Why is change so hard?

Maybe it's because we resist and judge it rather than embrace change with curiosity, honesty, and patience while being kind to ourselves along the way.

In this week’s episode, we’ll explore different approaches like tracking progress and seeking support, to help you create meaningful and lasting lifestyle changes.

Some of the key factors in creating change are self-awareness, honesty, and self-reflection so we can clearly see and understand our own actions or the lack of them.

Listen now to hear more about:

• The significance of being honest without judgment and how to approach change with curiosity and explore the gap between what we think we're doing and what we're actually doing.
• Questioning the duration of consistent efforts…how long is "long enough" to see results?
• Creating time for yourself to track and evaluate factual information and gain a deeper understanding of your actions.
• Embracing curiosity and flexibility: the importance of making adjustments, exploring different methods, and giving yourself grace as you navigate the journey of lifestyle changes after breast cancer.

Referred to in this episode: 

Better Than Before Breast Cancer Life Coaching Membership 

Read the full transcript below:

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. Hello, hello, welcome to episode 240 of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I am Laura Lummer. And I'm excited to tell you something really cool. I think it's really cool. That's coming up starting next week. So beginning next week, you're gonna get double the dose of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. And I'm going to tell you all about it next week. But here's a little teaser, a little sneak peek, you are now going to be getting in addition to the Friday episodes, a Tuesday episode. And on Tuesdays, I'm going to be focusing specifically on what I'm calling Tuesday terrain talks, which means I'm going to be talking about the things well, I mean, I talk about this most of the time anyway, the way but I really approach it in my Friday episodes from the way that we think and how we can reframe things in life so that we can incorporate things that are supporting our health, and that we can let go of things that are kind of old conditioned thought patterns. And it kind of translates into Tuesday train talks, because a lot of the things that we do to our body for our body put on our body allow around our body, also sometimes could use some reframing, but they also have some really tactical pieces that I think we can dig deeper into and get a better understanding of now I was inspired to add these additional episodes from my studies and my training with Nisha winters, I just am blown away by how many wonderful things that I've learned from her. And I'm excited actually today as I'm recording this, I got yet another CT scan result, and everything is showing stable. And what is this two and a half years now since my diagnosis of very advanced metastatic breast cancer. And in fact, the state of cancer in my body today is much less than it was when I was originally diagnosed in 2020. And, of course that makes me happy. And of course, I credit that to both my standard of care treatment and the lifestyle changes and adaptations that I've made. But I just think it's an awesome thing to dig deeper into. And I want to help all of you get an understanding of this Metabolic approach to support your body this understanding of how the body itself is the train. And if we're not putting our mind into taking this medicine to stop a recurrence or taking this medicine to prevent a recurrence or taking this medicine to kill a cancer cell. But we're putting our thoughts into what lifestyle changes can you make that support your healthy cells in your immune system in becoming even healthier, that support your gut in becoming even healthier and functioning the way that it was, by nature intended to function. So that's what I'm going to dig into on the Tuesday episodes. And the first episode is an introductory one. It'll come out next Tuesday, and dig even deeper into why and what to expect. But I'm really looking forward to the show. So excited to give you that update. May is the perfect month for new things. So let's move into this. I am actually a couple of days ago, I just returned from an amazing road trip that I took with my daughter. She and I drove from California to Colorado to Grand Junction, Colorado, where we stayed with my son Brandon and my younger son, Connor, who lives in in Aspen, lots of first second, who lives in Aspen came down and spent the weekend with us as well. So I was able to have three of my four babies together. In Colorado. The weather was absolutely spectacular. The road trip was fun, everything was amazing. And in California, anytime you go somewhere, you kind of want to plan it around traffic. You know traffic is always a factor no matter where we consider going here. So one of the beautiful things about it was the timing that we left for the road trip and that we came back we were able to make this multiple state trip with no traffic there was one spot on the way there with that had an accident but that was made the roadtrip even more amazing to be able to go and not have to sit in traffic and just get to drive and experience the spectacular spectacular landscape driving through Utah. That border where Utah comes up to Grand Junction Grand Junction is just on the other side of