Avoiding Weight Loss

Smart nutrition choices can make your journey through cancer treatment a little easier. Eating well is important because your body needs energy from the food you eat to rebuild and repair itself. And even if you are overweight, losing weight during treatment is not healthy. Maintaining your weight can help you finish your treatments on time, heal faster and feel better.

Treat Food Like Medication

During cancer treatment, try to treat food like medication. Set times to eat, such as every one-half to one hour. Then be sure to have at least one or two bites of food at each “medication” time. Food may not provide pleasure right now, but you must eat to help your body heal.

Enlist Friends and Family

You may find that your family and friends are worried about your poor eating, and they may try to force-feed you. Let them know that you appreciate their help with food and meals. Let them know that you cannot force yourself to eat when you feel poorly. Stress at mealtimes will not help you to eat well.

Use the following tips and hints to make sure you are giving your body enough nourishment to help the healing process .

• Eat five or six small meals and snacks each day instead of three large meals. This will take some work if you are used to eating just a couple of times each day. ANY food can be a snack. Don't worry about how much you eat, just focus on eating often.
• Keep snacks handy. Hunger only may last a few minutes. Try easy foods such as granola bars; fruit; nuts; yogurt; pudding; pretzels or crackers; single serving sizes of canned fruit, tuna, or chicken; trail mix; power bars; oatmeal; hard boiled eggs; and Popsicles.
• Try High Calorie, High Protein Recipes to boost the nutrition you are getting every time you eat.
• Focus on high calorie foods such as nuts and peanut butter. A small handful of nuts contains about 200 calories! This is a lot of nutrition for a small amount of food. Plus, the fat in nuts is healthy fat.
• Eat your favorite foods any time of day. For example, if you like breakfast foods, eat them for dinner or for a snack. Pancakes at three o’clock in the afternoon are fine if that’s what you want!
• Eat every one-half to one hour. Do not wait until you are hungry. Even a couple of bites of food at a time can be helpful.
• Drink liquids between meals, rather than with meals. For example, separate liquids from solids by at least a few minutes. Drink just enough of a beverage to swallow your food comfortably, but avoid “loading” up on fluids like water and coffee with your meals, which can make you feel fuller.

Do Not...

• Force yourself to eat if you feel nauseous.
• Allow issues about food and eating to become the only focus of your interactions with family and friends.
• Put off eating. Have small amounts of foods OFTEN!

Call Your Medical Care Team If... .

• You can't eat for a day or more.
• You have a lot of nausea 
• You lose 5 pounds or more of weight since losing your appetite.
• You have pain while eating.
• You can't urinate for an entire day.
• You don't have a bowel movement for 2 days or more.
• You urinate infrequently and when you do urinate, it is a small amount of dark yellow urine.
• You have vomiting for more than 24 hours.
• You have a fever.