aj6044 Asked January 2023
How can I help my wheelchair bound mom lose weight?
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She complains all the time that she's unhappy with her weight but she won't do anything about it like change her diet, reduce calories, etc. Her workout options are limited with hemiparalysis and electric wheelchair.
How can I help her?
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You can read and be given 500 Diet Tips and they're all 100% useless until mom wants to make some changes in her life.
#Truth
Complex answer...She is the only one that can make the decision to change what she eats and how much she eats.
When she complains change the subject.
If she has any cognitive impairment / dementia trying to reason with her is an exercise in futility. (not the kind of exercise that will help) And with cognitive impairment she is probably not able to grasp the fact that eating is related to weight.
If however, someone else has control of groceries coming into the home, and someone else is preparing food, then there is some more control. Would still suggest nutrition training for the person doing the aforesaid.
Sure wish you luck.
:)
sending new year hugs to you, and to your mother.
i know you're looking for serious answers, but in case your mother has a sense of humour, you can tell her this quote:
🙂
"Losing weight doesn't seem to be working for me, so from now on I'm going to concentrate on getting taller."
My many observations are that overweight people eat too much. That makes as much or more difference than what they actually eat. A buffet meal at a local pub shows fat families absolutely loading their plates. It’s the same with our sheep. When feed is lush, they put on weight (you ‘fat score’ them by rubbing down the spine and feeling the coverage on the spine and ribs). Come the end of summer, they ‘take it off their backs’. Which is good, because they do better with lambing at fat score 2 (score 3 is overweight, score 1 is very very skinny). Humans unfortunately don’t have less paddock grass to manage their ‘diet’ for them. Occasionally we ‘fat score’ visitors to explain how it’s done – always interesting for them.
So:
1) Use smaller plates. They look full with less food. Buy two new smaller ones because 'they looked so pretty'.
2) Put out a fruit snack at the time when people are getting hungry. Guests don’t like munching into a whole apple or pear, but if I cut it in slices (minus core) and put it on a plate in front of them, it disappears quickly and I have to cut up another one. Do that for M, a little while before meals. Fruit snacks also help to delay drinking alcohol. My teenage daughters' visitors took 'snacks' for granted, but were always surprised and enthusiastic about fruit nibbles.
3) Don’t buy potato crisps or cheezels. People sit watching TV and get through a packet without even knowing that they are eating. Make sure that ‘Oh, we’ve run out’ – and buy one packet at a time.
4) Drink water, and have a glass of water in the places where people reach for a sip. Don’t drink fruit juice, it’s full of fructose with no roughage.
Of course you can change the dinners radically, but that’s unpleasant for a lot of people. Try the suggestions, which aren’t so ‘in your face’. You can cut out the worst bits of the meal more gradually. And it's 'a change in diet', not 'a diet' you can lapse from.
Just for interest, I was working with a group of older women who laid into a very high-cal cake at morning tea. I said “But I thought you were diabetics”. They looked at each other, and one said “That means you aren’t allowed to buy it yourself”. Making change easy, and bad habits more difficult, goes a long way.
My 'fat score' went up over Xmas 😂. I will keep in mind 'reducing my paddock' from today.. eg icecream does NOT grow there 😁
Whenever she brings it up tell her, to lose weight you have to make changes in your diet, what do you see yourself being able to change? Cut down portion size? Give up junk food? Stop eating cheese? Whatever she is doing can be modified to help lose some weight.
When you age, it gets harder to lose weight, so it takes time to see results. Encourage her to stick with whatever she decides she can do. If she does nothing, it's just conversation.
Alcohol is high calorie, in most cases. Low alcohol beverages are building in popularity here, quite a lot in the supermarket up high above the soft drink. How does mother get the drinks? Any chance you can help her to ‘run out’ and change to drinking something high volume but lower calorie?
How does she do her shopping? If you do it, you can drop down on junk food. After all, if toilet paper ran out with early Covid, some snacks might do the same! Fruit for snacks, like mandarins, might help a change in diet.
If M won’t change, then she won’t lose weight. Tell her it’s up to her. And tell her that if she becomes a 2 person lift, she will probably be moving to a facility, where change will be forced on her anyway.
On the farm, I make virtually all our bread in a bread machine. Flour, yeast and water – that’s it. I add seeds and nuts for variety, but never sugars. You need a routine because it takes over 3 hours, so it goes on a breakfast time as hot bread for lunch, every other day. That might be an option, if you can do the routine.
Is it possible to have your mother's primary care physician order homecare with a physical therapist?
Also, is an UpWalker Lite of any help to you. As I write you, my mother, with Lewy Body Dementia is walking in the hallway using her UpWalker Lite. If she didn't have this she would have no freedom.
It goes to the market, doctor's appointments, etc. Even doctors' have asked me where did you get that? $495 well worth the money.
Drinks lots of water. I'm not a medical personnel but maybe we can all brainstorm. I'm a firm believer in a good shoes too.
Her mobility is critical to know and we do not know.