As I aired this episode, I was wrapping up my radiation treatment, and it got me thinking about the significance of acknowledging our milestones and triumphs, big or small. 

But here's a thought: Why do we often link celebrations with foods or drinks that might not be in line with our health aspirations? I’ll open up about my personal experiences and the internal debates I've had around the best way to celebrate. 

My revelation? The real celebration is in continuing the practices that got us to where we are. For me, that means cherishing the nutritious meals I prepare, sticking to my health regimen, and investing in my well-being. 

Celebrating is all about embracing what makes us feel alive and vibrant, and I want to encourage all of you to see caring for yourself from a fresh perspective. 

So, today’s episode is about redefining rewards and acts of self-love. 

Listen now and learn to celebrate your successes while you care for yourself. 

Referred to in this episode: 

The Better Than Before Breast Cancer Life Coaching Membership 

Grass Roots Co-op

Read the full transcript below:

Laura Lummer  00:00

You're listening to the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm a Certified Life health and nutrition coach, and I'm also a breast cancer thriver. If you're trying to figure out how to move past the trauma and the emotional toll of breast cancer, you've come to the right place. In this podcast, I will give you the tools and the insights to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer. Well, let's get started. Hello, hello, welcome to episode 270. To better than before breast cancer with me, Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach, thank you so much for being here today. You know, I was thinking about earlier today I was listening to a podcast I thought about when I first started my podcast, that's been oh my gosh, how long ago was 2017 when I started my podcast, and there were virtually no podcasts in this niche. You know, there were some medical institutions had very had doctors talking about a lot of the medical part of treatment of breast cancer treatment. There were a couple of big nonprofits that had some, some shows some podcasts, but there just weren't a lot of, you know, coaching and survivor to survivor and things like that. And it's so interesting now, because I get approached and I communicate with there's actually like developing this community of women who have realized that this experience of breast cancer and this space of either living with it, healing from it, recovering from it, going through it, and this place after treatment of figuring out what you want to do with your life after treatment. There's so many women now who have figured out this needs attention. And we need support. And I see more and more podcasts popping up from other women like me, who've realized that they had a calling like something in their heart that their own cancer experience brought up that they wanted to share with the world, a message that they wanted to put out there to be able to connect with others who that message resonated with. And I just see this growing community of support. And I think it's so wonderful. I think it's so awesome. And I know that you just continue to have more and more shows that you can listen to on some of these subjects. And so thank you for choosing to come back to this podcast and for supporting it. And I hope that what you hear in it supports you. So today, when this podcast comes out, it will be on Friday, the last day of my radiation treatment. So I spoke about in the last show that I'm doing five days of radiation on my right hip, actually on my right femur. And when this show comes out, I will have completed or will it be the day that I'm completing my fifth treatment. And I started thinking about that, because I look back at the milestones for cancer treatment, right? When you finish chemo, the day you got your mastectomy, when you got your diagnosis, right, we all have different kind of hallmarks that those dates stand out to us. The day finished radiation, right, and we ring that bell. And we want to celebrate. And I'm a huge fan and a huge advocate of celebrating successes, of recognizing of honoring, of embracing of acknowledging all that you have done for yourself, what you have done to take care of yourself, the things that you have been able to go through the strength that you have grown and expanded on for yourself. I think it's so important to acknowledge that because our brain with its negative bias, way too often just goes to knocking you down what you didn't do what wasn't good enough, what was imperfect what wasn't okay, and we don't need any more of that ship, we have to really put energy and intention into recognizing and honoring our successes. But here's the problem. One of the things that we have a tendency to do, me included, and I'll share a story with you here in a minute.

