This is a special episode because right before I recorded it I received my official Terrain Certified Network Badge!  

After a year of study and coursework with Dr. Nasha Winters, I’m ready to go! 

The first thing I ‘d like to do is give you a new area of your health to explore. It’s called your GKI.  

In this episode, I’ll tell you about your GKI, what it means to you, what you can learn from it, why it’s important that you know what it is and keep it in a healthy range, and how to figure all of that out. 

Your metabolic health is the foundation of your wellness and the more you learn about it, the more you realize how much control you have over your wellness. 

Join me in this episode and learn about a tool you can use to step into the driver's seat of your metabolic health. 

Referred to in this episode: 

Creating Time for You After Breast Cancer 

Glucose Ketone Index (GKI)

Read the full transcript below:

Hello friends before we get into today's episode, I want to give you a reminder that this Saturday September 30, at 11am Pacific Standard Time, I am hosting a live workshop on creating time for yourself after breast cancer. In this workshop, we're going to spend 90 minutes together and I'm going to teach you the importance of carving out space for yourself, to love on yourself and care for yourself and dive into the life you want to create and the life you deserve to live. All you have to do is go to my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com and grab your free seat. It's that easy. And not only will I give you the tools, but I'm going to be there to coach you I made this workshop a little extra long because I want to answer your questions. I want to coach you through your thoughts through your mind telling you you can't do things for yourself because I know you can. And I know we can find ways. So grab your free seat now. The breast cancer recovery coach.com Ford slash time and that's a capital t, lowercase i m e or just go to my homepage right at the top you'll see a red banner that says grab your free sheet for the creating time for you after breast cancer workshop. You're going to love it and I'll see you there. 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. Welcome, welcome. Hey, friends, you're listening to Episode 281. Of better than before breast cancer with me Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach and this is our Tuesday terrain talk. This is an exceptional day for me to be recording this Tuesday during talk. It's so serendipitous that this fell together today, because today is the day that I received my terrain certified network advocate badge from the metabolic terrain Institute of Health. And what that means is that I have completed all of the coursework, the mentorship requirements and all of the other elements that are required in this last year of training through Dr. Nation winters program at the metabolic terrain Institute of Health, and I have become an official terrain advocate. And I am so excited. What a terrain advocate does is I have the ability now to work with oncologists who are supporting cancer patients and step into this role of educating people on the insane amount of power you have over supporting and improving your metabolic health. I cannot tell you how much this means to me. When I started this training a year ago, nearly a year ago, I started November of last year, and I'm an overachiever. I like to be the first one out the gate and get this done. I love earning badges. Anyway, when I decided to do this course and do this training. I really did it for myself, I really made this investment first have time and energy and money into myself. Because I wanted more information on how to heal. Dr. Nation winters could not be a more valuable resource. She is a leader, a top leader in this field of metabolic health. And I want it to understand how do I go deeper? How do people support their body's ability to heal? How did people change their lives entirely? What does this mean? What does this look like? And what do you know? And I gotta tell you that what I learned is so far beyond the scope of what I expected. And as a graduate as an advocate. Now, as a certified advocate, I move into this train network where I get to sit in on these case studies and work with doctors and listen to Naisha and present case studies of my own clients that I'm working with, which is an incredible honor and benefit. It's just amazing because this woman has decades of experience in supporting metabolic health, especially and particularly with people who are trying to support their body's ability to heal from cancer. The knowledge is absolutely incredible. And as I got into this, and I learned more about this, and just blew my mind. And then it grew way beyond what I wanted to do for myself because I was so excited to take this knowledge and bring it back out into the world. I started these Tuesday terrain talk episodes a few months ago because I want all of us to be more aware of what is available to us. And that does not mean that we abandoned standard of care or we judge standard of care or criticizing standard of care. And I just think it's important to keep pointing that out. What I'm speaking of is an integrated approach to supporting herself and her health. I am in treatment for stage four cancer, I take chemotherapy, I have had radiation multiple times, I do make my decisions on what I think is going to serve me best and preserve my health and my quality of life. On both sides of this coin, I'm so thrilled that I have the ability to access all of it. And I want you to know, you have the ability to access all of it too. I think that when as we move forward, and we start to really embrace and step into the power we have over our health, it's just critical that we realize that we don't have to be in judgment or condemnation of anything, we just have to look at all the tools available to us, and ask ourselves, what will work? What kind of quality of life do I have? What kind of span of life do I want to have? How do I want to feel every day? And what are the things I can do to support myself in getting there, and it is incredible the tools that are available to us. Here's the thing,
