We all know the benefits and importance of eating healthy and exercising regularly. Sometimes it’s hard to follow this advice even when we know it’s best for us, but it’s even more important to keep a healthy lifestyle when diagnosed or recovering from a disease like breast cancer.
Eating a plant and whole-foods based diet as well as a half hour of regular exercise while maintaining a healthy weight is the best advice you can follow to lower the chance of repeated diagnosis and increase survival time. Eating nutritious foods and keeping a healthy weight prevents normal diseases, but also improves your mood and mental state, which can be important when fighting cancer.
During treatment it can be hard to continue a healthy lifestyle with the side effects of the breast cancer treatments:
- Some treatments can cause your weight to fluctuate regardless of diet & exercise
- Chemotherapy can cause changes in smell or taste and cause issue with eating the healthy foods your body needs
- The stress and physical toll of treatment can sometimes make it extremely hard to exercise
Again, the best advice for a healthy diet involves a largely plant based diet with little to no meat. A heavy amount of legumes and beans will help provide healthy protein and you should stay away from processed foods as well as anything high in salt or sugar. With these guidelines and the assistance of your treatment center resources you will have the healthiest foundation for your body to feel during and after treatment.
