Hello Danette! Welcome! I'm glad you joined our group.
Yes, you can still lose weight when you are doing the radiation. A good way is to increase your protein. You will feel more energy.
The other day I had liver (yuk!) and vegetables for lunch and I felt so energetic! It was amazing. I don't generally eat organ meats but my girlfriend told me that was the answer to her abundant energy (and she has tons) and it worked for me too. I had lots of energy all day.
To answer your question, the Tamoxifen made me feel as though I was dragging a truck behind me. My solution was to get the smaller dose pills and take 1/2 in the morning and 1/2 at night. You can ask your pharmacist about that. It is not a nice drug to have to take. I managed to take it for 2 years and then quit because it started to affect my eyes. Get your eyes checked when you start the pills and every 6 months afterwards.
When I was diagnosed with breast cancer I immediately went on a diet and lost my excess weight and to do that I basically ate only 4 things: Fruit, Vegetables, Whole Grains and Beans, ( plus someFish and some Chicken). I learned to cook very well with those food for years. Then I started to drive through McDonalds again and guess what? The cancer came back. Food, weight, exercise are very important. What you have to remember is that it's not how much you eat, it's WHAT you eat. I eat tons of food all day long and am not fat anymore. The trick is to get your bowels moving and that gets rid of the excess estrogen. If you aren't moving your bowels everyday you won't lose weight so easily and you are not eating enough vegetable fibre.
First...
What I did is I went through my house and got rid of all the packaged junk food, took it to the food bank.
If it's not in the house you can't eat it.
Then on the way home I went to the store.
I bought fresh apples and vegetables and made a salad that was big enough for 20 people and put it in my fridge.
Every time I opened the door I ate the salad. I made it delicious. So I wanted to eat it.
Breakfast was 2 toast (Squirlley bread) and coffee. That is the fiber that you need to get things moving. (I used avocado or sliced banana instead of butter).
Snack was fruit. As much as you want. (Who can eat an orange, apple and a banana at 10 a.m. ?) That's only 200+ calories.
Lunch was a huge bowel of salad. No lettuce, I just chopped up 5 or 6 different vegetables and then threw a handful of cranberries or dried cherries and very few nuts or sun dried tomatoes or something good that I liked on top. I'd eat 3 bowls of it. Supper would be four bowls of vegetable soup. (hence the name Gorger!) (Heart smart soup). I'd eat and eat and eat vegetables. And I very seldom have my calories go over 1300. No matter which way you spin it, you can't over eat calories that way. It works and it's good and it's fulfilling.
I chose the lowest calories foods. Yukkie... Oysters have basically no calories, and today I ate boiled cauliflower with sun dried tomatoes and goats cheese. It was so good and I ate two bowls full. You can eat! And you will feel good when you eat this way. Dieting needs only to be- replacing that which you are addicted to- with something that is better for you. That's it. If you start doing that you will lose weight. Noodles and pasta and white garbage make me feel tired, bloated, and like there is cement in my gut.
I eat nothing that is white and nothing that is beige and every time I put food in my mouth I ask myself the question..."Is this a fruit, vegetable, whole grain or bean? Is this good for me?". I find new vegetable receipes to try. I eat very little dairy and take calcium. Sometimes I have a tablespoon of zero fat greek vanilla yogurt on top of my fruit. (Try this if you want sweets....get a pie plate and put a bag of frozen raspberries in it, stir in sugar, add a couple tablespoons of flour to thicken and bake as a pie with no crust. When it is warm, put a blob of greek yogurt on top of it. You can eat the whole darned thing and if you count the calories you will wonder why you ever ate anything else. It hits the sugar spot. And then walk. What I do is think of who I want to phone. Then I put on my running shoes and head out the door with the dog and my phone. I dial the number. By the time I've walked a half hour, the call has ended and I'm back home and I never noticed that I walked. Also, instead of meeting a friend for lunch, meet them for a walk. Even if you are tired. First time 5 minutes, second time 10, pretty soon 40 minutes. Eat to live. Not live to eat. Hope this helps you! People will resist and discourage you. Don't listen to them. Whoever is giving you the advice, take a long look at them. Are they overweight? Why would you listen? Make socializing to be not food focused. Also get a Vitamin D blood test. Breast cancer patients seem to be deficient. Same with M.S. patients. So....go get 3 huge tomatoes, cut them in half, put a small piece of cheese on each one and put under the broiler. Then walk away from the table smiling because you are stuffed and full and ate very few calories. I'll be you can't eat all three! You won't ever feel deprived. Eating apples means you can eat all day long. Tell yourself that you can eat the horrid and unhealthy thing that you are craving, but not until you have eaten 9 1/2 cups of fruits and vegetables that day. Believe me... You will never get to the junk that you were craving.

OP, I don't know if this is the right course of action for you, but my doctor and I determined that I should work to maintain my weight through chemo and radiation. The radiation was touching my heart and we wanted to minimize changes and adjustments during the radiation. I have lost 70 lbs in the five years since.

As an aside, I am about to leave for a Survivorship Series at the U of . Here are some of the topics.

