Thursday, 27 November 2014

Diet

(Sorry, not the Japanese parliament!)

How powerful is our attitude to food, how influential our approach to it can be on our overall well being!

For a long time, particularly during "those 10 weeks" and even more in the awful following 10 days, I had wholly abdicated my responsibilities for food to Diana (bless her), not caring if I had a Fortijuce or sponge pudding for dinner, and only vaguely aware of my nutritional needs.  Maybe the most telling thing of all was the fear of having to eat three times a day, every day for ever.  A truely debilitating thought.  And even though it's all explicable in terms of my reaction to the radio-therapy inspired fatigue and chemo tiredness, that's no way to recovery and no wonder I lost so much weight. The negative inward dark spiral was, I now see, fed by my failure to eat.  Diana cared so much, but there was only so much she could do to keep my body and soul together.

And then something happened.  No idea what - effect of steroids?  CST?  Some magic moment?  Whatever it was, something 10+ days ago swapped the spiral round (around the time of my "light at the end of the tunnel" posting?), and my desire to eat returned.  Or was it the other way around - did my desire to eat switch the spiral?  Whatever the cause, I know there is a direct correlation to this joyful wellness I feel now and an increase in calories from c. 1400 per day to 2200.

But it's not only the quantity - being "well" means you can think positively about the next meal (let's have Chicken wraps for lunch!) while still eating breakfast - such thoughts would have been impossible then.  Indeed, if Diana even mentioned food I'd struggle dreadfully...  Now, it's a real quality of life thing, something we all take for granted until it's not there...

And there's more - you know I'm a bit of a technology person, and via my son we've discovered a wonderful "diet tracking" app, that not only adds up calories (reading bar codes into a tablet computer still amazes me!), but also tracks protein levels, carbs, fat and all the other vital nutrients we need.  And, being me, you also will not be surprised to hear it fascinates and helps me to have that feedback, for example that my protein balance is close to the mark, that I'm getting enough iron and vitamin C etc., and most intriguingly being able to compare foods (not all bagels are the same!!!)

I always knew that diet (and exercise!) is is the one major positive factor I can directly control, how it influences the impact of all the other side effects I have to cope with, and which make me a happier or sadder person.  If only dietitians had a bigger influence in the overall cancer-care regime... (and - almost impossible I know - if hospital food was more carefully tailored to the patients' needs).


PS:  Weight wise I'm stable right now - the effects of chemo on my digestive system are such that my body is less effective at absorbing what it needs than yours.  So while the app is predicting weight gain, I'll probably have to wait to week 2 of each cycle to see any evidence of that.

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