Laura Lummer  04:11

We tend to celebrate our successes, with food, with alcohol, and maybe not with the best kind of food, the best kind of food to support our health. Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that we're all going to indulge in things now. And then we're all going to enjoy the birthday cake and I hope you do. It's part of life and I want you to do that. But as I come up on this fifth day of radiation and as I share my experience, I don't if you follow me on social media, you see I've been sharing kind of what I've been going through with my supplement routine and my nutrition as I take care of myself through these five days of radiation. And I think about all the work and all the intention that led up to this point weeks and weeks right and a lot of money and a lot of time, money working with an integrative uncle apologist, you know, and with my other team of doctors and co pays, I put a lot of energy into preparing for this week, and a lot of energy into supporting myself this week. So I think about day five, done another treatment in the books. And how do I want to honor that. Now in the past, there have been times, and I think I shared on the show one time that I got some really great blood test results, and I was so happy. And I just said, I'm gonna go and get a Smashburger and tater tots. And I did it on purpose, and I enjoyed every bite of them. It's not something I would normally do. And I and it was okay, I enjoyed it. But let's be honest, eating tater tots is not going to support me and what my ultimate goal is, which is to maintain a state of therapeutic ketosis as long as possible, so that I'm supporting my body's ability to heal. Now, I say tater tots because I never met a potato I didn't like and I happen to love tater tots. But when I think about day five, and I think about all the work and all the effort and all the energy. And I think about all the energy I put into changing the way that I think about my relationship with food and how I nourish my body, that honestly, I don't want to go have a glass of wine, I don't want to go get a Smashburger and tater tots. I want to just really sit with honoring everything I did for myself, like my celebration for day five, is just noticing how beautiful this experience has been. And continuing with it. And, and seeing the food choices that I've made. The lifestyle choices that I've made and saying this is the treat. This is the good stuff. Right? The cake, the cupcake, the tater tots, the Smash burger, those tastes good. I'm not gonna lie those days. Good. We all know that. But you know what, sort of my beautiful little Capri say lunch with microgreens and freshly harvested tomatoes from the chef's garden that were shipped to me overnight from Ohio. And the money I put into that too, right? When we're thinking about nutrition and supporting ourselves and our health, we're making an investment into that. And I think that's something else is celebrate, like, wow, I made an investment, this beautiful, really nutritious food to support me all these things I've done along the way. And I want this day five, my celebration to be more of that more of the same more of showing love to my body. I want to wake up on Saturday morning, and go to my 7am yoga class, feeling good. And what makes me feel good is when I eat the way that I've been eating when I go to bed on time, and I get plenty of sleep, when I have good hydration, when I'm not putting alcohol into my body when I'm not eating a smash burger, because honestly, they don't make me feel good. So when I think about celebration, what comes to mind is oftentimes as we go through breast cancer, and I'm coaching women, they will be making lifestyle choices that don't make them feel good, right? So we'll make choices to maybe eat things and I hear words like, Oh, I know I shouldn't eat this, it's bad. Or I'm not happy with my way. But I can't stop