Eating

Hi Addy. There was a similar discussion from hooch yesterday on this same topic. I'll say the same here as there- you can't really be the food police. Controlling what someone else eats is very difficult, be it that there's too much or too little. I frankly wouldn't worry too much about it, you've got plenty of other battles to fight. Perhaps you can leave some snacks or finger foods out where she can get them if she's hungry? Another thought- is she on any meds that could suppress her appetite? Aricept(donepezil) and Namenda (memantine) are notorious for doing this and are many times stopped because they adversely affect appetite.

So weight loss and food aversion were some of the concerns I had when I took my mom to her PCM last April and she was diagnosed with dementia. Digging deeper on my own, I discovered that as the brain atrophies with dementia the ability to feel hunger is affected as well. Foods that my mom loved, she hates now. She will imagine that lettuce is pickles or that peanut butter is tuna. And she refuses to eat based on these imaginations. She will also flat out refuse food. Sometimes because she feels full despite not eating at all that day and other times she has delusions of get-togethers with family and cooking a bunch of food and claims she’s eaten a lot and is full. I’ve tried everything I can think of from milkshakes to sneaking protein into foods she will eat to nutritional shakes and adding as much fats to food and it is no use. She will love a food for a while and then refuses it at a later point. Her imagination is something else. One day she said she had soup for lunch and it was bitter and that means someone tried to poison her! In reality she had toast, eggs, and a protein shake for breakfast. She hadn’t had lunch yet….that was I was trying to do, feed her lunch. And it was not soup!

I have just come to the conclusion that I cannot purchase anything in bulk as it will be a waste of money when she decides she no longer likes it. And I have to “trick” her a lot. Things like telling her someone dropped of a treat for her etc.