- Hello, my name is Tonya Craven, a dietician with Nashville General Hospital.

On today's "For your good health," we're gonna be talking about healthy eating habits during and after your cancer treatment.

We say eat the rainbow.

All your fruits and vegetables, the more color, the more vibrant color, are gonna give you those vitamins and minerals.

We want to help you keep a healthy weight, not overweight, not underweight.

We don't want you to lose weight, so we're trying to maintain those calories and protein during your treatments.

One of the easy ways to add calories is to add fat, but we wanna make sure those are healthier fats.

The trans fats and the saturated fats are harder on your heart.

That's like the lard, the heavy marbled meats.

Especially during treatments, we wanna make sure you're getting your fluid intake to help your body absorb the medicines, and then to flush those extra medicines out.

We want you to have water, but you can also have fluids with juices, milk and dairy products.

Fiber is another nutrient that's important.

High fiber foods include your fruits and vegetables, your beans, peas, legumes, all the greens and yellows are there.

We want to try to use our food as our nutrients.

Fruits and vegetables, beans.

All of the food groups will have those nutrients.

And yes, if you think you need an extra supplement, please ask your physician and your team.

We don't want any over the counter medicines interfering with your treatment.

You may want to consider decreasing your red meat and processed meats.

Those things have nitrites and different preservatives.

There are multiple ways you can prepare your foods, and we want to try to preserve the nutrients.

So baking, grilling, broiling are gonna be good for your meats.

Maybe just steam your vegetables in the microwave and therefore you keep that vibrant color and they're not boiled where they seep out in the water.

Dietitians are an important part of the team, and if you're having difficulty chewing or swallowing, having nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, just ask for assistance.

We're a part of the team and we wanna be able to help you.

Again, my name is Tonya Craven.

Thank you for watching "For your good health."