you got to put a lot of intention into it. You have to put work into it, you have to be deliberate. This last weekend, I went to Napa Valley, it was amazing. nine of us women who have known each other since either elementary school, junior high school, or all of us since high school, came together to celebrate our 60th birthdays. We were all born in 1963. We all turned 60 This year, and we decided to have one big birthday party where we would all come together and celebrate, there were some of our friends that weren't able to be there that we did miss. But for the nine of us, it was an incredible experience. And, you know, I've come so far in this journey. That was really cool. For me. I thought about this. And I thought you know, if I had done this trip, maybe a year ago, maybe two years ago, even after my stage four diagnosis, but before this training, if I had done this trip, I think it would have been different. I think I would have been saying it's okay, I'm going to have all the red, it's okay, I'm going to eat the pasture. It's okay, it's just a weekend away. And if I decided I wouldn't do that, I probably would have been feeling deprived. At that point in time, I probably why didn't why don't I get to eat these things? You know, why do I have to be different than everybody else. But I was so at peace when I was at this trip. And I did have a couple of wine tastings and a couple glasses of wine, not ashamed to admit that. But as far as the food, I stuck to my program and made the choices that support my ability to stay in therapeutic ketosis, which I was in nutritional ketosis because I had that wine. But that's okay, because I got home, did a little bit of fast, took the necessary nutrients I knew I needed to do to shift my body back into this state of ketosis, which is really what it's all about. It's about the metabolic state of health that we're after. So I just was noticing, as I was sitting there, and we went to some amazing restaurants and amazing wineries, there were some gorgeous food, we went to an Italian restaurant one night and tell I'll tell you the breads and the pastas looked out of this world. And it was I was okay with it, you know, I was perfectly okay ordering the branzino with the tomatoes and frizzy on the side, you know. And I thought this is so nice to have finally come this far where I realize this is not a deprivation like this is a treat, this is a good thing. And to you know, everybody's having all these delicious meals saying I want to taste this, you want to taste that. And I really don't, I really don't want to taste that I don't want to put flour into my body or I don't want to put sugar into my body. And I don't feel like I'm missing out. I'm so happy enjoying what I'm enjoying, and feeling good about what I'm doing for myself. And that's such a lovely place to be. But it does take work to get there. I'm not gonna lie about that ever to anybody. And I hear people say to me all the time, you know, and this was even said over the weekend. If I ever get cancer, I'm going to do what you do. And I always am a little shocked by that. And I think why would you wait? Why would we wait until you have any kind of disease? Any kind of health ailment of any nature to start taking care of yourself? Do we really have to get sick before we pay attention to treating ourselves? Well? I'm gonna say no, but I just don't think we have that level of awareness. Generally as a society. We don't think in those terms. We think it's okay as long as I'm not sick. I'm eating this way now and I'm not sick so it's okay if I get sick, I'll change it. But we don't get sick over Tonight, right, this builds up. And again, food isn't everything. This is a multifaceted approach. But I want to talk for a minute on this show about one thing that everyone can do to begin making that shift. And I get a lot of questions, especially since I've done a couple of episodes on how you look at your blood and the different metrics and labs that we go through to look at where your metabolic status is actually at. So there's another measurement of metabolic status. And it's something that I look at every single day. And it's called your GK AI. And it means your glucose ketone index. Now, I look at my GK AI, because here's the deal. If you are only looking at your glucose, you're kind of only getting one side of the story. So if you look at your glucose, and you say, Oh, my glucose is 94. Okay, that's just like a snapshot of what did I eat? Or was I under stress? Or did I not sleep well, but if you measure your ketones as well, and then well, what I use is an app that does the algorithm with me, but there is an equation to figure out the glucose and the ketones, there's an equation you put together to come out with your glucose ketone index.
