Over the past year, DH has gone through not eating very much, losing weight; then starting to eat again and gaining some back, and then again. He went from 213, down to 185. Recently, he has begun to eat again and no matter what I fix he will say he has never had such good food, or that he has never had that food before- and it is so good! Of course, he has had the food before. It just seems so strange to me. I assumed that he had lost his sense of taste/smell earlier; but now it seems he has it all back. While I'm cooking in the kitchen and he's in the den, he will call out to me, "Oh, that smells so good". Just not sure what to think of this. I'm not complaining, just puzzled.
My husband did the same thing. Foods he loved, he no longer liked. He also has started to eat with his left hand now. It turns out he was left handed as a child but was forced to learn how to use the 'correct hand'.
My husband always refused to eat chicken and shrimp. In this past year, he now eats both...and anything put in front of him. I don't think he can taste any more....It is just the motions of eating that his body does now........
This sounds very familiar..eating habits have totally changed here. I'm a "cook", and G has always loved everything i prepared, but now I find myself preparing two separate meals as he doesn't care for old things and I refuse to eat junk. Such a good time! If he decides he doesn't like baked potatoes, I'm in real trouble, but now he just eats the inside while before he only liked the skins....weird.
My husband's eating habits have changed too. Most noticable - he use to eat popcorn 2-3 times a week. Now he says he doesn't care for it. He will eat it if I cook it for me and I only take a small bowl of it - he eats the rest.
It sounds familiar to me as well. DH couldn't care less if he didn't eat anything but cookies and crackers, especially breakfast. This is very odd, because he wouldn't go anywhere if he didn't have breakfast first. I can't really get him on any kind of schedule. He doesn't get up until very late in the morning. By then, I've eaten my breakfast. Today I caught him going back to bed without anything to eat! I had to insist that he go down and eat something. And this was at noon!
hmmm my LO is an eating machine,apparently their stomach doesn't tell them they"ve just had a big meal,she eats continually ,doesn't seem to be gaining any weight tho
When DH's tastes changed, it was to my advantage. Foods he disliked before were usually the ones I liked the most. I'm a southern girl and I love sausage gravy and biscuits and also chicken n dumplins. He would never eat either of these. Then he decided that he always liked them and would eat them. Things he used to like, he swore he had never liked and wouldn't eat. When I served them he would eat them because he just liked to eat, even when I started pureeing his food. He would eat anything that he could get in his mouth. This did prove to be a problem because some things, you just can't eat. That didn't stop him from putting them in his mouth though.
Kadee, my wife was an avid coffee drinker. She could drink 4 cups of regular coffee at dinner, and then sleep through the night. At day care they would meet her at the door with a cup of coffee. Now she barely touches the coffee I give her for breakfast and drinks less that one cup for supper (now decaf).
Lately it's been easier to control dh's overeating because he has stopped looking in a lot of places. He no longer opens the freezer to find ice cream, or the cupboards where we sometimes keep munchies. He does look in the fridge, so if I make sure there's something for him to find there he will usually be content with whatever fruit or yogurt (sometimes cheese) he can find. He also almost always forgets now to pour wine in the evening. (Don't worry, I do it after he goes to bed.)
Blood tap tomorrow morning for diabetes check-up so I hope his system will have recovered from the Christmas overeating.
My husband would live on candy, cookies and chips if I let him. He will try to tell me he's not hungry at dinner but will then say in the next breath that he will have his m&ms at 8:00. I always say, like you would to your child, that if you don't eat your dinner, you can't have your m&ms. So far, this has worked. I try to get at least one good meal into him every day. He hasn't lost any weight but has gained a little. He just had his bloodwork done and all is well with that. He doesn't have diabetes or any other health problems.
All of this sounds so familiar. My husband could live on candy, cookies and crackers. I let him. But, I do make sure he gets his veggies and some fruit. He isn't to the point where I treat him like a child, such as telling him if he doesn't eat his dinner he gets nothing else. I think he would blow the roof off the house.
my husband is down more than 40 lbs. hardly eats at all. mornings now, I give him ensure, maybe he'll have a donut or piece of pie with that. Won't eat an egg, altho when we're at my DD''s, he eats eggs my SIL makes. Today he ate a whole ham and cheese sandwich (without the crust for lunch, no breakfast, and an ensure. went back to bed. i don't expect to see him again til dinner. He's always eaten very slowly, now he's even worse. I give him a lot of soft foods, rice pudding, etc, but he really has very little appitite for a man who was a big eater. odd.
Every week my DH changes what he likes and doesn't like. I am constantly having to change the menu. I am really close to having to make two meals, one for him and one for me. I am at a loss as to how to make him heathy meals. All he wants is candy and cookies too. I swear I think I am married to the cookie monster. He eats once a day and when I ask him if he wants something for dinner he says NO but then an hour later the snacking session begins. It use to make me really upset that he wouldn't eat but I decided that my sanity was more important.
My husband did the same thing Janet. When we would go out to eat, he would always ask me what he would like. He also had a thing about the cost of things on the menu and he would have no trouble letting everyone know that he wasn't going to pay $6 for a hamburger. If the kids were with us they would tell him they were paying and then it was ok to have the hamburger. As time went on I would tell him it was my treat because he paid the last time. One time he refused to pay the price and said he would not eat. That time I ordered two meals and when they came I told him it was too much for me and did he want to eat one of them. Eating was the one thing I never had to worry about. I had to puree his food for the last year, but he would eat three big meals everyday.
My husband also loves anything sweet and now eats food that he would never eat before. Unfortunately, he still continues to lose weight. He weighed 225 when he was diagnosed and now weights 157. That is up from his low of 147. He put on 10 pounds after they doubled his portions at the nursing home..
