What's a healthy diet for a cancer survivor?

Healthy diet suggestions for cancer survivors include eating within an hour of waking, eating every 3-4 hours, eating most calories early in the day, and avoiding refined sugars. Oncologist Pallav Mehta, MD, explains these guidelines.

Transcript

00:00

Trying to get your calories in the first half of the day rather than the second half of the day-- remember,

00:06

throughout the day, we're always moving. And the calories that we take in, we tend to use up. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:19

A lot about diet actually pertains to how you eat, how much you eat, and when you eat, even sometimes more than

00:28

exactly what you're eating. What I tell my patients is a few important points about diet. The first thing is within an hour

00:34

of waking up in the morning, you should have something to eat. What I recommend is at least 7 to 10 grams of fiber

00:40

and at least 15 to 20 grams of protein. And there's lots of different ways to do that. And trying to do that with limiting saturated fat

00:47

and limiting sugars is important. A second tenet of diet is to eat every 3 to 4 hours.

00:55

If you wait too long to eat, your body actually takes protein for fuel. And protein's in muscle. So you tend to lose muscle when you wait too long.

01:03

And then finally, trying to get your calories in the first half of the day rather than

01:10

the second half of the day. Remember, throughout the day we're always moving, and the calories that we take in, we tend to use up.

01:16

The calories you have at night when you have that big dinner, you sit on the sofa, you watch TV, and then you go to bed. And those calories are stored, often, as fat.

01:24

If there's one big piece of advice I can recommend, it's to avoid refined sugars.

01:30

And refined sugar refers to the sweet stuff that's in the cupcakes, the sodas, the cakes, et cetera.

01:37

But it also refers to anything with white flour. So learn to read the nutrition label and the ingredients and avoid white flour because of the impact

01:45

it has on different hormones in the body and how those hormones can lead to cancer growth and stimulation of cancer cells.