Now, this is a really cool first step into learning about your health, learning about your responses to food and getting the whole picture. Because you're not just seeing, Oh, my glucose is, on average, 90, that's pretty good. Great, but where are your ketones, because the ketones come in to support your body's overall health. Because we know that cancer can't draw energy from ketones, we want to keep those at a certain level in our body. Now, I keep them at a higher level, which this is sounds a little weird, but the higher my ketones are, the lower my G AKI is right, because my glucose is low, my ketones are high, my GK is low. That's what you want when you're trying to get into therapeutic ketosis. But as an overall approach to health, getting into the zone of nutritional ketosis is what's recommended for everyone. Every human being, we don't have to have any problems. But I'll tell you what, I'm 59 years old. And the majority of my friends that which they look amazing, they're gorgeous. And it's funny, I hear the statement, none of you look 60. And I think that's such an interesting statement. Because this is what 60 looks like, right? Do we think 60 has to look something else? The 60 need to look like a 90 year old, like think about that statement? What is 60? This? Is it. This is it. Right? But when I hear that, and I hear that a lot, in fact, we were all saying it to each other all weekend, you don't look like a six year old. And I thought well, isn't it interesting, because that's just a story that I was been telling myself, based on what based on what my grandma looked like when she was 60, or what my mom looked like, from my lens when she was 60. And I think but this is 60. Right? And I was thinking about that a little bit because I was just kind of wondering about other areas of our life and just contemplating other areas of our life where we want to resist what is because it doesn't align with what we think. Right? And this is another thing when it comes to healthy aging when it comes to overall health. People say you know, you don't look sick, you don't look like someone that has cancer. And I think, but I am. So isn't that interesting, because this is what that can look like. So we can start to change that perception and and realize, you know what, we don't have to look this way. Which from you know, what people say to me is, like, really old or not independent, are not able to get out and enjoy your life and things like that you can be useful and healthy and vibrant and active. At any age, can we shift that thinking? So we realize, well, 60 can look good, you know, 60 can be active 60 can be fit. And we do look like 60 year olds, because that's what we are. Right. So that was kind of a squirrel moment. But I just thought that was an interesting thought. When it comes back to our thinking. We just have so many interesting thoughts that we believe are truths. But when it comes down to and we stop and evaluate them, there's no truth to that, right. It's a very interesting thing to contemplate. What other thoughts do you have in your life that apply that way that you don't accept? Or that don't make sense to you because they're not what you think they should be? It's an interesting thing. And I think that it also can apply to this work we do and on going back to GK I now to thinking about our food, thinking about our nutrition and our lifestyle and we realizing like I don't have to be a sick person to do things to support myself. And if you do it now, it's not as challenging. So someone who doesn't have any kind of a disease doesn't have to get into such a high level of Quito of ketosis. Right. So it's a little easier and a little looser of a program, but still a much healthier program than the standard American diet. And so I think that's what I lost my train of thought when I started talking about thinking about 60 year olds, because what I wanted to say is that, even though my friends look great, there are a lot of them that have health conditions. So you know, as we sat there talking about well, at 60, we sit around the table talking about who's got what health condition and who's taking what medication. And if we could go back 40 some years, we were talking about who's dating who and what we're wearing to the dance, you know. So it's pretty interesting shift, because health becomes a much more vital part of our life, doesn't it? As we get older, and the body goes through the ravages of time, we got to step in and pay attention, because we want our life to be long and vibrant at the same time. So when it comes to GK AI, can you think about being curious, I wonder what my GK is, I wonder what that combination in my body looks like? I wonder if I could get into nutritional ketosis. And I'm going to post a link in the show notes for this episode that you can read all about that because I know you're quite well, what is nutritional ketosis? And what does that look like? And how do I get there? And what are the numbers? When it posted a link in the show notes for this episode, you can read an article on it and get all of those statistics and the equation to figure it out also, and the device that I use, which is called the Keto Mojo. So the interesting thing I want to propose here is what if you could be curious about seeing if you could get into nutritional ketosis through whatever means. I'm not saying you got to follow ketogenic diet. But what have you learned about getting into nutritional ketosis? What have you experimented with that for a little while and notice how your body felt? Maybe you wouldn't have the inflammation you experience now, maybe the metabolic syndrome criteria would start to disappear a little bit, you know, maybe things would start to shift for you. And you might find that it's a really nice way to feel healthier and have more energy. But we have to get curious about our health and be willing to step in, right. So as I test my blood, a lot of people say, Well, I don't want to poke myself, I don't want to test my blood. Well, gosh, it's really not that bad. It's really not that big of a deal. But it is sure interesting, because without that metric, without my ability to look at my GK i on a daily basis, I would not have been able to intelligently shift the nutrition choices that I made, because I don't really know what's going on in my body. So this is one of the things that I love about Naisha winters in her teachings is test assess, don't guess, right? So if we want to be healthy, we don't want to guess about what is serving us. I've talked about this in previous episodes of Tuesday, train dogs, we don't want to