In the midst of my drama, let us not forget that my there is drama for the other person who lives with me. I don't talk about it too much because it's personal and I think he would be horrified to know I write about it. But, I'm at the end of my frustration rope, so I'm going to recap some food issues that we have round here.
1) Celiac - No wheat, bran, barley, or rye as a result of a gluten intolerance.
2) Eosinophilic esophagitis - We refer to this as the second of the "boutique diseases" that impact the fud sitch we're dealing with. Essentially, the boy is allergic to a variety of foods. In his case, these are very mild allergies, but they manifest themselves in a ringing of his esophagus, heartburn, and a narrowing of the esophagus. These allergies include most fruits (except grapes and apples), a lot of nuts (except almonds and cashews), tomatoes, onions, and a whole bunch of stuff I know I'm leaving off this list.
3) Pickiness - I don't allow the boy to eat pork because pork is gross. He doesn't like eggs.
To our dismay, the boy has managed to lose whatever weight we have valiantly fought for him to put on in the last year or so. His low weight is problematic on a number of fronts - he has no reserves if he gets sick, self-consciousness, and stress on organs. He is relatively active, doing weightlifting with a trainer a few times a week and riding his bike semi-occasionally (that will pick up as the spring arrives). The only solution to this putting on weight problem that we can see is for the boy to eat more calories. Ideally it would be a 3000 calorie a day diet, but that's not realistic because he's just not that hungry. We're looking for more like 2400-2500 calories a day.
But how? Seriously, I'm begging for ideas that won't break the bank. We are spending about $100-$120 a week on groceries for both of us and, while we can certainly sustain that, I'm pretty sure that adding another $20-40 a week might not be sustainable...
A general day might look like this:
Breakfast (he's not super hungry) - a couple pieces of toast with butter, a cup of tea, yogurt
After working out - a protein whey smoothie made with ice cream
Lunch (no access to a microwave) - a ham sandwich, some almonds, yogurt, cheese stick, meat stick
Afterwork snack - ice cream/popcorn/pudding/oatmeal/cereal/whatever we have in the house
Dinner - our dinners are usually in the realm of about 300-500 calories a serving
We've talked about adding a fourth meal, turning the afterwork snack into another meal, but then he's not really hungry for dinner. And, beyond that, I'm fresh out of calorie rich food ideas that meet all of our strange specifications. We add calories in as many ways as possible - whole milk, real butter, full fat sour cream, blah, blah, blah. I don't want it to end up falling into the, hey, have two Milky Way bars every day to fill in your calories because he has arteries we need to care about, too, but I'm almost to that point. The frustration on my end is pretty intense and I can only imagine what it is like on his end. We're frequently looking at him needing another 300-500 calories at bedtime.
(Is anyone interested? Yes, I've gained weight while I've been laid up. I think it's quite a bit, but the boy says no and there's no scale to check. I've certainly lost a LOT of muscle tone. Going from working out 4-5 times a week to complete immobility for a couple of months is not awesome. Now I can do some light weights with my upper body and some floor work for my core so I'm hoping to at least halt the weight gain until I can incorporate more cardio into my life. So, while I need more like 1200-1500 calories a day, I KNOW that and do not eat anywhere near the amount he eats daily.)
So, yes. If I took a picture of us today, he would look like a skeleton and I would look like a puffy face. We know.
Any ideas? My experiences with dietitians have been stressful at best. Does anyone have a miracle cure for us?
How much fish do you eat? Why do you allow him ham but not pork? I'm not saying this to sound sarcastic - wouldn't pork be a little more fattening? That's probably what you've heard from lots of dieticians, so I'll digress. Does he eat hamburger (or a substituted ground meat) where he could make a patty on some gluten-free bread and add a little more substance to his sandwiches? I know that would take a lot more time, but it wouldn't take much meat and you could individually package it with sandwich bags so it's ready to go for each sandwich.
