American Cancer Society Nutrition and Physical Activity Guideline for Cancer Survivors

Good food choices can help cancer survivors keep up their energy, feel better, and stay strong. What you need nutritionally during treatment depends on the type of cancer, your treatments, and any side effects you might have.

General tips for healthy eating habits

During and after treatment, it is important to eat well. This means:

• Eating a variety of plant-based foods: vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and beans. Don’t be afraid to try something new!
• Choosing foods rich in nutrients, not high in added sugar, fat, or calories. These foods can help you get to and stay at a healthy body weight.
• Limiting red and processed meats (such as beef, pork, and bacon and deli meats), sugar-sweetened beverages, highly processed foods (such as cakes, cookies, and candy), and refined grains (such as white flour and white rice).
• Choosing healthy protein sources such as fish, poultry, beans, and lentils. Consider eating beans and peas instead of meat a few times a week.

These tips follow healthy eating patterns found in the ACS Guideline for Diet and Physical Activity for Cancer Prevention. They are useful for survivors who don’t have nutrition problems or side effects that make eating difficult. Treatment side effects—like changes in taste or smell, poor appetite, or digestive problems—can make it hard to eat well. This can lead to weight loss, muscle loss, and poor nutrition. People being treated for cancers of the digestive system are most at risk.

Being physically active after a cancer diagnosis can make a big difference in helping you cope with side effects from treatment, improve your quality of life, and possibly decrease the risk of you getting new types of cancer. Research shows that exercise may help people with breast, colorectal, and prostate cancer live longer, and evidence is growing that it might help with other cancers, too.

Physical activity can help with cancer-related side effects:

• Reduce anxiety, depression, fatigue, and lymphedema
• Improve quality of life, bone health, and sleep

General tips for being physically active

Exercise is safe for most people with cancer, but it’s always best to talk with your treatment team before starting or changing your activity plan. They can help you choose safe and effective exercises.

Once your doctor says it’s okay to get started, be sure to:

• Start slowly
• Listen to your body
• Be safe
• Choose safe locations
• Protect yourself from infection
• Swimming during treatment
• Exercise with someone

Gradually increase what you can do. Work toward one of the current physical activity recommendations below for general health and add muscle-strengthening activities:

• From 150 to 300 minutes per week of moderate-intensity activity during which you can talk but not sing (for example, brisk walking, yoga, leisurely bicycling)

• From 75 to 150 minutes per week of vigorous-intensity activity where you have trouble talking or are out of breath (examples include running, swimming, singles tennis)

• A combination of the two intensities  

• Muscle-strengthening activities 2 or more days a week (examples include hand weights, exercise bands, and body weight activities such as push-ups or squats).

If you want exercise plans tailored to specific issues such as fatigue, anxiety, or depression, visit Moving Through Cancer from the American College of Sports Medicine.

 

The effect of alcohol on cancer recurrence and survival is not clear for most cancers. People with head and neck cancer or liver cancer who drink alcohol, however, do not live as long as those who don’t. For other cancers, the link is less certain.

During treatment, it may be safest to limit or avoid alcohol. Alcohol can:

• Worsen mouth sores caused by radiation or chemotherapy
• Interact with some chemotherapy drugs
• Irritate areas being treated with radiation

Always talk with your treatment team about whether it’s safe for you to drink alcohol during treatment.