Hi everyone ,just halfway through my 3rd ec and i have tried so hard to eat the right things but just seem to eat rubbish.Read a thread telling me dairy not good and just crave milky coffees as seem to be only thing i can taste sometimes .
Also i eat out a lot and onc says avoid salads as might not have been washed ,so is that jacket pot too as working in a tearoom myself i know they dont always get washed .Been having bad constipation only on ec 3 though but got given emend this time so been having fibre cereal again with milk .
Had lots of chips and always seem to fancy cream scones although i never really liked cream cakes!!!
Have really cut down to very low units on alchohol and dont eat hardly and microwave meals anymore or takeaways but just feel guily no matter what i eat. Havent put any weight on ive lost 4lb but still feel really bad ,anyone else finding it hard.
It starts when i get chemo and cant taste anything so just snack and the worse the taste is the more i snack to stop the bad taste .
Any suggestions or are most of us struggling .xx
Hello!
Don’t beat yourself up - there have been threads about this before and most people suffer in the same way. There are people who choose to cut out things like dairy and live on juiced vegetables and fruit, but I’ve been on a BCC diet seminar and have also asked 3 oncologists about this. At the moment the NICE guidelines are to eat low fat dairy as there is proof that it actually helps combat BC and no proof that it encourages BC and that the additional oestrogen is minute compared to what your body naturally produces. HOWEVER this is a contentious subject and complete personal opinion and someone will probably come along and tell me off for saying that! But it’s just what I was told when I asked about the dairy thing. The oncologists all said to eat what you want during chemo - but to try to not put on too much weight as you’ll just need to shift it afterwards. I, and I know many others, have put on weight as the only food that helped my nausea was carby comfort food (which I supplemented with fruit etc!) and the steroids made me RAVENOUS! So the fact that you haven’t put on weight is great.
My diet and exercise will start after chemo has finished!!
Struggled like crazy on chemo week … wanted all the bad things … and ate so healthily before … but suddenly had the urge for cream cakes biscuits sausage rolls crisps chips … none of which I ever ate before. Then weeks 2 and 3 back to healthy eating. Needless to say have put on over half a stone in four months… have no advice except I was told to eat when I wanted to eat… you need the energy so dont deprive yourself.
Me too - eating sensibly - but then eating carby cr*p as well !!!
Sandytoes thats real interesting ,thanks for posting that.Think its just luck that i havent put any weight on yet ,but am still managing to keep pretty active most days (although it gets more and more tiring)hope i can keep it off. lost nearly a stone since may when i was diagnosed as i started eating a lot healthier but the chemo week has really thrown me xx
I’ve always eaten pretty healthily apart from the odd cake so no weight loss for being good here :o(
The big thing for me is giving up alcohol except for very special occasions as I feel that my liver has got enough to do processing poisons right now.
And if I feel like a big squashy cake - I jolly well have one. Chemo’s cr@p and if I want to eat some cr@p because it makes me feel better, I will.
i found myself craving scones during my TAX… my body would tell me when i need to have something healthy… i would be sat around doing not alot and would suddenly want some veg…
Hiya,
I had dreadful cravings whilst on FEC and wanted to eat a cow sandwiched between two bread vans, my Onc suggested eating this but with a green salad and trying to moderate how much of the cow I ate!
I know diet is a VERY touchy subject on here and personally think Sandytoes has got it about right.
Best Wishes for the rest of your chemo.
xxHelenxx
Ooooooh yes. When I had chemo the steroids would make me eat like Pac Man - everything within reaching distance. I think even the cat was a bit wary of me at points 
Then on Week 3 I’d go mad for bad things too, just wanted to stuff loads of meat down my neck and bread and chocolate.
I haven’t DARED weigh myself since diagnosis, I can feel it in my clothes and I can see it on my chins. If I weigh myself I’m bound to feel like cr*p even more, so don’t see the point just yet.
When I first started on chemo I was being really healthy, making my own veg soups, eating salads, fruits etc. That went out of the window by the 3rd Chemo I think. EC wasn’t too bad on me, Tax was evil to me and we didnt get on and I had bad oral thrush.
Just go with what you want and worry about it after treatments.
OR Have an attack of the guilts and have HOLY days where you eat really well.
Just finished scoffing a “Mash with roast onion snackpot” Just what I needed! Made some carrot and coriander soup yesterday, all fresh ingredients, tasted like acid. Can’t win with food at the moment so just going with what my body tells me. Want to eat healthily but it all tastes horrible! Even my favourite tipple - so unfair!!