ReplyDeleteI know it's tough when you can't just buy what you want. I have to think about the picky eating of seven other people (which leads to many, many meals of meatloaf, pork chops, and roasts). I would never suggest the diet we eat in my house; though it's fattening it's extremely unhealthy. For me, the toughest part of your post is the small breakfast and the egg aversion. Breakfast is the biggest meal for me, usually consisting of a meat, an egg, some kind of bread, and cheese (or multiple cheeses). Could he add a shake to breakfast as well? Maybe instead of making one snack a meal he could just add one more item to each meal. Maybe his stomach would begin to expand (slowly) and his appetite would grow. It seems he has an extremely small appetite as well.
I find I tire of big portions and can devour an entire plate of what are essentially samples. It probably wouldn't cost much more or anything more at all to change the way he eats - more variety at each meal rather than bigger portions. The portions would last longer as you ration them so you would be buying the same amount in the long run. Can you think of anything that could be an egg substitute for breakfast?
Does he eat at the same time each day? I think I've said this before, but I get hungry at the same time every day because my meals at work are fairly routine. It doesn't matter whether I just ate brekfast at 11:30, I'll be starving at 1:00 because I'm used to eating at that time every day. And I've found that if I don't appear hungry at 1:00 and so don't eat, I'll be shaking and sick by around 3:00 because I should have eaten at 1:00 regardless. Maybe you need a strict time schedule for meals?
Okay, that's what I've got. I don't know if any of that is plausible but I hope you find something. Good luck.
A friend of mine just co-wrote a baking guide that might be just the ticket: http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Gluten-Free-Baking-Guide-Part/dp/0977611140/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330485960&sr=8-1
ReplyDeleteIt's all gluten free and most of her recipes can be modified for other diet restrictions.
Oh dear. This sounds so difficult, for both of you! I'm sorry you are going through this.
ReplyDeleteHave you tried adding almond butter to things - like putting that on his normal toast, or having him dip apple slices in almond butter at lunch?
Or making "smoothie pops" with blended ice cream, protein powder, whole milk, etc? You can buy popsicle molds, and then he can snack on a high-fat smoothie whenever he feels the urge without needing to do any blending.
And you may already have looked into it, but have you checked out any recipe books for ketogenic diets? What I've seen is pretty egg-heavy, but I bet you could find some good alternatives.
And... I don't know how helpful this would be, but maybe make a ginormous portion of beef stew, with bacon and bacon fat and big hunks of beef and potatoes that you can make once and freeze. Beef stew does really well when reheated, and I feel like you could possibly fill it up with some high-fat foods. I know you said no pork, but I am pretending that bacon doesn't COUNT as pork in this situation. And bacon isn't terribly expensive, and it's easy to portion out and freeze for multiple uses. And stew beef is pretty reasonable, as are potatoes. (I know, I know - potatoes aren't an IDEAL food. But they are filling and caloric.)
What about marrow? I think marrow bones are pretty inexpensive. You can use them to make your own broth and you can use the marrow as a base for stews and soups... or spread it on bread, which I probably wouldn't do but I know people DO. And it's high fat, I think?
Oh! And this is a last-ditch suggestion since you SAID he doesn't like eggs (and neither do I): but what about some quiches? You can fill those up with cheese and ground beef and whatever veggies he can tolerate and I would bet that they would be high in fat. Like I said, I dislike eggs too and I ALSO dislike quiche. But eggs are pretty cheap and have a high-yield when it comes to packing a big dietary punch.
Good luck!! You guys will get through this!
Wow! This is quite a challenge.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Doctor's Wife about almond butter. Almond butter, cream cheese, butter and honey...anything to increase calories without adding a lot of bulk. Drinking calories - milk or juice (apple juice?) or his shakes - instead of tea or coffee.
Cheese, nuts, meats. Can he eat avocado? Hummus is cheap and easy to make. Um...wow. It's weird to be looking at this from the other side of the spectrum.
Darn, eggs are such an easy solution. Can you think of ways that you can incorporate them into other things to make them more palatable? For example: add an egg to a shake to turn it into an egg nog. Egg drop soup. dip Chicken in egg and then in some kind of seasoning (I won't say bread crumbs) and bake. Mix hard boiled eggs with cubed ham and mayo on a sandwich? Crumble eggs on salad. Egg whites in particular are fairly tasteless and if you grind them finely...
ReplyDeleteCould you add some ground nuts, almond butter, or flax seed to toast or shakes to add some extra calories? Sounds like every little bit will help.