Future of Cancer Survivorship
Staying healthy after cancer therapy
Exercise for cancer surviors
Cognitive function and cancer therapy
Sexual health and cancer survivorship
Maintaining a healthy heart
Growin through the Narrow Spot in the Hourglass

Maybe I'll post something on another topic when I get back.

Vegetables are the least desirable things for me to eat too! I try to trick myself by using nuts instead of croutons and mashed cauliflower instead of mashed potatoes. Things like that.
...Best wishes with your radiation treatments. Please check in and let us all know how you are doing. If anyone is having difficulties coping let us know and we can totally arrange telephone support for each other. I'm as near as the phone. (Probably Gorging on something:)

Good day everyone!! - I'm newly diagnosed (2/2012) - lumpectomy 3/2012 - just had my CT scan today for mapping my radiation and will be waiting to hear when treatment will start - sometime in mid to end of April - did anyone have any luck with losing weight during radiation treatments or did you all just concentrate on getting through? I really don't think my body likes the Tamoxifen I've recently started either - I just feel bloated, tired, etc...I know, I'm a whiner.....not really, just feel too tired to even get up and go other than what I have to do to get through my day.... any tips of any kind would be greatly appreciated - Hugs to all - Danette

Welcome, Danette. I'm at the same stage... two more chemo treatments then on to radiation (30 treatments). I start Tamoxifen next year, after Herceptin is finished. So, I thank you for posting these questions and I look forward to any and all advice you get back.

Question though... had you heard that weight gain during radiation was normal? Because it's taking every ounce of strength and constant vigilance to PREVENT gain weight during chemo, let alone achieve a weight LOSS.

Kathy

Thank you so much!
When I first joined MFP, I couldn't help but study the diets of the anorexics on this interesting and informative diet site. ...(You know how some people let you read their diaries). ...Well, there are some people on MFP that are trying to gain weight and some that want to lose weight and some that are tracking their sodium or sugar intake etc. So I made a point to snoop at the diaries of those who were having problems with gaining. Most notably some underweight people eat quite a lot of food and often times they eat in front of their loved ones to cover up the fact that they are anorexic.
I noticed that some were eating Body Wise bread. (50 calories a slice). So in other words, it looks to their families as though they eat 2 pieces of toast for breakfast or in their sandwich when really they are only eating 100 calories. So, there is no deprivation. And they also eat no calories to speak of. So....That's the key.
Then I also noticed that some of these people I was following also ate apples quite a bit. (Apples also stop cancer). So, by mid-day these thin people had only consumed 150 calories even though they ate the same amounts of food that I ate. They just simply ate differently. Lunch would be a lovely salad and a piece of meat and so would supper. And again there was the apple in the afternoon, big juicy and delicious and people saw them eating so the alarm bells weren't going off. They certainly weren't starving themselves. But there were reducing calories on purpose. So, 2 toast, 1 apple, a huge salad, a piece of salmon, another apple, more salad and a fruit in the evening and wahoo! A grand total of 700 calories a day! They also used that low calorie mayonnaise and on it went.
So, today I ate 2 Body Wise Toast at breakfast, two at mid morning snack, I made a vegetable soup with a hot and sour soup base mix and put avocado on top to get the texture of meat so I didn't feel deprived and then I ate the soup again for supper and I even ate a 400 calorie treat at 3 p.m. a cinnamon scone and my total calorie for today is a whopping 1000 and I sure am not hungry.
I have just learned to cook vegetables in a way to make them delicious. It takes time. But if you make lots, you can take them to work with an apple. The difference between a fat person and a thin person is not much. The heavy person eats the same as the thin person except they only eat one more sandwich than the thin person every day. That adds up to a 52 pound gain over one year. With just the extra sandwich. Thats why heavy people say they don't eat much because often they don't. The thin person eats the same as the heavy person except they don't eat the sandwich before they go to bed and they also replace a couple of foods a day with lower calories substitutes. That's it. Simple. Everyone is noticing that I have lost weight. Yet I am eating to battle this disease with healthy foods. I eat way too much. Yet I am losing weight. I also listened to Matt Cutt's 30 day challenge. Here is the link. It so motivated me! http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_cutts_try_something_new_for_30_days.html

Wow! You are right about the markings for the radiation. (Although, I don't think I could lose enough weight in 3 weeks to mess that up anyway. haha )... oh dear! I seem to like to eat lately. If I didn't eat my vegetables I would weigh 4000 pounds!

I just made a vegetable sandwich. One piece of bread with low calorie mayonnaise, mustard, layers of tomatoes and cucumbers, red onions and avocado. The onions make it tasty. I am so full because I had two huge servings (total of 2 breads). That was 400 calories and I am stuffed. If I ate that much of any other kind of sandwich I'd be as big as a horse. ( I need to stop eating so much.) I need another hobby.:)

As for the Tamoxifen, I had problems too and so was prescribed the 1/2 dose, twice a day pills. It reduced the side effects for me.
When I was on that drug it felt as though I was dragging a wheel barrel full of lead behind me when I walked. It's nasty.

