Has the chemo been giving you a lousy, metallic taste in your mouth lately? Have your medications been giving you dry mouth, leaving you to keep dropping weight like crazy? In this post I mention ten foods that got me the calories I needed during my treatments and saved me from needing a feeding tube.
For any of you currently going through cancer treatments, or watching a loved one fight the horrible disease, it’s no question that weight loss is a big deal. Sometimes it can be from the metallic taste that chemotherapy comes with, and other times the radiation might just be leaving us too tired to even be hungry.
Whatever it is, having an appetite can be a constant struggle for some of us and not getting enough calories to keep our weight up can lead to health issues down the line.
The first time I was diagnosed back in 2009, I lost 42 pounds in a matter of weeks. That is not something to shrug off. I went from a healthy 180 pound hockey player to a 138 pound skeleton VERY quickly. In fact, because I was bedridden for the few weeks that I was in the hospital around my diagnosis, I didn’t see myself in the mirror once during that weight drop period. I still remember looking into the mirror and not recognizing the man that was looking back at me.
And then again during my bone marrow transplant in 2016, my weight was dropping so quickly that the doctors told me I’d need a feeding tube if I didn’t start eating.
And for anyone that’s gone through cancer treatments, you’ll understand that it’s not just about “not being hungry” or “not having an appetite.” When you’re on chemo and your body doesn’t want food, it means that your body will not let you eat food no matter how many people tell you that you need to eat. Just the thought of eating used to make me nauseous at times.
My point here is that there is a dilemma when fighting cancer – we need to eat, but our bodies won’t let us eat.
Okay, so what do we do?
In this post I’ve laid out a few of the foods that have gotten me through some really bad weight loss periods, whether it was from dry mouth, nausea, or just not having any kind of appetite. I hope they can help you too!
One disclaimer I feel the need to mention here is please talk with your doctors if you’re questioning whether or not you can eat some of this stuff. The last thing I want is for something on this list to make someone sick.
Tip #1: Fruit cups
These were an absolute life-saver for me (quite literally). When I was in transplant and I had such bad “dry mouth” that I could barely swallow, I used to love these things. Most hospitals have them I think, but if not they are pretty easy to find at the grocery store. Dole pear and peach fruit cups. I would actually look forward to them every morning because they were sugary, very moist, and delicious.
Bonus tip: Applesauce is great too. Or even just cooked apples. We used to skin a couple of apples, cut them up, put them in a pot with about 2 inches of boiling of water and let them simmer until they were soft. We drained them and added a little bit a cinnamon and those were a great, easy to digest snack too!
Tip #2: Ensure Nutrition Drinks
In all honesty, these were not my favorite, but they helped a lot. They are packed with calories and nutrients. My hospital had a supply of them, so check with your doctor or nurse. The brand Ensure makes them in chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and maybe even more now. In my experience, drinking calories is much easier than eating them when your body doesn’t want food. Even just taking tiny sips throughout the day adds up.
Tip #3: Boost Breeze
This might be my favorite in-hospital “treat” on the list. They are little juice boxes from Nestle that have 250 calories each and 9g of protein. But here’s the kicker – don’t drink them! Instead, pour them out into a cup or bowl, put them in the freezer, and in an hour or so you have a nutritious, high calorie italian ice that tastes amazing! My dad used to do that for me when I was in the hospital. This was just about all I ate after my transplant when I had mouth sores running from my mouth most of the way down my esophagus.
Tip #4: Popsicles
This one is a little more obvious and well-known, but it’s too good of an option to leave off the list. Yummy, not dry, and sometimes can even count as extra liquid when you have doctors telling you that you need to drink more fluids (check on that before you count it though!). What else could you ask for?
Tip #5: Fruit smoothies
During recovery from my transplant when I was trying to put weight back on, my wife (girlfriend at the time) would make me these amazing, calorie-packed fruit smoothies. She would put all kinds of frozen berries and juice, and her secret was that she would add a splash of olive oil and grind up either dry oats or cashews to add more calories. I couldn’t taste the extra add-ins and the shakes were delicious! A lot of hospitals will have high-calorie smoothies from the cafeteria too. Be sure to ask!
Bonus tip – if you can drink dairy, using 2% or whole milk instead of skim milk will bump up the calories even more.
Tip #6: Soup and rolls
You’re probably sick of hearing about my dry-mouth by now, right? Well that was a huge factor in what I could eat for the longest time so a lot of these foods have to abide by that! So the soup really worked well for me. Soups by themselves don’t generally have a ton of calories, but when you add in some bread to dunk, it changes the whole game. I used to have Annie’s chicken and stars soup with something like four rolls on the side or some Ritz crackers.
Tip #7: Pasta with butter and salt
I know what you’re thinking. Who the heck would want plain pasta with butter and salt? But guys, this was a staple for me for so long. I was seriously craving salt at one point so I’d throw some spaghetti in a bowl, add a hunk of butter for calories (and to make it less dry), and every bite I would shake some salt onto it. Don’t do this if salt is an issue for you of course, but for me the doctors said I could use more salt in my diet so this was perfect!
Tip #8: Casseroles
I was on SUCH a chicken pot pie and shepherd’s pie kick at one point during my treatments. There is just something about a bunch of different flavors all in one dish that seemed to appeal to me even when I didn’t want anything else. It wasn’t dry, it was flavorful, and generally had a lot of calories and nutrients packed into a small portion. Bonus tip from my mother in law, you can use sweet potato instead of regular potato for the shepherd’s pie!
Tip #9: Soft pretzels
Did I mention my dry mouth and salt cravings? Oh I did? Well I’m mentioning them again because dry mouth was such a huge issue for me! I couldn’t eat regular pretzels because they were too dry, but I really wanted the saltiness. So I started eating frozen soft pretzels. They just needed to be warmed up in the microwave and have the butter and salt poured over them. I must have eaten a hundred of those things.
Tip #10: Ice cream
Annndddd last but not least, what sort of a list would this be if I didn’t mention ice cream? I didn’t personally eat a lot of it because I wasn’t allowed to have dairy dairy for a little while during my transplant, but ice cream is yummy, high calorie, and if you buy an ice cream that has quality ingredients it’s not even that bad for you as long as you don’t go crazy with it. I know I’ll probably have some people out there saying that “ice cream isn’t healthy” and blah blah blah, but hey, when your weight is dropping from 180 pounds to 138 pounds before you even have time to notice, sometimes you just need calories in whatever form appeals to you at the time.
So there you have it. Some of the ways that I was able to get calories even when my body wanted nothing to do with any of it. I understand the frustrations and the struggles but I sincerely hope this list can help some of you out there that feel like you’ve tried everything under the sun.
As always, please feel free to reach out to me on my contact page if you have any questions, tips of your own, topics you would like to see covered, or just feel like chatting to someone that’s been through it. I am always here for you.
-Alex
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