>> Why should you eat when you don't feel like eating or worse, when you're having symptoms
from treatment such as nausea, constipation or taste changes
that make you even less interested in eating?
The reason is compelling, and it's five-fold.
Eating enough to maintain your weight during treatment will actually help you tolerate your
treatment better, so hopefully have less stops and be able
to get more benefit from the drugs that we give you.
Minimize the side effects and the complications.
Make it less likely that you're going to get nauseous or have taste changes
or get stuck in the hospital for dehydration.
Maintain your strength and your energy, which is going to help you maintain your mass,
your muscle mass, because you will break down muscle mass during treatment
if you're not getting enough calories in.
And that's one thing to keep in mind, even if you are overweight,
I have a lot of patients tell me that they feel, they're 400 pounds and five foot
and they need to lose some weight.
The problem is if you lose weight during this process,
it tends to be the weight that you don't want to lose.
It's that muscle mass loss, not the fat mass loss that you want to lose.
And then again, it takes away from the energy that you can have during the treatment.
It optimizes your immune function, which is what's going to help you fight the cancer.
So you want that running at 150% if at all possible.
And it's going to speed up your recovery.
You're going to get back to feeling like you usually do after the treatment much faster
if you get the calories in to maintain your weight.
And it's going to help you heal better after surgery.
There are about five key ways that you can get enough calories
in without making eating a full-time job.
One is to make every bite and sip count to basically eat the exact opposite
of how we would want you to typically eat.
Instead of focusing on lower fat, lots of fruits and vegetables, I want you to focus
on higher fat, higher calorie foods such as whole milk, cream, gravies, sauces,
adding some syrup, some honey to some of the products,
so you get more calories in a smaller portion.
For, I have an example here.
So you have two different kinds of soups, a broccoli soup,
which has only about 200 calories for two cups of it.
And then there's a cream-based soup.
This, if you make it with whole milk, which is kind of what it says
on the label to do, you have 390 calories.
So for the same two cup amount, you'd be getting almost an extra 200 calories just
by choosing a different type of soup, being a little more strategic in the way that you eat.
You can also bump the calories up more by using half and half instead
of whole milk when you're using the product.
And that's going to get you 520 calories.
And then whether you wanted the cream-based soup or the broccoli soup, if you added a third
of cup of cheese to it, it's not going to feel like you ate more,
but you added an extra 110 calories to say the 200 or the 520
if that's what you were shooting for.
Another tip that's really helpful is eat often, even if it's only a couple of bites.
A couple of bites will add up if you're doing it frequently throughout the day.
So for example, if you only were able to eat half of a granola bar, and that's all you felt
like you could do at that time period, if you did that six times a day,
by the end of the day you'd eat three whole granola bars.
And that's going to be getting you over 500 calories just
by doing the minimal that you can get by with, okay.
Don't skip meals.
Try and eat by the clock.
If you normally eat at eight, noon and six, then eat at eight, noon and six.
If you don't have the hunger cue that's encouraging you to eat, maybe use other cues
within your environment, whether it's the times that you take medications if you're doing
that frequently throughout the day,
the times that your favorite TV shows come on, or other family members.
If they feel like eating because they're hungry, follow their cues.
Make use of when you're feeling hunger and when you're having good days.
There's definitely going to be good days where you feel like you're back to your normal
and you can eat your normal amount.
Don't feel like you're going to eat too much on those days.
If you feel like having McDonald's milkshake, French fries and a hamburger that day,
and then hey that was an extra thousand calories
that you weren't getting on, you know, a different day.
And keep in mind when your hunger does strike, your body's not working on cuing you to eat,
because it's working on trying to heal you right now.
So when you do have a hunger cue, it might not last for very long.
So keeping something like a granola bar in your purse or in your car so that you can eat it
for that three minutes that you actually felt hungry can be a way
to use your hunger to your advantage.
Lastly, if all of these tips are still not really getting you too excited
about eating, you can set the mood.
And it sounds silly, but if you find something that you like to do.
Say you like watching TV.
If you eat while you're watching TV,
there's studies that show we eat more when we're watching TV.
Maybe it's the commercials.
Maybe it's the fact that we're distracted, but we do eat more.
Try and pick something that's upbeat too.
We tend to eat more when we're happy, so a comedy might be better for you.
If you like talking, you know, either plan to have meals with family or call somebody
or Skype somebody while you're having your meals.
You'll probably find that you eat more than if you weren't.
Set the music so that you have a happy tone or just something that makes you happy.
Even if it is a more melody that goes along with it.
All of those things can help you get the calories and the protein
that you need during treatment so that you can recover and get through as best as you can.
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