Sunday, July 29, 2012

Chemo and weight gain

When my mom had cancer 20 years ago and she went through chemotherapy, she lost so much weight because she was so sick. Well, a lot has changed in 20 years! I'm not gonna lie, when I found out I was going to have to get chemo I thought well at least there will be one positive thing about all this....I'll lose weight.

At this point I had been eating raw foods and fresh juices since the day I was diagnosed. I had lost about 15 or so pounds and looked great. When I found out about chemo the nutritionist told me I couldn't eat like that anymore because there was too much risk in me getting an infection from bacteria or whatever on fruits and veggies.

So needless to say, I pretty much just ate whatever tasted good which was Mexican food and a bunch of other junk. With all the steroids you take you are starving all the time it seems. And really, I think I gained weight whether I ate too much or not! It was terrible.

Since finishing chemo I did lose the 20 pounds of weight I gained only to turn around and gain 30!!!! I know a lot of you who have had chemo have struggled with the same thing. Well, last Tuesday I started the Glycemic Index diet and have lost 9.4 pounds now!! So I only have 20 more to go. You can Google it and find out all about it. I also went to the library and got every book they had on it so I could see what all I could eat and what kind of recipes I could make.

It's been relatively easy. And this is the first weekend I have made it through without blowing it on the weekend. And this is the first week I really stuck to it. I don't think I've ever lost weight this fast in one week but I am really excited about it. Deryl is doing the same thing only he doesn't eat fruit, bread, rice or pasta and he lost 5 pounds the first two days! So, just wanted to throw that out there for those of you struggling with your weight. It's at least worth a shot, right?