Colorado. On the far let's see what to read West like the southwest side of Colorado. So you go over the border of Utah and my god is it She's just gorgeous, I don't even know what you call those features and rock structures with all the striations and the colors. But if you ever get a chance to go, I would highly suggest is just so it's quite a bit outside of Zion National Park. And then as you get into Grand Junction, Colorado, there's a place called the grant the Colorado monument, that we went up with a hike on. And if you go to my Facebook page, Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach, I posted some pictures of the kids and I were in that canyon. Just stunning. So anyway, okay, enough about my vacation. But what happened during this trip, of course, as a 12, almost 13 hour trip, my daughter and I had a lot of opportunity to talk. She just recently a couple weeks ago, graduated with her degree in holistic nutrition. And she's very interested in going into coaching. So we got to really dig deep into stuff we're both passionate about. And one of the things that we talked about was the difficulty people have been making lifestyle changes, including us, including her and I and the challenges that we come upon and the challenges we see with people close to us. Or even sometimes the challenges we see in the people near and dear to us, who themselves are struggling to even see with awareness and clarity, what they're doing and not doing to support their health. And that's really what I want to touch on here today. I want to touch on that piece of us being honest with ourselves, when it comes to what we're doing to support ourselves. Because I think this is just key in my groups in my better than before breast cancer membership, my Empower membership. And in all my courses. There's a focus on awareness. Becoming aware and allowing yourself to be aware of what you're really doing, and what you're really not doing. And being very honest with yourself about it. Then working on those thoughts and being able to be honest with yourself without judging yourself and condemning yourself and feeling guilty and all of that crap that goes with it, this is probably the most important step to change. So let me give you real life example. Think about someone bring up whatever kind of lifestyle change it might be, whether it is a supplement to help you sleep better, or an exercise routine for whatever reason, or a way of eating or even a strategy of eating. Oftentimes people will say, there's two, usually of the most popular complaints that I hear when it comes to making lifestyle changes. And that is I don't have time, and it's too expensive. So when we talk about not having time, is that really true. And so somebody may give you a technique and say, Okay, here's the strategy, I used to be able to get my healthy meals that I desire into my life with within the timeframe that I have, right without putting too much of a time crunch on myself. And oftentimes people say I tried that, you know, I tried that that didn't work for me. So this right here, this little tiny place of awareness is so important, because my question for all of us. And I say all of us, including me, because I asked myself this very important question all the time.
How long is long enough? All right, when do we do something to the point that we call it consistent? Versus when do we try something, give it a week, two weeks, maybe a month and say I didn't notice anything, and just let it fall by the wayside. And then anytime that topic comes up in the future, I tried it, it didn't work. So let me give you another example. One of the super important factors in making lifestyle changes for yourself, is to create time. And by creating time, I mean, to literally go through a process where you become more aware of where you are spending your time investing your time, making choices with your time and what you're doing with that time. And with those choices. This is critical. And I'll tell you as much as we don't like to track and I am in that group, I've switched sides of the fences now. But for a long, long time, anything with tracking was just there. I just didn't do it. I just wasn't consistent with it. I just didn't keep up with it. And I really had to change my frame of mind around what it meant to go through what I called the pain in the ass to track everything. What did it really mean? What was the significance of it? And when I changed my mindset to look at the value that that data could give me and what it gave me was facts. Because what my mind likes to give me is stories. So anytime we're doing something, we've got this story, I tried it there's not that Not much time, I can't do it, it didn't work. But when we have the data, then we look at it and we say, Oh, well, I guess I didn't really stick to it. Right. I'll give you the example of going into therapeutic ketosis, which is a part of the therapy that I now do. And in the beginning, in the fierce first few weeks of tracking, it was a little bit frustrating to look at and say, Why am I not in ketosis yet, but I tracked everything. And when I worked with my nutritionist, she looked at it and she says, Well, you're gonna have to cut that half a cup of blueberries to a quarter cup of blueberries. And I think, are you kidding me, but she knew what she was talking about. Right? She had a lot of experience in this. And it was moving my body to a point of metabolic flexibility. That was