AIBU to ask my friend to leave after criticising my diet?

[Dogingarden]

I have a friend staying with me at the moment because it's just been my birthday.

I have been having treatment for breast cancer and have had no appetite for several weeks. Today I had a craving for pizza and have eaten a large pizza and some chips. I've also eaten most of a bar of green and blacks chocolate today too, along with some other bits.

Friend isn't very impressed and has said several times I need to eat healthy food. She's very much into healthy eating and is very disciplined about what she eats.

I've explained that my consultant says to eat whatever I fancy when I fancy and not worry about what I'm eating as long as I'm getting calories. I have long nearly two stone from chemo side effects, for context.

Friend disagreed with this and said I shouldn't be eating "processed crap" because it's just going to make the cancer worse.

I'm extremely upset by her attitude and what she's said. She's gone up to bed and I'm sitting in the garden with my dog feeling awful. She's meant to be staying until wed but I'm going to ask her to leave in the morning.

Wibu?

On chemo, apart from nausea, I had that other lovely outcome - inflammation from mouth through gut to other end. My mainstay was mashed potato with gravy, yogurt, and lots of ice cream. (Ice cream is a famous chemo staple - very soothing.)

I lecture on health and nutrition - I know all this stuff people are advising. My oncologist knows. Really - who doesn't? I still got people with that toxic positivity vibe giving me their expert advice - made me want to bite them.

Five years on and thriving. I did go off mashed potato but I do like a bit of ice cream now and then. Between salads.,...

How infuriating. When I was having chemo I lived mainly on ice cream. I lost my appetite entirely and lost a lot of weight. My consultant also said just eat what you can. Just getting through chemo is enough for now.

I think your response to your friends unsolicited advice about your diet depends on how much you value her friend ship other than this issue.
If you do value her friendship say thank you for your concern about my diet but im following my consultants advice on this one.
If you do value her friendship,perhaps re evaluate wether you want her in your life.
People have varying opinions on diet particularly around cancer.
You are entitled to your own choices and opinions (which may vary depending on your needs and requirements at any given moment)

I'm a GP and dispute that there is as much evidence that people claim about food types helping cancer recovery especially in the immediate sense. Even if there is evidence for it do you know why GP's and oncologists advise 100% to eat what you fancy? Because they see the real life humans going through this. They see the people who are skin and bone because of what the cancer has done to them, they listen to them cry because they can't face eating anything and everything tastes like literal sewage, they hear about how low their mood is for various reasons. Any pragmatic person is going to know that what is going to aid that person's recovery both mentally and physically is to just flippin well eat! That's why we advise this. Any decent friend should know this too.

Oh my gosh leave the woman alone she has said she can barely keep anything down and she fancied a pizza and some chips. Having the odd meal that’s a bit processed when you e barely been able to eat isn’t going to make any difference and if it gave her satisfaction to eat something she wanted,
well that’s good for her mental health to have had something nice she could keep down. All these people backing up what her friend said need to have a day off and let OP have her pizza without judgement!

I’m really sorry for your diagnosis, and of course it’s not from eating too little broccoli! You absolutely deserve as many bars of Green and Blacks as you fancy. When dad was being treated, I’d leave him chocolate treats where only he could find them as my mum was being very hardline about healthy eating.

Two things can be true at the same time though, and there’s a movement afoot about the importance of diet in treatment and recovery. It was a really interesting programme and well worth a listen. Some foods help your body do the hard work, and others do the opposite.

Right now though, you need the calories that stay down, and if that’s chocolate then so be it. I hope she meant well, otherwise she’s bloody insensitive.

Am so sad at the response you have had from your friend and really hope you find the courage to ask her to leave. You need people who will nurture and support you unconditionally at this moment. And there is no such thing as an unhealthy food - all foods are fine in moderation and any food is the perfect food if it is what your body craves and is all you can keep down during treatment.

So sorry for all you are going through - stay strong.

It’s always people who haven’t had cancer that bang on about eating healthy while having treatment.

Treatment makes you loose your taste and appetite not to mention the mouth ulcers you get. Eat whatever you fancy/can. The worst thing is to loose a lot of weight as all your meds are worked out on your weight. Bugger that friend if you fancy cake eat it! My nurses told me to eat whatever I wanted but to try and eat at least a square of dark chocolate a day for the iron.

Your friend should be supporting you now and you can pick up the healthy eating when you feel more able to do so.

Your friend is not being helpful with her criticism, I’d be asking her to zip it on the criticism front or leave.
Chemo is tough, if she had any understanding of just how tough she’d have bought you the pizza and chocolate.
I ate an entire loaf of sourdough and packet of bacon when I finally got an appetite, eat what you can when you can.

posting from the POv of someone still doing Chemotheraphy for breast cancer. before this my diet was veggie wholefood now its what ever I can stomach that does not taste like battery acid.

Your friend was an arse, well done for managing to eat some pizza and choclate.

Have a day off. Did you read what the OP said, she’s barely eaten anything in weeks and fancied a pizza so she had a pizza, it’s not a big deal and her friend was massively out of line commenting on her food choices.

I honestly cannot believe the judgement from some people on here, since when did we decide it was ok to police people’s food.

There’s more to health than the physical and if OP wasn’t able to eat for weeks it must have been quite the mental relief to actually fancy some food and to be able to eat that food.

It’s wild you think you’re more expert on this from listening to a Radio 4 programme than the OPs own doctor.

