Speakers: Laura Lummer, The Breast Cancer Recovery Coach
Laura Lummer: Hi, my name is Laura Lummer. I live in Southern California and I'm the host of the Better Than Before Breast Cancer podcast. And I'm a life health nutrition and certified Terrain Advocate coach for breast cancer survivors.
Why is metabolic health important to you?
Laura Lummer: Metabolic health is not just critical for myself and my patient population, but it is the foundation of everything. I am a breast cancer survivor and currently living with managing metastatic breast cancer. But all of the clients I work with are in some stage of breast cancer, whether it's treatment recovery or living with metastatic disease and the root of that is metabolic health. So getting my clients and working with myself to increase and to achieve the optimal level of metabolic health addresses so many things that are hallmarks of cancer. It helps to reduce inflammation in the body, but it also gives us a better quality of life because breast cancer and its treatments often come with really unpleasant side effects including difficulty sleeping, joint pain, fatigue, brain fog, and taking the metabolic approach to health helps to get to the root cause of some of those things that even though medication may be driving these side effects when we can address through nutrition and lifestyle ways to get these areas of our life in check, we can reduce the amount of suffering we incur even if we are still in treatment.
What is one tip or fact that you would like to share that people can use to improve their health?
Laura Lummer: If I could just give one tip to people when it comes to metabolic health, it's take it slow, take small steps. What I see too often is that my clients want to change all the things at the same time and it becomes overwhelming and then all the things get kicked to the curb. It's so important that we understand that change happens in small steps and our brain resists changes that we try to make in huge leaps and bounds. So go through the Terrain 10 assessment, discover the areas that are the biggest areas of opportunity to improve your health. And then look at what some of those categories are and choose them one at a time and say, OK, I think I can wrap my head around this. I can make this small change. And then when you make that small change, it gives you a sense of accomplishment and then you can move on to the next small change. Take one thing at a time and do it for yourself, right? Don't do it out of fear, do it out of love for yourself and know that if I can make these small changes, I'm going to be treating myself so much better. I'm going to be feeling better and I deserve that.
