting you and trusting your intuition, and asking yourself, How can this be fun? How can I enjoy this? If I talk to you about the benefits of an intermittent fasting protocol, and your mind goes straight to, oh, my God, I'm going to be hungry. That sounds miserable. You're really not likely to try it out. But if I talk to you and you listen with curiosity, you're like, wow, that would be super cool. That could be fun if I tried it and it cleared up my brain fog. That could be fun if I tried it and I really did feel better and I wasn't bloated and gassy and miserable and tired every time I ate. That could really be interesting. And it could be a fun experiment to see how I could do this and incorporate a new practice, right? If you're going to think one way or the other way, that's the experience you're going to create. And you're not alone in that. Everybody goes through this, right? It's something that we absolutely experience. And I would say unintentionally, our brain just throws this up because it doesn't like change, doesn't like what we perceived as discipline from the past, as hard as missing out. But the good thing is that we can rewire our brain, and we can choose in to think in ways that support anything you want to create in your life and making those things fun. So what is the antidote to perfection? What is the cure for all or nothing mentality? It's consistency. Consistency just means keep showing up. Keep showing up imperfectly, keep showing up. Don't get it right, and then figure out why you didn't get right, and then try one more small step to get it better the next time, consistency is showing up for yourself in small, sustainable ways. That is how you create habits that fit into your real life and not some imaginary perfect life that's unattainable. And the best part is that consistency doesn't require you to.

10:00
Who do things perfectly. It's just us that you do things regularly, and let's talk about why that works. Every time you repeat a healthy behavior, you reinforce it, and then over time, that becomes second nature. And I'm going to offer you some small healthy behaviors that I'm referring to that will help you with that. When we take these small steps and they start to become second nature, they also start to add up. So one glass of water today becomes two glasses tomorrow, a 10 minute walk this weekend becomes a daily habit. And these small wins, build up, build up, build up, and they become really big changes, transformations. They build self trust. And this is a big thing. I see this all the time, and I ask people this often, why don't you trust yourself? Why do we look outside ourselves so often for the answer to what's inside of us? Right? We have questions. We think we need something, we think we need change. Why don't we trust ourselves when we think we need it, why don't we just say, if I think I need it, then I do so when, when you start to commit to small, manageable goals, and you follow through, and you show up for yourself consistently, you prove to yourself that You're capable, and that is super powerful.

11:22
So know that this podcast isn't about getting you to stick to the plan all the way through the holiday season. You can take a deep breath, because the good news is you do not have to overhaul your whole life overnight, and most people couldn't do that anyway. Even if I said you have to do this, if you don't do this, you're in big trouble. Most people would just be in big trouble, as we see all around us in our society today. You just need to start with small, consistent steps, and I'm going to give you some tips on how to do that right now and how to stay consistent with that even when life gets busy. So there are absolutely ways that we can make healthy habits stick in real life, even during holidays, weekends, vacation, or even times when there's just a full calendar and routines feel like they've just gone out the window. So step number one, set some non negotiables for yourself. Okay, non negotiables or small actions that you can stick to no matter where you are. These are your anchors, okay? These are the things that ground you when everything else feels chaotic. Let me give you a couple of examples. You have a habit of drinking a glass of water every morning before your morning coffee. If you have a habit of walking for 10 minutes a day, no matter what, no matter where you are, if you have a habit of eating a vegetable with every single meal, these can be non negotiables. For me, I set the time I'm going to wake up, right? I said the time that I'm going to journal. So every morning I have a manifestation practice, because I'm creating the life of a person who's healed from metastatic breast cancer. So my non negotiable is I get up always at least one hour before my gym time, and that hour is when I do my journaling and I do my visualization and I get myself ready for the day. Okay, so whatever those small things are. So if you're at a place where you're telling yourself, I can't go to a gym or I don't have access to that, that's okay, because your non negotiables should be very simple things that you do no matter where you are. You can do them with no equipment, you can do them with no money, and you can do them anywhere in the world. Okay? So like, first thing I do when I wake up, drink a 1224, ounce glass of water with a squeeze of lemon in. It easy. You can do that anywhere. If you're like, No, somebody's gonna listen this. Go, well, I don't like lemon. Leave the lemon out, but drink the water right. Walk for 10 minutes. I did a study with the University of South Carolina a couple of years ago, and I was a mentor for breast cancer survivors to help them instantly implement a healthy lifestyle routine. And I had two clients who had some issues with walking, whether it was safety in the neighborhood or just their own insecurity about their physical health and feeling leery about being outside by themselves. They did their walks in their house. You can walk in your house. People, you walk in circles. My mom, she walks in her backyard in circles. So you can walk 10 minutes a day no matter where you're at, eating a vegetable with every meal, every single meal. Think about that. If that's your non negotiable, then even if you go out to breakfast, you're like, Well, I want to have the pancakes, but I've committed to myself that I'm gonna have a vegetable with every meal. So I'm gonna have a side of spinach or tomato, and someone's gonna say tomatoes or fruit. So you know what I'm saying, right? Some fresh kind of produce. So even if the rest of your day is unpredictable because of whatever your circumstances are, tiny actions of.

