How to Eat the Nutrients you Need – Stop the Prednisone Weight Gain!

Dr. Megan here. I’m so excited to share today’s tip from me, the Prednisone Pharmacist.

We’re going to talk about how to actually get those nutrients that you need while on prednisone.

It’s very important that we avoid the right things and get the right things while we’re on prednisone so that we can prevent weight gain and other side effects like osteoporosis.

Weight gain can eventually go away, but osteoporosis is permanent.

So we need to make sure we do everything we can to prevent any damage from this drug.

Watch now!

All My Prednisone Weight Gain Videos in One Place

Before We Go On: Give Yourself Grace

Before I share any nutrition tips, I want to be very clear that I understand you’re taking prednisone because something is wrong.

There’s something going on that means:

You’re not at 100%
You’re not at the top of your game
You’re very likely not capable of doing an entire weight loss program right now

You are just trying to survive.

That’s how I was when I was on prednisone. Let me just get better. Let me just have my condition go away.

So everything I say, I want you to take it and implement it how you can in your situation.

If you’re taking prednisone because you have bowel issues, then you’ve got to take everything I say in the context of how your digestive system works.

If you’re taking it because you have rheumatoid arthritis or some other condition that’s impacting your ability to move and get up and go, then just give yourself grace.

That’s what I wanted to get across first: You are taking prednisone. That means you deserve patience from yourself first of all—and from family members too.

Step 1: Give Yourself Grace

You’re fighting a battle most people can’t see. You deserve compassion—starting with yourself.

Step 2: Get All the Temptations Out of the Way

When you’re on prednisone, your ability to say no to the cookie is less than it would be otherwise.

Normally you’d have a certain amount of willpower to:

Say no to the cookie
Say “it’s okay” when your child spills milk on the floor
Not scream at the person on the freeway

But while you’re on prednisone, there’s not as much willpower.

So let’s make it as easy as possible.

Think of It Like Museum Barriers

In museums, they have those little red barriers around things they don’t want you to touch. And when there’s a movie star, there’s a red carpet.

Let’s get some barriers and some red carpet going in your diet.

Create Barriers: Remove High-Sugar and High-Salt Foods

What we need to do is take all of the food that’s high in sugar and high in salt and get it out of your house.

This means:

Goldfish crackers → Toss them

Instant dinners → I know this is convenient, but if it has 42% of your daily sodium, that’s way too much for somebody on prednisone. You just have to toss it.

Simple sugars like cereal boxes → You can’t afford that while you’re on prednisone. Simple sugar is going to turn straight into fat.

You need to just get them out of your house.

You can’t have them where you might succumb, because prednisone is taking away your ability to say no.

Make Treats Special Occasions Only

The easiest thing is to make a little red barrier—just like at the museum.

Make it so that the only way for you to get treats like that is:

NOT just walking into your pantry
NOT just opening the cabinet

You’d have to have a special occasion. You’d have to:

Go to a party
Go celebrate after an event
Go to your child’s program and get ice cream afterward

That’s okay once in a while, but it’s not okay to keep sugary things or salty things in your house right now while you’re on prednisone.

Step 3: Get the Right Nutrients

So those 10 nutrients—the very most important are:

Calcium and vitamin D
Chromium

How do you actually get those into your diet now that we’ve tossed away those fake foods—those things your great-great-grandmother never would have eaten?

There’s no way she could have eaten Honey Combs cereal, right?

Eat Whole Foods, Close to the Source

Once you get rid of those things from your house, what ARE you going to have in your house?

We want things that are as close to the source as possible:

The actual meat (not a chicken nugget, but a chicken breast)
An actual potato (not a potato chip)

You want to eat the whole potato. You don’t want to just have the potato chip that’s been fried, where you’ve lost all the nutrients that are in that skin.

You need the whole food.

Keep Your Recipes Simple

Try to get as much as possible real, straight foods.

Your recipes should be really simple. It should be:

Baked vegetables
Steamed vegetables
Grilled meat

It shouldn’t be lots of modified foods being thrown together.

What About a Main Meal?

Get:

Some whole grains
Some whole vegetables
Some whole protein

Simple.

What About Snacks?

Here are some snacks you could try:

Dried Apricots

Dried apricots are a really fantastic source of a lot of nutrients that you’re low in while you’re on prednisone.

