Healthy diet

Hi Aly Ellie

As your medical team said eat a balanced diet as you need to keep your strength up for the upcoming battle. 

Best wishes

Daisy53

Follow the advice of your medical team - there’s a lot of advice, not all of it good, to be found out there. I would also say eat what you enjoy - cancer treatment is bad enough anyway without making yourself miserable through denial. 

Thank you.

I can understand the need to want to ensure you eat as healthily as possible yo give your body the best chance to fight this cancer, you may come across varied advice in regards to foods to improve health and even  cure cancer etc. just be careful as some.advice on which foods to eat may not always be healthy or safe even.. I had an aunt who is obsessive about her ‘eat only raw fruit and veg diet’ she has been on for years and convinced my step mum who had cancer to go on it as it would ‘help her beat  cancer. She ended up in hospital really unwell where the medical team advised against this diet and advised her to eat a balanced diet instead as her body needs to keep as healthy as possible and her diet to include dairy which she was avoiding. Maybe this isn’t the best time for starting diets of any sorts I would think but yes, minimise unnecessary sugars fats, salts, processed foods and alcohol and please with any change in your diet speak to your medical team so they can advise and be aware of it. Wishing you well throughout your journey 

Thank you for your advice.  

Hi there,

It’s me again. Like you I was keen to prepare my body as well as i could for the treatment and journey that was coming up. I was a healthy eating vegetarian anyway so wasn’t sure what I could add but these are the things I discovered as I prepared and then went through chemo:

• My vegetarian diet continued to work well for me as it’s what I love the most although I did eat fish to max out the protein
• I didn’t cut out cheese but I lessened it
• The steroids you have with chemo can make you starving beyond!!!!! It’s a really good idea to have plenty of healthy snacks around as when that starvo feeling comes it has to be fed or you feel dizzy/edgy
• Quite a few people put on quite a bit of weight on with chemo - the medical team know this (the anti sickness drugs work so well these days). Myself I have put on half a stone but in my mantra of ‘not sweating the small stuff’, I am accepting it as a natural consequence and that as it has come, so it will go.
• Absolutely must keep up the water (easy to forget), it will help flush out the toxins and with dehydrated skin (plenty of moisturiser). It will also help flush through your digestive system which some people find gets clogged with chemo.
• Unsulphured dried apricots are another way of getting the digestive system moving - game changer in fact!
• If you do feel nauseous at any point, I found sipping ginger ale really took the edge off.
• I did cut out alcohol altogether although you don’t have too I don’t think. The liver filters everything (including the chemo) and I didn’t want mine having to deal with alcohol on top of the drugs. I am very partial to the alcohol free beers though!
• I did develop a bit of a liking for those lovely cakes that are in the coffee shops these days - lemon polenta this and almond blueberry that .If i wanted some, I just had it and savoured the moment. I saw it as part of my ‘balanced diet’ - balance for my mind as well as body!
• A healthy diet includes what you feed the mind as well as the body, so try not to overthink and worry - take some time to be at peace with yourself and others whilst you can by spending time outside and being with people who care for you.

Jan x

Hi just like you when I got diagnosed with TNBC I wanted to be as healthy as possible before treatment started.

Certain foods your advised against eating when treatment starts so I ensured I ate all of them first! Blue cheese, prawns, pate etc

Now I eat a balanced diet, small and often and I have actually put weight on. I'm still aiming for 10k steps aday but on the odd occasion when I hit 3k that's OK too. 

I eat a lot of green veggies, broccoli and spinach is my go too and a piece of chicken, fish, beef with ever main meal.

Fruit it's great being summer lots of strawberries raspberry and mangos. 

Lots of water but on treatment day and day after I treat myself to those ready made smoothies from shop as well - placebo effect I'm sure but sometimes you don't feel hungry and you get 1/5  a day. 

Treats are important a Take/fake away once a week. Obviously cake when out with friends. Dark chocolate on movie night and a real ale on Sunny afternoon  

I'm halfway through my second cycle of pembro, ec and pax and bloods have not been knocked off yet. . My hair has just started falling out and no other side effects so keeping fingers crossed. 

Excersise whilst you can but don't be hard on yourself and through treatment just listen to your body. X

Good luck with treatment