myself, I keep eating this. And I deserve it because I've been through so much. And we have these thoughts. And we give those thoughts energy, and we believe them ourselves. And we say that these are treats like I'm doing nice things for myself by actually harming myself, think about that. So I'm making this choice to eat the chips or the ice cream, or have more wine than is really good for me or another beer. And it doesn't really feel good. And you don't feel good. Like if you stopped and you said how do I feel about this? How's my body feeling right now. It's not great. It's not how you want it to be. But you telling yourself that it's a treat, that it's a celebration that it's a reward for something. And it's fascinating because it's a really big thought error. Right? If I were to after that bell rings and the fifth radiation treatment is done, drive down the street to the brewery and grab me the delicious chocolate stout that they have there is a cupcake chocolate cupcake stout. Let me tell you that thing is delicious and Smashburger and tater tots. Am I treating myself and my rewarding myself? Am I a puppy? Do I reward myself with food? Is that helping me in any way? Or does that just wipe out what I worked so hard to achieve? What has been so much time and energy and money and intention into creating for myself? That's a really big thought error right? And we not be a reward, can I have a celebration? And celebrate in a way that continues to support me? That continues to support my goal? And yeah, I absolutely can. And I think that this is the key part here. Do you know what the goal is? Do you have clarity on what you want for yourself. And here's a really fascinating way that our brains work, when we decide we're doing something. If you want to lose 10 pounds, if you want to get through radiation treatment, if you want to finish chemotherapy, if you want to get good results on your labs, and we get that report card back, and we hear this came out good, oh, I'm happy with it. Our brain does this weird thing. It's like, everything's good. Now I can go off the rails a little bit. Right? Instead of everything's good. Wow, what I'm doing is working. This is awesome. Let me put even more intention into this. But we go the opposite way. And we undermine ourselves. It just it happens. So often, I do it. Everybody does it. And in fact, I was at the symposium for metabolic health last weekend. And one of the presentations, they mentioned this, there was Doctor Who was presenting on glioblastoma and the ketogenic diet. And he was actually showing these MRIs of I think he had about five or six different patients. And he was showing the MRIs of these patients that had come to him. After their standard of care, doctors said, there's nothing more we can do for you. And he worked with these people to get him into therapeutic ketosis. And he was showing that their scans after X amount of time it very patient by patient, but after X amount of time, he's showing, here's the scans, they have no evidence of the tumor. And yet, as soon as they found out, they had no evidence of the tumor, the majority of them said, I'm doing good, I can slide a little bit back on the diet. Now, I can change my diet a little more. It's obviously ketogenic diet is a very low carbohydrate diets. So they started bringing in more carbohydrates and just changing the macronutrients that were healing them, they started to do good. They said, Good, I got this. Now let me go off the rails. So it's fascinating. Now some of them, this doctor was presenting some of them when they went and started changing and sliding back sliding a little bit at a time on their diet. Their tumors came back, they saw that happen. And they went, whoa, whoa, whoa, let me redirect. And they went back to following their plan. Some of them didn't. Some of them said, You know what, that was really hard. And I love this statement, one said,