Almonds (and Other Nuts)

This is what I would do every morning when I would take my prednisone:

I would take:

A handful of nuts (almonds are a really good source of nutrients we need on prednisone)
My pill
A tall glass of water

Drink the whole glass of water because we need lots of water on prednisone too.

That was how I would take my prednisone.

Whole Fruit or Dried Fruit

If you really need a snack, try to make it whole. Try to make it:

A whole fruit
A dried fruit (like the dried apricots)

Shop Differently: Start with Produce, Shop in Season

The way I used to shop was: “All right, here’s five meals, and I’ll go buy the ingredients for those meals.”

But what we really need to do is shop in season using whole foods as the starting point.

Here’s the New Approach:

Option 1: Go to the farmer’s market (if you have one and it’s that time of year). That’s the best.

Option 2: Go to the produce aisle and start there. Start with your vegetables. Start with those whole foods, and then plan your meal around that.

Example: Shopping with Asparagus

Right now (in spring in North America), asparagus is in season.

So instead of planning your meal around something like pancakes with syrup (not a great meal for somebody on prednisone), a better meal would be:

Start with: “I’ve got asparagus. It’s in season. What goes great with asparagus? And how can I prepare asparagus?”

Answer: “If I drizzle some olive oil on it and roast it in the oven with some garlic sprinkled on top—oh, that’s like heaven. That’s my favorite thing. I can eat a whole pound of that myself.”

Add: Some brown rice with a little bit of chicken.

That is a great meal.

Notice that they’re all just one-ingredient things. They’re not too manufactured or too refined. And I’m pretty much doing all the manufacturing myself—I’m the one cooking it.

Why Shop Local and In-Season?

We start in season, and the closer foods are to you, the better nutritional value they have.

If foods are being shipped from across the world or from across the country, then it’s hard to preserve the nutrients that we need.

Prednisone is stealing nutrients. We need them in our food.

We need to be very purposeful at purchasing food with the highest nutrient density. And the way we do that is by purchasing food closer to home.

Plan Ahead and Batch Cook

A lot of people on prednisone are stuck in bed, and there’s not much you can do.

But you CAN plan. You can be laying in bed and you can plan what you’re going to eat.

And when you actually have that energy—when there’s that little burst of energy—then you prepare the food.

Batch Cooking Examples

You can prepare a week’s worth of food at once:

Potatoes: You can boil or bake potatoes all at once and have one every day for the week.

Sweet potatoes: One of my favorite things is getting a bag of sweet potatoes from Trader Joe’s, steaming them one day, and having a different one every day of the week.

Steaming time: 5 minutes of my effort
Reheating time: 30 seconds in the microwave with a pat of butter

So easy.

The Tools That Make This Possible

I do this using:

An Instant Pot – This is the only way I could prepare this many vegetables for myself
A Blendtec blender – For smoothies and soups

We’ve got to:

Reframe our meals by focusing on the vegetables
Season with whole seasonings
Get the tools we need to make all this happen
Use our energy carefully (because there’s a limited amount of that)

And then you can get the nutrients you need while you’re on prednisone.

The Nutrients You Can’t Get from Food Alone

Even with perfect eating, prednisone depletes nutrients faster than you can replace them through diet alone—especially:

Calcium (your body can only absorb about 500mg at a time)
Vitamin D (prednisone interferes with activation)
Chromium (prednisone makes you excrete 57% more than normal)
Magnesium (critical for sleep, depleted through urine)
Vitamin K2 (directs calcium to bones, not arteries)

That’s why I created Nutranize Zone—to fill the gaps that even healthy eating can’t address while you’re on this medication.

It’s two simple doses (morning and bedtime) that give your body what prednisone is systematically stealing, so you can focus your limited energy on healing—not tracking 8-12 different supplement bottles.

Learn more about Nutranize Zone →

Summary: Your Prednisone Eating Plan

Step 1: Give yourself grace. You’re not at 100%, and that’s okay.

Step 2: Remove temptations. Get high-sugar and high-salt foods out of your house.

Step 3: Eat whole foods close to the source. Think: actual chicken, actual potatoes, actual vegetables.

Step 4: Shop in season, starting with produce. Plan meals around what’s fresh and local.

Step 5: Batch cook when you have energy. Use tools like an Instant Pot to make it easier.

Step 6: Supplement strategically. Give your body the nutrients prednisone is stealing.

You’ve got this. And you don’t have to do it perfectly—you just have to do what you can with what you have.