My dad’s continuing weight loss—he’s now down to 102 lbs—hasn’t really been addressed, if in fact it can be. Knowing the pathetic state of Jeannie’s cooking (and having heard that lunch earlier that week consisted of grapes and nonfat yogurt) spurred my resolve to find a solution.
Beforehand, I checked out a handy online Calorie Calculator, which tells you to plug in a person’s age, height, weight and sex, along with their activity level, and it will then give you the minimum calorie requirements for that person. Gene’s magic number would be about 1250 just to maintain his current weight, and I estimate that he consumes no more than 1000 calories on a good day.
My battle plan: take Gene out for lunch, mostly to see if giving him a choice of tasty, calorie-dense foods might inspire him to eat more. He opted for Chinese, since Jeannie dislikes it, meaning that he never gets to enjoy what used to be a favorite cuisine.
We headed for the nearest Chinese restaurant, and after some discussion, he decided on sweet & sour pork. The lunch special came with soup, salad and a fortune cookie. As the food arrived, so did the problems: the hot and sour soup was too spicy for Gene, so a couple of spoonfuls were all he could manage. The salad was small and bland, but he ate most of it.
When our main courses arrived, I noticed the servings were huge—each one big enough to satisfy two normal (read non-American) appetites. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to clean his plate I still imagined that he might get through half of it. As it turned out, some 20 minutes later, the mountain of Chow Mein on his plate was barely diminished, while more than half of the pork remained—and he said he was full. We packed the rest to go, though I wondered if it would ever be eaten.
So—despite my best efforts—taking my father out to a restaurant of his choice and giving him an opportunity to eat what he wanted resulted in a net intake of perhaps 450 calories. While that’s more than he would get from one of his usual lunches, it still isn’t enough.
As tempting as it would be to cast all the blame on Jeannie, even if she were to prepare enjoyable, adequate meals every day it’s likely that my father would not eat enough to gain weight and maintain his long term health. And the downward spiral goes on….