critical here. So I had to make whatever even the smallest, most miniscule tweaks does that mean, I had to eat only a quarter cup of blueberries for the rest of my life knows, if your brain already went there, come back to me. That's not what it means. And then for me to accomplish the goal for where my body was at it at that time, in that moment, for me to move into the metabolic state I wanted to be and I had to make tweaks and adjustments and be really careful with them, in order to get to my goal, which worked, right, and then I could play with it along the way. But before when I've tried to get in ketosis before I committed to doing that tracking my mind how to Story. Story was I'm doing everything right. And yet, I kind of in my head thought, Well, I'm eating enough fat I had, you know, an avocado today. And I had this tablespoon of of avocado oil. And in my mind, telling myself, that was enough. But then once I started tracking, I could look and see oh, that no wonder why I'm not moving into therapeutic ketosis. I'm not eating nearly enough fat, I still had a lot of fear of including, even though they were very healthy fats of including more of them into my diet. So when we tell ourselves a story, and we go with the story, we just think about it. Most oftentimes, I'm sorry to tell you that story is wrong. When we tell ourselves that we exercised five days last week, and we did it for 30 minutes a day. But then we look at the Fitbit data, and the Fitbit data says, Well, you missed two days. And then on the third day, you actually only got in 15 minutes. And then you go, Oh, I thought it was more than that. Right? So why is it so hard for us to make healthy lifestyle style changes? A lot of times, it's because we think we've done it, yet, we haven't seen the results from it. But we haven't taken the time. And we don't have or have developed the self awareness to see that we actually didn't do it, then we actually didn't stick to it. So let me come back to I kind of went off off the rails there because I was talking about creating time. So there is a process, I was trained in this process in the Life Coach School. It's called Monday, hour one, when I first heard it, I thought, Oh my God, that sounds absolutely horrible. I don't want to plan every moment of my day. And then I realized that the philosophy behind Monday hour one was to have more time for me. Then I started doing it. And I was frustrated as hell because the plan I had every week just kind of fell apart. And then I just kept with it and kept with it and kept with it and found a flow and found a routine and found a way that works for me. And now I think it's flipping magic. And I always incorporate these Monday hour one philosophies and tactics into my coaching into my trainings, and encourage people right off the bat, the very first thing you need to do is look at your thoughts around your time, and then start to create that time for you. So I had spoken with my daughter about this, she was well aware of Monday, our one she and I went through the course together I gave her some tips on it. This is quite a while ago. And as we were talking on our trip, she was telling me all the things that she didn't have time for and I asked her Have you gone back and revisited or tried Monday hour one? And she said I did it for a week and everything I had planned completely fell apart. And I thought this just doesn't work for me. So I love that because that's the way it's supposed to work.
What Yeah, that's the way it's supposed to work. And that's the way almost every thing in life works my friends. What if I told you that the point of money our one that the point of a food tracker, that the point of doing all these things to get more information Trying to make change wasn't to prove to yourself that you're doing it right. What if it was to see for yourself where the gaps are? What if the exploration was? Let me see the truth, aside from what the story is, my head is telling me, let me see what's really happening in my life, which really untruthfully happening. Let me document it. Let me write it down. Let me look at it. And then with curiosity, let me approach and say, Well, no wonder no wonder why didn't get everything done last week, I put so many things on their to do list it would take the normal human being six weeks have been 36 hour days, and doing nothing but the To Do lists. It's impossible to get to all of it. No wonder I never have time for myself. Look at everything I put on that calendar. Wow, that's fascinating. I had no idea. I piled that much stuff on myself. When we look at food plans and exercise plans, and the commitments we want to make to spend more time with people we love and go on date nights and make times for dear friends and travel. And then we say, I don't have the time. It didn't work. I tried it before. What if we were just supposed to keep trying? What if we tried it before? But now we can sit and look and say well, I did try that. But let me look at how I actually did it? Let me look at what I did. And maybe I look at what I did. And I say, Oh, I was spot on. i dotted every I crossed every T and nothing worked. Awesome. Now you know where to make tweaks? Now, you know, maybe that was too hard. Maybe that was too much. Maybe that was too intense. Maybe that's just not what you needed in your life at that time. How can you tweak it? What if we just allowed ourselves the grace and the space to keep exploring, instead of just