Wouldn't it be nice to not be sick, be able to eat like that and not gain? My hb use to be able to eat as much as he wanted of anything and never gain a pound. If he did, he could skip a meal and loose 5 pounds. In the last year+ he has gained about 40 pounds....good thing he didn't weigh a lot to begin with. Sad thing is in December he went in for a sleep study follow-up and when his weight was 206 he didn't even seem to register it. But, he does pat his belly and joke about having one now.
I was talking to a nurse in an ALF one time about the challenges of getting our LO's to eat good food. She said that they often let their 'guests' eat pudding or similar dessert FIRST because that got their hungry juices flowing and they'd continue on eating their mac and cheese, etc. That made so much sense. WHO CARES if they eat dessert first....it won't 'spoil their appetite', ...I was told that the last taste they have is "sweet'. They loose all taste sensations as the disease progresses, that is why they lose interest in most foods. Blend together power milk shakes with an extra egg, ice cream, milk and fruit. My DH loved his shakes and fruit gelato until the last week.
My husband definitely wants sweet stuff more than other stuff. I have noticed he says a lot of things taste "weird" or have no taste. Not sure if that is his medication (Exelon and Namenda) or the AD. I have also read that some people think AD is caused by the brain not processing glucose correctly; wonder if that is why they crave sugar?
My husband says that he's just had no appetite at all for a few months, just eats because he should. We live in a very good retirement center and the food here is great, so he eats one large healthy meal at noon every day, but prefers to just "graze" on muffins, cookies and ice cream the rest of the time. He never puts on weight, so that's no problem, but I do wonder if this is an AD sign. He turns down offers of a sandwih or soup, but will eat fruit.
Since DH was always a good eater, I had no problem. He did like sweets and would eat them anytime and anyplace. I used to joke that I could sprinkle suger on anything and he'd eat it. I have read where others have found that their LO has started liking spicy food. The spicier the better.
My DW has gone through a long period of eating the first half of her meal and then having trouble with the second. She starts believing that the food isn't her's anymore and asks "is this mine?". She's not doing that as much anymore but still asks with the drinks unless it's her cup of tea. No problem with her regular hot tea drink ever. Last night she reached over and drank a swallow of my coffee. That's the second time in 40 years that she's had a swallow of coffee. No reaction either. We're mid and about 5 years in.
I noticed the comment about switching back to the left hand which was the original hand before being 'trained' (read forced). The brain is wired so that many different things have multiple circuits. If DianeT reads this can I ask is he as proficient with his left hand eating as he was with his right, and does he hold the fork and make the same motions as when he ate right handed. In other words is it a mirror of his normal mannerisms except he moved back to his natural hand?
And finally for some reason I'm really hungry all of a sudden.
My husband lost weight over the last few years. Before the dx I did not know what was wrong. Did lots of test and with the dx found he was forgetting to eat. And when he did eat at work it was candy, lots of candy. Now that he is home he has put some of the weight back on. I am making sure he is eating right. But still need to watch the candy. A few weeks ago he ate almost all of my dark chocolate and saved his Hershey kisses for when my candy was gone. I have noticed he says my food is some of the best cooking ever. Loves what ever I fix. This is a strange illness. Learn something new everyday.
My dh has gone off coffee (which is too bad because it is important socially). Sometimes he will drink a cup if it is simply placed before him, no questions asked. He has always loved fruit and sweets including ice cream and still does, will eat any that are left out. I keep the bananas tucked away or he will eat however many we have. He isn't eating as much at meals as he did for a while and has lost some weight -- should lose more but I'm not worrying about it. Strange thing is that he has also gone off wine. Except once in a while in a restaurant.
The other day I caught my husband eating some scented wax pellets that are used in tart warmers to scent the air. I tried to get him to spit it out but he wouldn't. He has had no adverse reaction to eating them but now I know I have to hide anything that could be dangerous to him or looks like candy.
Even though this upset me it also kind of made me giggle because after he ate the wax he announced he was "full up" and patted his stomach. Now when he tells me that what I have made for our meals was delicious, I going to think that maybe my cooking is not all that great since flower scented wax pellets were good too. LOL
My DH stopped drinking coffee about 2 years before he died...but I thought he'd NEVER stop drinking wine. About a year later, he would shove away his wine saying it tasted bitter. All he wanted was sweet tea and fruit drinks. He even refused to drink plain water. I worried about his dehydration and UTI's without enough liquid to keep a bird alive...Lots of Crystal Lite was consumed in our house.
My DH started with massive amounts of pepper about 6 months ago. About that same time he had some chips and salsa at a restaurant and decided he needed those at home. He went through a lot of those, and even went with chips and salad dressing when he ran out of salsa.
He seemed to stop the chips after awhile. He currently loves the $1 tv dinners and is always talking about how tasty they are. We also had some fish sticks/white bread requests. Definitely food he used to eat at when he was younger.
My husband and our daughter and I went to a Chinese Buffet about two years ago and after he prepared one plate of food and ate it, he went back and got another plate, filled it with steamed rice, and then put peach cobbler on top of it - a lot of cobbler! He sat down, mixed it all up and ate the whole thing!!! My husband could not stand peach cobbler before AD!!!!! <grin>
While I was walking the dog, I had left a bottle of windex ontop of the kitchen counter. I spray my countertops with it, so it is often out. anyway, happily, the dog finished quickly, and wanted to come back in, I looked at the table, and DH had a delicious glass, filled with ice and a blue liquid.... we do have that blue soda in the frig, so I asked what he had. then I picked up the bottle of windesx and realized that the spray top was off. I of course, dumped his glass of windex, now I need some, I'm sorry I didn't just pour it back in the bottle. I'm just grateful that he didn't get a chance to drink it.