Better Than Before Breast Cancer with The Breast Cancer Recovery Coach

When was the last time you felt truly inspired? This episode comes out the day before the 15-year anniversary of my first breast cancer diagnosis, and as I look back over these years, one thing stands out more than almost anything else. Not a diet, not a single protocol, but inspiration. For a long time, I thought inspiration just showed up on a good day. What I have learned is that I have to go l...

July 2026 marks 15 years since my first breast cancer diagnosis. When I sat down to plan this milestone month, I had all these celebratory ideas, and then life happened. I lost people I cared about, a few clients passed, and right as I went to record, our dog of 14 years died. I want to be honest with you from the start. Life is hard, and life is wonderful, and most of the time both are true at on...

Your body has been talking to you your whole life. The question is whether anyone ever taught you to listen. In this episode, I want to widen the lens on how you read your own body. We have lost so much of the generational knowledge our mothers and grandmothers once passed down, and now we tend to wait until something hurts before we pay attention. But your body speaks in subtleties long before th...

This Father's Day episode is personal for me. I lost my brother to testicular cancer in 1993, and that loss taught me how dangerous it is when we do not talk about the cancers that catch our loved ones off guard. So I am honored to share this conversation with Jake Messier, a stage four metastatic male breast cancer advocate known on social media as The Guy With Stage Four Breast Cancer. Jake foun...

June is Mental Health Month, and in this episode, I want you to hear something clearly. Your mental and emotional health is not a side note to breast cancer or to life after it. It deserves to be a priority, right alongside your physical health. I share a recent stretch of unrelenting pain that pulled me away from my walks and workouts, and how quickly that started to weigh on me mentally, because...

What do I even eat? If that question has ever stopped you in your tracks, this episode is for you. So many of us cycle through the same handful of foods week after week, then feel guilty for not eating more variety. And when we try to fix that, it often turns into more recipes, more shopping, and more pressure to find the perfect anti-cancer diet. In this episode, I want to take that pressure off....

Last week there was no podcast episode. For the first time in a long time, I simply didn't have the physical or emotional energy to show up behind the microphone. After navigating one of the most challenging health seasons I've experienced since my stage 4 diagnosis, I realized I couldn't just move on without talking about what this experience taught me. The lesson was acceptance. Not giving up. N...

What is the most important thing I've done to support healing after breast cancer? Mindset work. Not positive thinking. Not pretending things are fine when they're not. Not forcing affirmations I didn't believe. I'm talking about the work of examining what I believed was possible for my body and my future and learning how to update those beliefs. In this episode, I share why mindset work became th...

In this week's episode, I want to invite you to think about your body differently. What if your cravings, fatigue, bloating, brain fog, and energy shifts are not signs that your body is failing you… but signs that it's trying to communicate with you? After years of working with metabolic health, blood work, and nutrition genomics, I've realized something important. The problem is not the informati...

What if you didn't have to wait for something to go wrong to grow? In this episode, I'm sharing why so many women stop reaching for support once life starts to feel stable and how that pattern quietly keeps you stuck. We talk about the difference between the discomfort of crisis and the discomfort of growth, and why choosing growth creates a completely different life experience. I also walk throug...

Emotional pain is not just in your head. It is happening in your body. In this episode of the Nutrition After Breast Cancer: Just the Facts series, we look at the connection between emotional and physical pain through both lived experience and research. When you feel exhausted, overwhelmed, or stuck in a loop of thoughts, there is a biological reason for it. Your nervous system is responding exact...

Cheri lives in Duluth, Minnesota with her adventure partner, Brent, along the stunning shores of Lake Superior. A two-time breast cancer thriver—first diagnosed with Invasive Ductal Carcinoma Stage IIIA in 2019 at 39 years old, and again with Metastatic Breast Cancer in 2021 at 41—Cheri continues to live life with strength, joy, and purpose. She leads an active, outdoor-centered lifestyle and seek...

What if your thoughts were creating physical changes in your body? In this episode, we are looking at the science behind mindset and how your brain, your expectations, and your thought patterns influence your health in very real ways. From negativity bias to the nocebo and placebo effects, I break down the research that shows how your mind impacts stress, symptoms, and healing. You will learn why...