stopping? Instead of just stopping to try to incorporate healthier lifestyle plans? Instead of not exercising at all? Instead of having zero date nights, instead of having zero me time? What if we just kept trying and said Well, that was a little too much. I know I've gone through things, especially when I really started digging into the Monday our one philosophies that I went through times where I was like, Oh, it is playtime. It is game on my commitment is to see my friends, this many friends this many times a month and to go out to dinner this many times with my husband and to visit my mom and well, yeah. And that was fun. But I didn't get any work done. So then I stressed myself out says oh, well, I didn't get any work done doing this. So I can't just throw out the idea that I want to spend more time with friends and be more connected. I have to go back and say, Okay, I was little out of flow here. Let me look at how I can do this differently. Let me look maybe as much as I want to do this way with everybody isn't going to quite work with what I really actually want to get done for work to which I love and enjoy. And so we're constantly going back and tweaking things. Life is this long journey, this wonderful process. And if there's anything in your life that you're just not loving, that you're not super happy with, if you don't love the way your body feels because you don't think it's physically fit enough or that it's not nourished in the right way. Isn't it great to just explore it. What if you just say, let me just see how this might work without saying I will do this for this long. And if I don't lose this much weight, forget it. I'll just go back to the old way. You know, I'll do this for this long. But if I get too sore when I tried that, forget it. I'm not going to work out at all because I don't like being sore. Right? Instead of trying something else, giving yourself a chance getting out there and just exploring, because that is our biggest downfall. We put these unrealistic expectations on ourselves. And then we don't plan for setbacks, which will 100% of the time happen. We don't see things coming in life that we should see because we know life gets in the way. And we should plan on it. And say for instance, when I went on this road trip to Colorado, did I know that it was going to be much more challenging to stay on a ketogenic diet and measure everything when I was on this road trip? Of course, I knew that. And so did I give myself grace? Yes. Did I still use my food tracker to put in what I was eating so I can stay? You know, I made that I could get as close of a guest as possible. Yes. And did I on our fancy night out with all the kids say in I'm having a glass of wine that night? Yes, I did. All right. So we get to explore things and then did I say oh, my glass of wine did to my blood sugar. Yes, I did. It was okay. It was fine. And then the next Stay, let me get back on track. Right? So we've got to learn to be in the flow of life and not so black and white label oriented, and give ourselves that space to just not make something happen, but see how something works? How will this work for me? How do I make this work for me? And a big red flag is if you hear yourself say, I tried that before it didn't work. Because most often, more often than not, if you hear yourself say, I tried that before, it didn't work. There's a huge missing piece there. How did you try it? How long did you try it? What does make it work mean? What was your expectation? How long should you have tried it in order to get closer to that expectation? You know, something like, ask about and I hear asked when I listened to summits or doctor speak about the metabolic approach to cancer. And people will say, Well, how long? Should I expect to do this before I see some significant change? And more often than not, I hear the answer. Two years. Two years, my friends, are you willing to stick with something for two years thing micro changes, but not necessarily hitting your goal? Are you willing to say, I will do that for two years? Trusting that it's going to take at least that long? For me to start seeing some significant change? Most of the time, we do it for like a week, right? I'll do it for a week. I didn't notice anything. I didn't feel any better. Oh, you know what? I took that vitamin for, like, I don't know, at least 10 days, I didn't notice anything. So are we giving ourselves a chance? Are we actually taking the steps that we need to take? Noticing when we don't take the steps? And being super honest with ourselves about it? I didn't take that step properly. I didn't do that every day. Things did fall through the cracks. I could do it better. And just kind of laugh it off. Right? take it in stride. I'm only human. I don't get things right. 