I really really do empathise with you - everything tasted foul when I was having chemo too. Utterly disgusting. I got oral thrush, all I could eat whilst I did was noodles and weetabix and all I could drink was sparkling water. I was miserable as sin. I could smell food and it smelt amazing. That lasted 4 sessions of chemo.
I tried everything I could, I really did.
So I totally understand how annoying it is, espcially if you get to the point where your body is crying out for nourishment and you try your best to eat healthy food and it’s just so foul you could cry.
I’d try fresh fruit, tinned fruit, veg, raw, cooked, steamed etc.
Horrible.
xxxx
Then you think “S*d it, I’ll just get rip roaring drunk instead, then I’ll feel better” and then alcohol is like battery acid or like drinking liquidised vines or something.
So you can’t even console yourself with a tipple.
Chemo is evil, end of.
ok, another post where i might get shot down in flames. but perhaps all these cravings is because the body is lusting after fat. To repair cells you need amino acids. you cannot store them, they can only be used whilst they are in the blood stream. so whilst the health care professionals worry about a healthy diet for most people as pumped out by the government they dont quite get their brain around the different needs of a body being poisend by chemo.
Might i suggest that those that fancy milk and cream pay a little bit extra for organic dairy, so that it is not full of the growth and hormone factors that figure in the reports.
In the war when german soldier invaded france, they did not gorge on sugar, but butter, they ate it straight from the packet. Again good honest organic butter–anchor is good --might stop the cravings for junk food.
Organic ice cream–yum. I am not promoting organic because of the lack of chemicals, but because it tends to be good old fashioned food that our bodies recognise.
However my friend is a nutritionist and says in any major illness the main thing is to get calories into the body in any form, the body needs energy to survive and any bad eating habit can be resolved after treatment,no matter how long treatment goes on. she did say though that if there is no junk in the fridge then you have to eat what is there, but if you are unrealistic when you shop then you will ignore the healthy fridge and order a takeawy. So best to by some healthy sin food/
OAL - So this is one occasion where being really fat could actually be beneficial? YAY!
I craved fatty foods like mad, and you know, when I had chemo mouth/thrush I could only eat noodles and weetabix and felt utterly dreadful, I was lusting after food I couldn’t stand the taste of. One night my OH was eating Caramel Nibbles and I took the packet off him and inhaled deeply going “ooooh that smells soooo goooooooood” - couldn’t eat them though - vile.
I crave cr*p whenever I’m ill.
Lisha,
from my experience - go for it - whatever your body wants - I went through avacado phases, marmite phases, cream cake phases, apples apples apples …my OH (an oncologist) said just eat as much as you like of whatever your body wants and we’ll sort out your fitnss/weight etc when its all over.
I managed to get my eating under control about 3 months after rads (which followed the chemo) and am really really enjoying getting fit again - althought the diet could probably still do with some improvement!!!
best Nicola
Thanks everyone for your wise replies ,dont feel to guilty now.Will take all the advice on board.My onc said eat whatever you like and dont diet but then she said that tnbc seems to have a better chance of not coming back if you keep a really healthy diet and excercise ,a bit confusing really.I am still eating my fruir and veg but rubbish too and also not much fruit and veg chemo week as it tastes awful. Also struggling with water it tastes terrible to the point of making me feel sick!!! xx
I tried to balance my bad days (immediately following chemo) with my better days towards the end when I could taste things again. TAX was the worst for me and I confess that I had chip (3% fat oven chips of course, gotta stay healthy you know!) butties covered in tomato sauce & vinegar, homemade rice pudding, apple crumble and custard, was pretty much all I ate on the bad days. I did go dairy free and use alpro soya products now and was a very personal choice for me.
I helped the taste buds by eating fresh fruit before anything else, pineapple was very good and also kiwi fruit. Once I got my taste buds back I hit the fresh fruit and veg trail and like AOL try to eat organic whenever I can. I managed to maintain my weight throughout chemo by doing this, total weight loss was about 5lbs.
Chemo is c**p so just do the best you can and try not to get too hung up on things. All I would say is that it can be very difficult to shift excess weight afterwards.
DaisyGirl xx
I just love my gut-buster breakfast MMMmmm!
Rose x
Thanks for the good tips daisygirl x
Thank god it is not just me, I am eating lots of rubbish. Danish pastries today and a large bowl of tuna pasta salad. ( not at the same time) followed by toast and honey. I have found that cold food tastes better. I filled my fridge pre chemo with nice fruit and things but have largely ignored it in favour of junk although I have found some organic yoghurt with ginger(rachels) which is refreshing and takes away some of the nasty mouth taste.
Every day I think I will eat healthily and by 11 am I am eating anything.
The forums are so good at reassuring you that you are not alone and others are just as daft!!
Fi xx