1. Base Your Diet on Your Symptoms
Understanding how certain foods affect your body can help you temporarily eliminate those foods from your diet during and shortly after colorectal-cancer treatment. A common ailment during and after radiation treatment, chemotherapy and surgery is diarrhea. High-fiber fruits and vegetables, onions and cabbage, carbonated drinks, beer and very rich or fatty foods may cause you to experience diarrhea while you are recovering from colorectal cancer. You should maintain a food log of what you eat and if any symptoms occur. If they do, be sure to document it so you can identify the food culprit.
After a few weeks, you should be able to reintroduce these types of foods into your diet. Instead of rich and fatty foods, however, opt for lean meats, dairy or soy, whole-grain breads, fruits and vegetables and plenty of protein-rich products that help your body maintain strength and energy, fight infection and heal itself.
2. Diversify Your Diet
Seek out new recipes to make cooking and eating more enjoyable. Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, and be creative with how you consume them. Raw or uncooked vegetables and whole or juiced fruits provide you with a variety of options. Furthermore, you can add fruits and vegetables to other dishes to take advantage of their flavors in pasta sauces, casseroles, salads, soups and stews.
3. Eat Many Small Meals
Following colorectal-cancer treatment, you should eat many small meals to ease the digestive process. Eating healthy foods regularly helps to maintain blood-sugar levels and body weight.
Meal-replacement energy bars and protein-rich shakes and drinks are readily available in stores. You can also learn to make your own smoothies at home using fruits, nuts, yogurt, peanut putter, honey, protein powder, vitamins in liquid or powder form and many other fresh foods and dietary supplements.