The thing to do is to eat healthy stuff. It's so important in this battle. Make sure you get enough Vitamin D. I likely now - am being diagnosed with M.S. as well as the breast cancer. MS can be related to a vitamin D deficiency. Same with some cancers. I either have M.S. or I've had a stroke from the Letrozole and Tamoxifen I was on. ( I have more medical problems than our local hospital
I am losing my balance when I walk. And I continue to have flashing lights in my right eye. Numbness on my left side of my face, blurred vision, tingling, tightness and muscle spasms in my legs, word searching problems when I speak and sometimes my words come out like a drunk person. Slurred speech. God help me.

A sense of humour helps me cope.

Good food, laughter, love and heath to all of you.

Hi Itzmeshel I'm am new to this group. I was diagnosed with Triple Negative BC March 2011. 4 x ACT and 4 x Taxoll both every two weeks followed by 7 weeks of radiation. Finished with chemo in September but still experiencing side effects, peripheral neuropathy. I love to elk but find that after more than 30 minutes my feet burn. Glad to be on this site to keep me motivated.

Welcome TrinaMargaret. Hope you are well. What does "triple negative" mean? How did you find the radiation treatments? I start next week, 30 in all, and am a bit nervous about it all. Burns are the worst! The women in this room are awesome! So much to learn... Kathy

Welcome to our group!
I had breast cancer in 2001, then again in 2010, then I just about went blind in January from Angle Closure Glaucoma, ( a silent thing I got from the cataracts that were caused by the Tamoxifen. After which I just got diagnosed with M.S. Go figure? Bad luck or what! All I can say is to eat 3 to 4 heaping plates of vegetables everyday. I think it's whats stopped me from getting metastases.
I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing right now. hahaha. I have more doctors than our local hospital!!!! The thing I do to cope is just block out the illness and continue my life just as it was. There's nothing else I can do otherwise I would be so depressed. Somehow I have reached inside for my inner strength and have just kept going. I'm still working full time, I have no other choice right now. I have no pension and no disability insurance and I am on my own. I'm kind of thinking about the fact that I lived 1/2 block from a hospital incinerator when I was a kid. They burned bio hazard material and there was always black dust on our windows etc. Dioxins and other chemicals is likely what was created. All the people that I keep in touch with that lived in the area seem to be getting auto immune disorders. It makes me wonder... What's going to come to us from the radiation of cell towers!

Thanks for reminding me about the mipilex (silacone self-adhesive then wound covering that you could wear through radiation). During my time in 2008, the thin version that was acceptable to wear through radiation was somewhat new. It saved me so much pain.

Over a month ago my L3 disk in the spine burst. No precipitating event. My specialist thinks that the chemo in late 2007 may have been a contributing factor. It is amazing the tentacles that the cancer treatment has. I have been working hard to maintain my weight, but my exercise has turned to physical therapy instead.

Hi netter, I guess your treatments should all be done by this time: Congratulations!

I began rads on 7 June and will be undergoing treatment roughly through the end of July.

I was diagnosed ER+/HER2- BC in November 2011, lumpectomy December 2011, completed chemo in mid-May. I opted for chemo instead of Tamoxifen because I didn't want to deal with the TMF side effects, but wound up in chemo-induced menopause just the same. Needless to say, I'm furious about this but there's nothing to do about it except wait and hope it's temporary.

The chemo drugs I was given induced a weight gain of some 20 pounds over 3 months. I'm beside myself with frustration, not to mention shame and a whole slew of body image issues (as if BC and breast surgery don't engender their own set of body image issues as it is!), all of which are exacerbated by my onco's insistence I not lose weight during radiation. She says "It's just a few more weeks, deal with it later" but this is hard medicine to take. The rationale, of course, is that rads depletes the body's energy stores during treatment, so if any weight loss does occur it comes from lean muscle mass and not adipose tissue. What's kicking my butt at the moment is that as my mind and energy levels return post-chemo - and, oh, by the way, it's now summer - I want to do something to shift the weight but at the same time not deplete the lean muscle. I'm told that although I have energy now, I'll feel depleted as rads continues. My nutritionist had me sign up here to track what I'm eating, suggesting 1800 calories, 120g protein per day in order to keep on top of things. I'm concerned that that is going to backfire on me and I'll have to buy more fat pants before this is all over. Worse, I'm freaked out that with the menopause now happening my metabolism will have changed and I won't even be able to lose the weight at all.

Who else has been in this situation? What did you do and how did it work out? I'm terrified that I'm destined to be a fat old lady now and don't see being cancer-free as a worthwhile trade for it.

..it is covering under my breast as I have a line of blisters there and under my arm where my bra rubs - I am a 44DDD so of course I cannot find any nice comfy cotton bras out there....and I even have a square patch over my nipple....it is a miracle helper....then at night I goop up with lidocaine jelly and Xclair cream.....all I can say is I'm ready to be done and put this behind me....

Did you continue to get worse for 2 weeks after your radiation stopped, netter? That's what they're telling me now. I have 2 left and they said the worst is yet to come. Yikes! I'm already scarlet with at least 2 spots about to break.