In this episode, I'm joined by Kristy Griggs, founder of Training Through Treatment, to talk about the role exercise played in her experience with stage four breast cancer. Kristy was told to rest during treatment. But what she discovered was that movement helped her physically, mentally, and emotionally in ways she did not expect. She shares how she navigated the difference between needing rest a...

This week's episode is a personal one. It came from a hard week, a lot of physical discomfort, and a moment of asking a simple question. Why don't we talk about this more? Not just the physical challenges after breast cancer, but the internal rules we carry about how we should handle them. In this episode, we talk about "manuals." The invisible rulebooks we all have that shape how we think, feel,...

In this week's episode, we're talking about weight loss after breast cancer and menopause, and why it often feels like nothing is working. You're eating well. You're making changes. And your body is not responding the way it used to. We begin with a simple question. If weight loss is just calories in and calories out, why does it feel so different now? Think about Survivor. Everyone loses weight....

In this episode of the Better Than Before Breast Cancer podcast, Laura Lummer sits down with Chelsea Hassink to talk about her experience navigating a stage 4 breast cancer diagnosis and the path that led her to explore integrative cancer care. Chelsea discovered a lump shortly after turning 40 and was quickly diagnosed with HER2-positive breast cancer that had metastasized to her liver. Within we...

In this final episode of the Nutrition After Breast Cancer: Just the Facts series, we break down ketosis clearly and responsibly. Ketosis is not a cure for cancer. It is not a replacement for chemotherapy or radiation. But research, including the Keto-CARE trial at The Ohio State University and ongoing metabolic oncology work at Boston College, suggests that metabolic ketosis may influence insulin...

In this week's podcast episode in the Nutrition After Breast Cancer: Just the Facts  series, I bring up the study that sparked that concern. I don't ignore things like this. I don't pretend they don't exist. If there's research being talked about, I want you to know about it. But here are the actual facts. The study was  done in mice. The mice were made to consume about  40% of their diet in olive...

Dairy is one of the most misunderstood foods in wellness. Is it inflammatory? Does it increase mucus? Does it raise IGF-1 and breast cancer risk? Or is that fear-based messaging? In Part 4 of the Nutrition Just the Facts series, Laura breaks down the science behind dairy and separates cultural belief from biological evidence. This episode covers: • Dairy and inflammatory biomarkers • The mucus myt...

Why are so many women told to avoid animal foods after breast cancer? And what does the science behind that advice actually show? In this episode of Better Than Before Breast Cancer, Laura Lummer explores plant-based versus animal-based eating through a clear, grounded lens. She explains why large observational studies like the Nurses' Health Study became so influential, how The China Study was ov...

Carbohydrates are often blamed, feared, or oversimplified, especially after breast cancer. In this episode, Laura continues her Nutrition Myths and Truths series with an evidence-based conversation about carbohydrates. This is not about food rules. It is about understanding how carbohydrates function in the body, how they interact with metabolism, inflammation, and genetics, and what lab markers c...

What does the science actually say about red meat after breast cancer? In this episode, Laura Lummer begins a new series focused on separating nutrition myths from facts. The conversation was sparked by hearing a physician recommend a low-fat, high-fiber diet with no red meat to an entire room of cancer patients. Laura explains why that kind of advice ignores bio individuality and why nutrition sc...

Diet plans. Supplements. Protocols. Podcasts. Advice from well-meaning people. At some point, all of that support can stop feeling helpful and start feeling overwhelming. In this episode, Laura shares a real-life story that highlights how stress and unresolved trauma can impact metabolic health, even when diet and exercise look "right." She explains why consistency, tracking data, and self-honesty...

At the beginning of the year, affirmations are everywhere. But if you have ever felt frustrated, tense, or discouraged while trying to use affirmations, this episode explains why. In Episode 446, Laura shares why affirmations that are not believable often create internal pushback, self-judgment, and cognitive dissonance, and why this is not a personal failure. You will learn how the brain responds...