Laura Lummer  12:45

doing that eating in that way is really having a big impact on my social life. I don't want to do it anymore. And that patient died. And I listened to it story. And I thought, okay, it didn't ketogenic diet is having a big impact on your social life. But I'm pretty sure dying had a bigger impact on your social life. So why does our brain do that? Isn't it fascinating? I think that it does it because we don't have an awareness that we're doing it. You know, we're so trained throughout life, like you're a kid, you did good. Here's a treat, you got A's on your report card, here's a treat, let's go out for ice cream, let's go out for pizza. And we just used food in our society and our culture, as this reward system literally, like when we train puppies. And now as adults, we do that for ourselves. And it feels like it's the right thing. It feels like it's a true thing. It feels like it's a good thing. But in fact, the good thing is, whatever you've been doing to get you to that place that feels good. And we want more of that. And it doesn't mean we don't want any of the other stuff. As I've said, let me be really clear on that. It doesn't mean we don't want any of it. But it means we want to do it all with awareness. We want to be very aware of what have you done to support yourself and celebrate that, acknowledge that write it down? What have you put into it? If you're getting good results in your life now? What have you put into that? How hard has that been? Because men, it's not easy, right? I'm not gonna lie. It is not easy. In fact, I was getting a coffee the other day. And there was this beautiful case of pastries. And of course, the barista says to me, Oh, can I get you this and this and we have 30% off on that. And I said, you know, we're gonna be awesome. If we could be healthy and strong and in great shape eating butter croissants. That would be amazing. I would love that. Wouldn't it be easy, but that's just not the case. It doesn't happen. And it's not easy to look at these delicious things and say, Yeah, that's not going to get me where I want to go. So, do you know what you want? One thing do you have a goal and if the goal is a number on a scale then I highly encourage you to consider why that is. How would you feel? Or how would you think you would feel if you hit that number on a scale, because it's that feeling, it's the way you want to feel. That's the thing that's important. So now, here I am, I'm going through this treatment, I'm feeling so proud of myself, and I'm not ashamed to say it, I'm feeling really good. I've been very committed and very dedicated. And I gotta tell you, even this week, as I've gone to my yoga classes and my spin classes, I've said to my husband, as I've come home, I said, dang, I am in the zone this week, like I am just killing it. And these, you know, sometimes these workouts can be really strenuous. And I feel like I'm just flying through them, I'm feeling really good. So I'm recognizing that this commitment that just going deeper and deeper and deeper into these metabolic therapies that I practice is really giving me great results. And I don't want to lose my momentum. So when I get to day five, when I finished that fifth radiation treatment, you know what, I had deliberately ordered that big box of produce from the chef's garden, because I want to celebrate with a homemade meal of these gorgeous vegetables and lovely proteins, I have a chicken that I ordered from I get my meats delivered from a company that's pasture raised, and grass fed meats called grass roots, Co Op grassroots co op.com, I'll put a link to that. And actually, they've got really great quality products, and really reasonable prices, and they run specials on them all the time. So I love stocking up on that food. And my celebration is going to be that it's going to be more of what got me here to feeling good. And I'm excited about that my refrigerator is curated specifically for me to support me. And I love that. And I want to embrace that. And it means a lot to me. And that is a treat. That is a celebration. There's no deprivation in that. There's no deprivation, and spending a Friday night, preparing a lovely meal with my husband in our home that we love, and enjoying it and knowing that in doing so, we're taking care of ourselves, we're showing love to ourselves. So I want to just talk about that. Because I think one, having the awareness of what you're telling yourself when it comes to rewarding yourself, treating yourself or celebrating something. Having an awareness of what you're saying to yourself there is really important. What do you tell yourself is a reward? And is that true? How you reward yourself? Does it make you feel the way you want to feel? And then the second thing is noticing that when you're doing things that feel good for yourself, when you're eating in the way that you desire to eat, to feel the way that you want to feel? Why do we tell ourselves that that's on the plan? Why do we not tell ourselves that that is the wonder that that is the celebration? Why do we hold on to thoughts that this is deprivation, this is restriction. This is discipline, a lot of people say to me, god, you're so disciplined with what you eat. And it's interesting, because I do not think of myself like that. And I've had to work through a lot of thoughts when it comes to food and food choices. And the reason I don't think of myself as disciplined, is because I've changed the way I think about food to say, this is what I love. This is what I enjoy. This is what makes me feel the way I want to feel. So there's no discipline involved. Because I look forward to getting that produce delivery, I look forward to getting this pasture raised beautiful food and putting it all together and creating something beautiful for me. So in that way, I never look at it as deprivation or discipline, because I've decided to look at it as living my best life. And we all love to have a beautiful dessert a beautiful treat. And I think you'd really be surprised at how many things are good for your body that actually tastes delicious, too. And coming into that with an open mind looking at your lifestyle, looking at your metabolic health practices, looking at the way you think about healthy lifestyle practices, and embracing and saying God if I really love myself, and I really love my body, what can I explore here? What can I be open to what else can I bring in that is going to serve me in a way that continues to show my body how much I love and appreciate it. So I just wanted to share that insight with you this week because it's just something that was on my mind. I gave a lot of thought to it. And I know that we struggle with a lot we women we humans, we really struggle with that this idea of treats and discipline this idea of self abrasion on the track and off the track and on the plan and on the off the plan. So I just want to offer that to you to maybe make that little bit of a paradigm shift, and to move from thinking about what you should do, how much you should weigh what you should look like, to how you want to feel, and to how you want your body to feel, and how you want to feel in your body. And what helps you achieve that because whatever helps you achieve that feeling that is a reward. That is an act of self love. And I hope that you get in the habit of practicing acts of self love all the time. All right, my friends, thank you so much for being here. And if you like what you hear here on the podcast, come and join me in the better than before breast cancer life coaching membership, where we spend a lot of time working on these mindset shifts to help you create a life and really step in and live an intentional life that truly is better than before breast cancer. All right, I'll talk to you again soon Until then be good to yourself.