100% of the time. Sometimes on a road trip. I wanted Chick fil A biscuit. What are you gonna do? It's life, right? So we had to give ourselves a chance, Grace, leeway opportunities, and most of all, curiosity. We've got to stick with that curiosity. This week, I didn't feel any better. This week, my gut didn't get any healthier. My elimination habits didn't work. Let me take a look at this week. Could I have done something better? Now seems like I stuck to the plan. Pretty good. Okay, maybe it hasn't been long enough. Let me stick to it longer. How much? Are you willing to stick to the plan? How long is consistent? When is the consistent? And these are really important questions, you have to ask yourself, like, what does that mean? To me, I have a client who made a decision to do a specific treatment. And it was a very difficult decision to make. And as we coached on what her thoughts were on committing to this treatment, it seemed like a lot, because and I've heard this many, many times from many clients. I don't know that I can handle that for the rest of my life. And so what if we don't say you have to do something for the rest of your life. But what if we say, Well, I think it's important to commit to it for six months, or for three months, right for a long enough time that we could expect to see a change. But also short enough time that your brain can handle it without going complete tilt, right and telling you throw everything out, get rid of this, like don't do this, this is too much. So when it comes to making healthy lifestyle changes, in food, in exercise, in relationships, in your workspace, in your business, in reducing your stress levels.
I don't think my husband listens to my podcast, but I often use him as an example because he's so in his mind all the time, right? He's just, he thinks and thinks and thinks and things and thinks which is so great on so many levels, but not great when it comes to going to bed and being able to sleep and stay asleep. And I will often say and offer breathwork and breath exercises. And from him and from also other clients who tend to have this very vata mind lots of movement in their mind. I'll offer these exercise or relaxation techniques, and he'll say, Yeah, I tried that it didn't work. You can't just try it three times. Like you have to keep doing this. Now. I tried it, it didn't work. Right. So let's look at how we really support ourselves and how committed we are to supporting ourselves and I think it's important to ask To yourself those important questions. You know, if you're working on a relationship, and you decide, well, I'm going to do these things, I think these things will help make this relationship better. And you do those things. And let's say those things happen over the course of a month, maybe you've decided on three different things you're going to try. And they happen over a course of a month and the relationship doesn't change. Then you say, Well, let me try three different things. Or let me keep doing those things. So the other person this relationship sees I'm committed and consistent with what I'm doing. Or do you just say, and this is the most popular response, I'm sad to say, I tried it, it didn't work. I tried it. And they didn't respond that way. I tried it, and they shut me down. So think about like a slalom, right, it's like, Did you run into the cone? Let's go back. And let's try to go around the cones, let's try to move through this with a little bit of flow, there's going to be a little back and forth, life is not linear. And so we have to give ourselves the opportunity to keep changing, and keep trying, not beating our head against the wall, not doing the same thing for two years with absolutely no change whatsoever. But be able to recognize small changes, even if those changes are only that you have increased awareness that you are making changes. And from those changes, you're learning more about yourself, and what you want to do in your life. And what you don't want to do. Maybe you try some things, you say I just I am really not willing to do that. That's just not something I like. And so we have to give ourselves that space. So my answer my daughter's question, why is it so hard? Mom? Why is it that people just can't decide this feels good for me, this is good for me and just make it happen is we just were too hard on ourselves. Were too black and white with ourselves. Just like we all have bio individuality. Each of our bodies is different, and your body will respond to blueberries different than my body will respond to blueberries is the same with our emotional health and our mental health and wellness and thought patterns too. So can we be flexible in mind, embody in spirit and can we be patient with ourselves? While we're working through and implementing the things we would really like to try to get make our life just that much richer, and that much more fulfilled, and that much better? All right. If you need help with that, you know where to find me, go to the breast cancer recovery coach.com. And work with me, you can join the better than before breast cancer membership where we dig into ideas and thoughts and you learn skills and tools to manage these things in your life. Without beating yourself up all the time. I've also got becoming you program where you really think about what it is that you do want in your life and try to get some clarity on it. 90 days of wellness where you commit for three months to approach yourself with a heart centered, thoughtful approach to your overall wellness. And then coming soon. Once again, I'm opening the doors to the four pillars of breast cancer recovery coaching program and that's a 16 week program that's just absolutely transformational. So we'll have all kinds of ways for you to support yourself and I love supporting you. So go to the breast cancer recovery coach.com and pick something that works for you. Give yourself a chance. All right. I will talk to you next week. When you hear the very first Tuesday Train Talk and I look forward to your feedback on that. I'll talk to you again soon.
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