Read the full blog post here: https://www.connectiondocs.com/blog/what-therapeutic-self-care-actually-looks-like

A woman I saw not long after her diagnosis told me that her oncologist had encouraged her to focus on self-care. She nodded in the appointment the way most of us nod when we do not want to seem difficult. Then she went home and bought a candle.

A few weeks later she said, with real frustration in her voice, "I lit the candle. I still feel like I am disappearing."

She was not doing self-care wrong. She had simply been handed a word that has been quietly emptied of meaning. Somewhere along the way, self-care stopped describing how a person stays whole and started describing what a person buys. Bath products. Face masks. A weekend away that you spend answering email.

None of that is bad. It is just not therapeutic.

Therapeutic means healing. Restoring. Something that changes the way your body and your life actually function, not something that changes how your evening looks in a photograph. When we talk with people about therapeutic self-care, we are talking about the practices that keep you connected to your own life while you are living through something hard.

Welcome to the F Perfection Podcast with The Connection Docs, Dr. Matthew Lederman and Dr. Alona Pulde.

Read the full blog post that inspired this episode here.

A gentle, evidence based guide to bland foods, hydration, and getting back to real eating, from two physicians who sit with people in the hardest weeks of treatment.

A few years ago I sat with a woman in the second week of her first chemotherapy cycle. She had a kitchen full of food. Her sister had stocked the refrigerator with kale, salmon, blueberries, bone broth, all the things the internet had told her a person with cancer should be eating.

She could not touch any of it.

What she could eat was saltine crackers. That was the list. Saltines, and sometimes a few sips of flat ginger ale.

Read the full blog post here: https://www.connectiondocs.com/blog/healthy-meal-prep-ideas-for-low-energy-weeks

Kim Murphy from Simply Plant-Based Kitchen and Dr. Alona Pulde of The Connection Docs talk about meal prep and perfectionism.

Some weeks, standing at the stove feels like climbing a mountain.

Maybe you are in the middle of chemotherapy. Maybe an autoimmune flare has knocked the wind out of you, or a new diagnosis has hijacked your sleep and your appetite. Maybe you are simply exhausted from carrying too much for too long. Whatever the cause, the result often looks the same: the refrigerator is full of good intentions, and dinner ends up being crackers eaten over the sink.

If that sounds familiar, please know you are not failing. Fatigue is the most common side effect of cancer treatment, and the National Cancer Institute reports that about 80 percent of people receiving chemotherapy or radiation experience it. It is also a different kind of tired. Unlike ordinary fatigue, cancer-related fatigue is not fully relieved by sleep or rest, and it is often out of proportion to how much you have actually done. People living with many other chronic illnesses know this feeling well.

Most meal prep advice online was written for someone with a free Sunday afternoon, a full tank of energy, and twenty matching glass containers. This post is for everyone else. It is for the weeks when you have fifteen good minutes, not four hours.

Everything here is whole-food and plant-based, with no added oil. If that way of eating is new to you, don't worry. Beans, grains, vegetables, fruit, nuts, and seeds are some of the most forgiving, lowest-effort foods on earth, and most of them come ready to use in a can, a bag, or a pouch.