guess about how many macronutrients we're taking it, we want to see. Because we want to be in charge. We want to be in the driver's seat of the health of our body. And we can step into that driver's seat. But are you willing to put the work in to do that? And if not, it's okay. But be honest with yourself. Right? Be Be straight with yourself and say, Wow, I'm not willing to do that work for me. Because that's a really interesting awareness come to? Why are you not willing to do that work? And I hear from people all the time, they say, I don't want to give up the croissant. I don't want to not eat pasta. And it doesn't have to come to that. So I'm saying when we have no evidence of disease, or when we're dealing with other metabolic disorders, which honestly, I have a harder time thinking of people that I know, who do not have some kind of an ailment, whether it is metabolic syndrome, pre diabetes, arthritis, gut issues, irritable bowel syndrome. I mean, you name it, insomnia, it goes on and on the whole lifestyle. And when those things begin to happen, we've got to realize, Oh, these are red flags. I've got to start taking charge of my health and a lot of people think be vegan, be vegetarian, but that may not be what's working for your body. And how do you know, we look at the GK and we see what that GK is doing because we know if we can keep it in a nutritional zone. There are studies and studies and studies that show how our metabolism improves, our metabolic health improves. And when our metabolic health improves, it means inflammation reduces. And inflammation is the cause of this pain, right in our joints, in our guts, so many things that are happening, but we also start to get a healthier microbiome, we start to shift we go into a fasted state, especially for a long period of fasted states, it has a cellular
impact, it changes our bodies at a cellular level is absolutely fascinating. And I know it sounds intimidating, it's scary and scary at first, because there was a time when I didn't do that. And I thought, I don't want to be hungry. And then I learned, oh, you know, you don't get any hungrier than hungry. This isn't so bad, I can do this. And then I started to see, holy cow, I'm getting some good results here. And as a certified terrain advocate, so excited to say that, that's what I want for everybody, that awareness, that understanding that experience of knowing, I'm really feeling good, I'm feeling better, I have more energy, I don't have brain fog. And I don't have so much fear. Because you know that you're doing the things to take care of yourself. You're not just waiting for something to happen to you one day. So you can say, Oh, I got cancer again. Now, let me try. Now let me step in, or even those of us for living with cancer is a really powerful feeling, to think that you can take steps in your life to influence your body's ability to heal. So as I put this episode out, and I celebrate this accomplishment, which you know, I look back, and I think again, how people will look and say, you know, you don't look like someone who has cancer. And I think when I was diagnosed, which will be almost three years ago, October 11, will be three years. And so I'm thrilled that I'm the sponsor of international metabolic health day, that's happening on October 10. Because that is a hell of a way to celebrate my three years of thriving life since a stage four diagnosis. But at that diagnosis, I decided, I'm not going to be that person that people think of when they think of stage four cancer, I am not going to be that person, that when they look at me, like, I'm so sorry. And since that time, I've gone through my life Code School training, I've changed my business, I've grown my business. And now I've gone through a year of training with an incredibly brilliant physician, and learned so much. And I'm so excited about learning more and continuing in this network and supporting all of you. So today's tip, think about investigating your GPA, get curious and ask yourself, what would that mean to you? Would you be willing to look at it? Would you be willing to take a little lab test every day, and they don't have to fear the big ones that are coming up? Because every day, you can look and say, Okay, I see, I see what's going on here. You know, an average range for someone who is not experiencing disease at this point would be to be at a GK I have six to nine in a nutritional level of ketosis at a lower level than that even like a seven or an eight I think it is, is good for weight loss and overall inflammation management. But would you consider having more information and learning how to support yourself and your metabolic health by investigating your GPA and understanding it? Because I think that I love this approach when I work with clients. And I say I don't want you to make any changes. I just want you to be more aware. Because when we're aware, change begins to happen. The more we allow our mind to be open to awareness without the pressure of I've got to change if I hear that if I know that I've got to change, you don't have to change. But if you hear enough, and you know enough, and you get curious enough, you might be surprised that you'll have a desire to change, that you'll have a desire for organic change, and that things don't become as hard when you really want them for yourself. It's a pretty cool experience. So I'm thrilled to celebrate with today's podcast episode, this achievement. And I cannot wait to be sharing more of this with all of you so that we come together as this community of women who have had breast cancer diagnoses and we say we're not powerless. We're stepping into this shit. And we are going to change the perception. A lot of cancer survivor is Alright my friends Be good to yourself. Check out the show notes. Consider investigating your GK AI and I'll talk to you soon. Take care