It’s important to tell your healthcare professional about eating and drinking and weight loss problems as it can have an impact on how strong you feel and what you are able to do and how well you cope with treatment.

Your healthcare professional may want to know:

• How long has eating and drinking been difficult for you?
• What gets in the way of eating and drinking well?
• Does it change during the day or before or after treatment?
• How much less than normal you are eating?
• Have you lost weight without meaning to?
• How much weight have you lost?
• Over what period of time have you lost weight?
• If you don’t know how much weight you’ve lost or over how long, think about whether clothes e.g. belts, waistbands and jewellery e.g. rings, have become loose. When did you start to notice this?
• Are you able to do your usual activities?
• What, if anything, have you found that helps?

Sometimes it’s hard to remember day to day what you’ve eaten or how you were feeling. To help you keep track of good days and not so good days try using the wellbeing diary. Take it along to your appointment.

Make a note too of whether you’ve been able to keep up your usual activities. Think about what is usual for you, it might be being able to take a shower, sit up and read for while or make a snack. For other people it might be taking the dog for a walk or going for a swim.

Remember you can ask for a nutritional check.

If you’ve already been prescribed oral nutritional supplements (ONS) by a healthcare professional but are struggling to keep taking them, it could be a good idea to keep a note of the following, for at least a week before your health check:

• How many have you been advised to take each day?
• How much are of the ONS are you able to take?
• What gets in the way of taking all of it?
• What flavours and types of ONS have you tried?
• What kind of flavours do you usually like?
• Do you prefer fruit juice or milk type drinks?
• How do you think the ONS is helping you?