Starting TC in a few days. Good staple food ideas?

Sara - you should definitely join the chemo thread for September. It was such a help going through chemo with other women in the same place. And go back and read the chemo thread for August. Always lots of good ideas.

That said, it will depend on your side effects. I took a bacon/cheese/potato breakfast taco with me to every infusion. Strangely enough the only thing I wanted for supper was french fries from Burger King. 24 hour later I had a Neulasta shot, and I usually had a biscuit. But my main SE was diarrhea. Therefore I ate mostly the BRAT diet. Some people get constipation, and that's an totally different diet. All of these things can be found on thread by the "search" function.

Quick things - like Seeds of Change rice that cooks in 90 seconds is good. Instant Oatmeal is good. I had a Carnation Instant Breakfast nearly every morning. English muffins with peanut better. Cottage cheese with canned peaches. Baked potatoes were good. See a trend? I didn't eat green salads. I ate very few veggies. I ate macaroni & butter. I ate lots of soups. Ice Cream. Chicken. I'm a savory person instead of sweet person, so it was no big deal that cakes & pies didn't appeal.

You'll have to see what your taste buds want. Good luck girl.

Hi Sara. As the others have said, you won't know what you want or need until you want it. I had 4 cycles AC, every 2 weeks, in summer 2019. I think I had scrambled eggs and toast for dinner on each of my infusion days. I had very little nausea, never threw up, didn't have constipation or diarrhea. I had a pretty good (normal) appetite most of the time. So my diet didn't change much.

I drank A LOT of water. It tasted horrid, even though I'm a water drinker. Other people say the same. I used Crystal Light type of concoction but at a lot lower concentration than the recipe. I made up pitchers of it so it was easy to dilute that way. THAT I could drink. Just water was nasty. Other than that, most things didn't change for me, except avocados. Used to love them. Now they are not okay.

If you get a chance to speak with a Registered Dietician, do that. However, they will probably tell you to eat more protein, and not have much more guidance. Protein can be plant form or meat, or eggs. Whatever appeals to you.

Your immunity may be poor, so stay out of the stores if you can. Get delivery or have someone else go. If people (friends) offer to bring you food, take them up on it, but have someone else coordinate that process. I didn't need anyone to help with that, as I could still cook for myself and my husband, or he took care of it. (Still, it would have been nice now and then to have someone else cook!)

Best of luck.

Gatorade. I don't know why. I have never been a Gatorade drinker, but for some reason, I absolutely crave it.

Hi again Sarabeara,

We're glad you've found these posts from our members helpful!

In addition, we'd like to point you to the main Breastcancer.org site's pages on How and What to Eat When You Have Treatment-Related Side Effects which offers tips on how to eat while managing certain side effects of treatment.

We hope this helps and we look forward to seeing you around the boards!

--The Mods

Sarabeara:

That was the $10,000 question for me during chemotherapy. I would find something I could eat after one infusion, stock up, and be unable to eat it after the next infusion. Generally I found it far easier and more cost effective to eat at hot food bars, though some sources recommend those with compromised immune systems avoid them, and most are closed right now due to covid.

Generally though, things I could eat with some consistency during the bad portion of my cycle were...

1. Chicken noodle soup from the market soup bar. I could not eat canned soup.

2. Egg whites.

3. Waffles, bagles, and bread.

4. Yogurt and pudding...probably ice cream as well but I was limiting my dairy.

5. Canned olives (possibly carcinogenic but whatever).

6. Mac n cheese, but again I was limiting my dairy intake.

By the end of the second week, my mouth sensitivity and acid reflux had usually resolved but I would start to lose my sense of taste. During this time, I liked marinated things and could tolerate Red's brand bean and rice burritos (hard to find) and shortening free chicken tamales from the local farmer's market though I mainly ate the masa.

The last week of my cycle I could eat salads and turkey chili from Trader Joe's as long as I kept my portion sizes small.

I didn't have a lot of food weirdness during TAC; I wasn't nauseated at all and textures didn't bother me. Once, though, my husband was making soup from a smoked turkey carcass and the smell was intolerable to me. He had to abandon his project. And I really lost the ability to appreciate extremely sweet foods, which has lasted to this day. A bite of someone else's dessert, just to see how it tastes, is all I really care for. I'm OK with that!