15:00
Non negotiables remind you that you're still prioritizing your health, right? You can do five push ups. You can do 10 sit ups on the floor next to your bed, anywhere you're at so whatever it is, 50 squats, right? You do that in the bathroom and you're brushing your teeth. You can do it anywhere. So think for yourself, what would say? Three false, non negotiables bead for you that you could do anywhere, anytime, for free, to remind yourself that this is a small step that you prioritize because your health is the most important thing. Okay, that's number one. Number two, use the good enough rule, not every day is going to look the same, and that's okay. Maybe you're traveling and you can't do your usual workout. So instead of skipping movement altogether, like I just suggested, do a quick stretch, take a brisk walk. Do something, because something is better than nothing, and that's contrary to what I often hear. If I can't do it all, I can't afford or I can't afford a gym, or I can't afford the time to go to the gym five days a week. And I say, Well, why can't we do three days a week? Who even start off with two most people have two days off in the week. Can you just do your exercise two days? Because two days is better than no days. And then that small step of implementing something consistently for two days, it will eventually become three days. You'll figure it out and just let it happen organically. So good enough is better than nothing at all, and way better than perfect. Because perfect, I think perfect, is kind of like the equivalent to overwhelm, and overwhelm and perfection usually result in the same thing, nothing, shame, guilt, depression, and we can keep going on, none of the good things though. So let's just throw those terms out. Let's just not do that to ourselves. Number three, plan ahead. I am a huge advocate of intentional living. Decide ahead of time what you want your life to look like, what you want your week to look like, what you want your day to look like. Look ahead. And some people will do this. So look at and they say, Well, I'm on vacation for the next week, so everything's out the window. Oh, we look and say, I'm on vacation and I don't want my afternoons to be interrupted with whatever it is, go to the gym or something. So now I'm going to be really intentional and say for this half an hour in the morning, or I'm going to get up a little earlier on vacation and take care of my own personal me time before vacation activities start with other people, right? So instead of just saying my normal routine is changing, therefore my self care and my health is out the window, we look and say my normal routine is changing. So now I've got to be very intentional about how I'm going to support myself. I've got to make sure and bring my water bottle. I've got to make sure and pack some healthy snacks. When I travel, I pack little cans of sardines that are packed in olive oil. I pack baggies of olives. I pack cheese sticks. You can take food on an airplane. You can't take liquids, but you can take food, and that way I know that if I'm in my hotel room and I get hungry or I have a craving for something, then I have some go tos that I know will support my health. So just that act of intentionally packing things that are available to me if everybody else wants to go to a fast food restaurant, which happens right when you're on vacation or out visiting family, especially visiting grandkids, and people say, Oh, they want to go to their favorite chicken nugget place. I don't, right, so it's okay, because I don't have to change the plans for everybody. I know I have some go to food that works for me. Okay? So planning ahead, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Right, wherever you go in the world, there's typically local grocery stores. So planning intentionally. I remember working with this one client, and she was going on a vacation, and she was going to be sharing a big Airbnb with several family members, and it felt uncomfortable to talk about the food situation. So we just had to work through how she could feel confident about saying, I'm going to go to the grocery store because, you know, they had some other ideas of things they might stock up in the house that didn't work for her. So she had a plan of how to go to the grocery store and pick up things that were specific to her needs and let everybody know in a very compassionate way that that food would be hers in the fridge, right? So many things we can do to support ourselves if we're intentional, and it doesn't have to be elaborate, just needs to be little, small things to support your success.

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Fourth tip, focus on fun, joyful habits, healthy choices. Should feel good. If you hate running, Don't run. Don't force it. Try dancing, try yoga. If you love roasted vegetables and you hate.

