Having chemotherapy causes all sorts of strains and difficulties. One almost universal side effect from chemotherapy is the difficulty many of us face in getting enough nutrition. Nutrition comes from eating food yet many of us just don’t feel hungry so eating is difficult. We lose our appetite, food tastes terrible and we battle nausea. However, there are a few different things you can do to better manage your eating while on Chemotherapy.
1- At the times it is difficult to eat, don’t push it. Instead, drink a liquid or a powdered meal replacement.
2- It is easier to eat 5 or 6 small meals each day instead of 3 large meals. At each of the meals you can eat smaller amounts so that you don’t need to force the issue and make yourself feel bad.
3- Always keep snacks nearby for when you feel like eating. When you go out of the house take easy to carry snacks like peanut butter crackers, nuts, power bars etc. with you.
4- Make an effort to try and add extra protein and calories to your diet when you are able to eat. Even if it is just a few calories.
5- At the times you don’t want to eat, drink liquids and do this throughout the day. Carry a water bottle and put a sugared flavor into the water to increase the calories. Better yet, you can also carry juice or even soup when you go out.
6- Don’t forget to have a at a bedtime snack. This will not dampen your appetite the next day.
7- Soft, cool, or frozen foods make a lot of sense while on chemotherapy. Included in this list are ice cream, milk shakes, smoothies and yogurt. Now is the time to indulge your sweet tooth.
Chemotherapy can change your taste and smell for foods. Find those foods that are not unpleasant and enjoy them.
Marinate your meats to add flavor. Tart and sweet foods are tastier, so add oranges, lemons and sugar to your foods.
If you develop the classic “metal taste” use plastic silverware instead of silverware.
Maintaining adequate nutrition is very important, especially when you are taking chemotherapy.
Speak to other people who have had chemotherapy and ask them for their tips. If you have ideas and things you have done to deal with this problem share them with us by making a comment which will be added to this post.
My history is prostate cancer, surgery 2 years ago then, with a rising PSA, radiotherapy, and it distresses me to regularly see dietary advice that I believe is really, REALLY bad. Specifically, to indulge your sweet tooth.
The very latest Ga68 PSMA PET/CT scans are amazing, able to detect tumours just a couple of mm big, and they work by having the radioactive Ga68 injected into you where it is then taken up by tumours so that the radioactive hotspots can be detected. But the reason the Ga68 is taken up by the tumours is that it is first mixed with glucose and tumours just love glucose. In fact, I read recently, they typically have a glucose uptake 20 TIMES that of normal tissue!
To boost calorie consumption to maintain weight is important.
Frequent small meals are great.
Similarly, a snack before bed.
But the best advice must be to increase healthy fats (olive oil, coconut oil, oily fish etc), avoid sugar like the plague and minimise carbohydrates generally (because they are rapidly converted to glucose).
It just makes no sense at all to force feed your cancer with the glucose it both craves and depends on. And while normal cells like to have glucose, unlike the cancer cells, they don’t actually need it.