I agree with all the posters who are pointing out that when you have cancer you really just need the calories. I'd also argue that all things considered, pizza and green and blacks is not the worst thing. There's at least some nutrition there (and, depending on the pizza itself) not necessariy a lot of UPF.

I think people have good intentions, but if they don't actually know what it's like to have these diseases, they can be totally unhelpful. SIL is a LOT like this too. knows nothing about diabetes but has a lot of opinions on what her mum can/can't eat.

Just stop it.

I do not believe that there is any evidence that eating pizza and chocolate will make your cancer worse

Or, the friend is entirely wrong and the oncologists know more about an individual patient than those folks on Radio 4 do.

When my daughter was about 2 years old she wouldn’t eat very much and was losing weight she dropped to the lowest centile. Her NHS dietitian said feed her cake, chocolate, biscuits, anything she would eat to get the weight on right now and gave her a supplement which was basically fat and sugar. 6 months in, she was back to where she needed to be and we returned to a better diet with no issues, having resolved the issue with her lack of eating. You won’t hear that being advised on any Radio 4 food programme.

Sometimes, fed is best. If you want to eat a certain way, and if you believe you would eat a certain way if you were undergoing treatment for cancer, knock yourself out. Telling anyone else they are doing it wrong is not being a friend, it is being a dickhead.

Oh, bloody hell, OP! Much love coming from the the badlands of Birmingham to wherever you are. With friends like that, who needs enemies, hey?

Your “friend” can bugger off - all the way off, and when she gets there she can go a bit further. What an absolute piece of work - to be smugly preaching at a seriously underweight, very ill “friend” about the type of food you can manage to eat. I’d tell her to do one, in no uncertain terms. Sounds like she’s a holier-than-thou type, who believe illness will never touch her because she’s so much better than the unenlightened masses. I wouldn’t have any time for that nonsense.

And the similar types posting on this thread - seemingly with no empathy or experience of living with cancer - are also free to bugger right off.

Human beings can be shit. I hope you have some better friends.

Your friend and some posters on here lecturing about foods, what you should eat and not eat can feck right off.
@Dogingarden eat whatever takes your fancy. Having just been through something similar with someone close, I would have bought them the whole of Dominos if they wanted. Like you they were unable to eat with treatment, lost a lot of weight as a result of sickness, to the point of needing a feeding tube. 4 years later they are still trying to regain full weight but will have chocolate and whatever they fancy when they want. Trying to eat healthily when your body is rejecting that food is not good.
Sometimes reading a thread I ask myself why some contributors always make it about them and their beliefs, completely ignoring or properly acknowledging the OP.

Your friend sounds a bit of an uneducated dick tbh.
as a nurse, anyone that has lost a significant amount of weight, struggling to eat and needs calories we say eat whatever you fancy where I work! (Even to those with diabetes, we can manage their blood sugars so it's not an issue when they're so unwell). Obviously if you can eat some protein and some veg that's great but you need to eat and eating what you want to is great for your sanity when your so ill

I honestly don't know why it is that some people have this compulsion to lecture people about diet, when they're going through cancer treatment and following their doctors advice.

Food seems to be an obsession for some people, to the point that they become unable to read the room.

For the record, I eat healthy, particularly as I have hereditary high cholesterol, so I'm not saying that food isn't important. But this obsession with lecturing people send to be an eating disorder in itself.

@Dogingarden

Give the friend the chance to apologise, if they refuse, kick them out. Or, just kick them out if you believe they will still do this kind of crap.

OP I totally get it. I am currently waiting for a kidney transplant and on dialysis. Most days I vomit, I have no appetite and I’ve lost 3 stone in the last few months.

Last week I saw a renal DIETICIAN who informed me that yes, during recovery when I have the transplant, I need to be eating healthy and he’ll give me a good plan, but FOR NOW, I must focus on getting high calorie, high energy food into me on the rare occasions I’m hungry.

I must focus on protein (to help muscle wastage) and fat. The examples he gave were adding double cream and cheese to a lentil pasta meal for example.

He laughed and said normally he’d be shot as a dietician for giving out advice like this but, it’s not normal times, I am not medically well and his focus is stemming my weight lose and giving me energy to just get up and get through the day.

Last week I woke with an urge for a Coughlins Cornish pasty. I ordered one, devoured a third and left the rest. But it felt great! That and some grapes was all I managed that day.

You are not well, if you fancy something, have it and focus on your recovery. I hope you do kick her out this morning, you don’t need friends like that.

Not really. She's imposing her own strict views on someone who's just happy she's able to eat after being ill. People who go on and on about food are tedious.

Good God. It's not as if you were smoking, drinking and eating endless oily kebabs - it was a pizza!

I hope you enjoyed it! 🍕

Yes she needs to go. Or if you want to give her a chance, tell her in no uncertain terms that she needs to keep her opinions to herself. That said, she'd probably give your food the side-eye and raised eyebrows, which is infinitely more annoying.

An aunt of mine got a very aggressive form of breast cancer, and she only ever ate organic food.

Sometimes reading a thread I ask myself why some contributors always make it about them and their beliefs, completely ignoring or properly acknowledging the OP.

Exactly

…and do you know what? None of your healthy eating is going to save you at the end. Your diet isn’t going to grant you eternal life.

In the OP’s position, she should eat whatever she fancies. It’s calories she needs, not condescension.