20:00
Raw vegetables. Don't eat raw vegetables. It's okay. Joyful habits will always be the habits you stick with. I love to propose this question to myself and to my clients, whenever I feel resistance come up to something that I've decided is a good thing for me, or that I've decided I'd like to check out. But resistance comes up, I ask myself, How can I make this fun? Because I know me, if it is not fun, I won't do it. If I won't stick to it, that's for sure. I know people who are I don't know how they do it. They can eat gross things because they know it's good for them, right? They can gag down anything because somebody said it's good for them, and they believe it. That is not me. Okay, if it's gross, it goes down one time, and it'll be lucky if it makes it all the way down, but it's not going down twice. I need to figure out how to enjoy that. I know this for me, and I think this is true for most people. So keep asking yourself, How could this be fun? How could I accomplish this and have fun with it and explore that for yourself. Leave your mind open to it, right? How can this be fun and remember? Well, this is kind of tip number five, practice self compassion. Give yourself grace. So how can this be fun might look like? Well, I'm going to support myself with these foods and make these choices. I'm going to be here for these holidays or these parties, and on those ones, I'm just going to enjoy in treats. I'm going to have whatever is there and looks delicious I'm in because that's part of living a full life, a full, rich, vibrant life. And if we want a life that's better than before breast cancer, if we want to be people who've healed and we want to live the life of healthy, healed people, we have to live into that right. We have to live into that life. We've got to take advice from that person who lives that way, and step into that energy. What matters most is that you come back to the habits that support your health as soon as possible, but it's okay if you deviate from them now and then, maybe eating a piece of the pumpkin pie with whipped cream or whatever it is that you indulge in. Maybe it doesn't align with what you believe to be your healthy lifestyle program, but it does align with you living a joyful life, all right? So you make it a part of your program, right? Progress, not perfection, consistency, not perfection. This is what we're after, Grace, joy, self, compassion, not guilt, shame, discipline. Who needs that? We don't need that, right? So if there's anything I want you to take away from this conversation today, is to remember this is a journey. It will not be perfect. Just keep showing up for yourself. I can relate this also. I think about my health, and I think about my business. I think about all aspects of my life when I talk about this, whenever I try something new, I never know if it's going to work. I never know if it's going to be as successful as in my mind, it is, but I'm open to trying it and then evaluating it. And if it doesn't work, then I try something else, and I just keep showing up. Eventually, when we keep showing up, we figure out how it works. So I have a I have two courses, actually. One is creating time for you, which is all about intentional living, and the other is creating a life you love in 168 hours a week. Because that's all we have 168

23:37
hours a week. It does not sound like a lot of time. Does it? Take out 30% of that time for sleeping, take out 40 hours a week or more for working. What are you left with? Like, 80 hours, right? What are you going to do with those 80 hours? You're going to be intentional, and you're going to keep showing up in that amount of time for yourself. But you can't do that. Those will slip away really quickly if we're not consistent, and if we don't decide, whoa, if I only have really 80 hours of time, that's mine to play with and create in my life. You want to make it fun, right? You want to make it enjoyable. You want to make it intentional. It's so important. So life will throw you curveballs. So it can't be perfect. Consistency will help you navigate challenges, because you'll learn about being flexible, you'll learn about having grace, and you'll learn that you can keep moving forward. That is what allows us to create a healthy lifestyle that supports our healing and not just for a season or here and there or six weeks or right before summer, but for a lifetime. Okay, so as we step in to next week to the holiday season, I encourage you to just think about consistency. Right kick three things that you could do every day, no matter what small things, maybe one that has.

25:00
Do with movement, one that has to do with food and one that has to do with stress management. Right? Five minutes of breath. Work a vegetable with every meal. I'm walking 10 minutes a day, whatever it is, small, non negotiables, right? Take simple, manageable steps, and then that will give you something you can feel good about. Just keep showing up. You are not alone. I'm here. The whole community comes listen this podcast. We're here. Everybody who's ever had a breast cancer diagnosis. We're all going through the same stuff and working and in the process of figuring it out. So cheer yourself on. I'm cheering you on, and I have communities to cheer you on. You can join the free Facebook community, the breast cancer recovery group. You can work with me in my better than before breast cancer life coaching community, amazing women there, and you can come and get one on one support with me as well. You can find all the details for all the programs I offer and my free download how to eat without fear and guilt after breast cancer on my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com.

26:05
All right. I hope you found this episode helpful, and if you did, maybe share it with someone who you think might need to hear it too. And if you haven't already followed the show or subscribed on YouTube, please do it now, right until next week. Take good care of yourself, stay consistent and remember your life is yours to create. Do it one step at a time and have fun with it. I'll talk to you soon.

 

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