Blog > What Can You Do to Help Your Senior Maintain Her Weight with COPD?

What Can You Do to Help Your Senior Maintain Her Weight with COPD?

Weight management gets tricky with COPD because there’s so much energy output that goes into just keeping your senior going. If you’re noticing that she’s losing a lot more weight than usual, she may need to adjust her diet fairly quickly.

You’re Aiming for Nutrition and Calories

Homecare Services Murfreesboro TN - What Can You Do to Help Your Senior Maintain Her Weight with COPD? — Homecare Services Murfreesboro TN – What Can You Do to Help Your Senior Maintain Her Weight with COPD?

Weight management with COPD is a little different than with other health conditions because you want your elderly family member to eat healthy foods, of course, but there’s more. She also needs plenty of calories. That’s because she burns way too many calories as COPD progresses and that means she loses more weight than she expects. The nutrition she takes in needs to be weighty, so that her body has the calories to burn.

She May Need to Eat More Often

With that in mind, it’s also important to remember that few people can pack in a ton of calories in one go. Your senior needs to become a little more strategic about her diet. Eating a little more often gives her a chance to sneak more calories in because she’s grazing throughout the day. She also keeps her “furnace” fueled and running, which can help her body to avoid tapping into fat reserves that it needs to keep her body running effectively.

Keep Her Hydrated All Day

There’s never a time when hydration isn’t important. Your senior needs to be taking in plenty of fluids along with the foods she’s eating. She may find that water is very filling for her, even though she needs it. So, she may start doing double duty with her beverages. Drinking things like nutritional shakes or whole milk may take the place of a glass or two of water, but they help her to stay hydrated.

Get Some Help

It burns a lot of energy to do most things on a daily basis and your senior is going to start noticing that very quickly into her journey with COPD. Having some help from you or from a homecare provider can be an important way for her to conserve energy and still get things done. This can be especially true with things like making sure the kitchen is stocked and that meals and snacks are ready to go.

Talk to your elderly family member’s doctor about what’s best for her to be eating and how many calories she needs each day, ideally. This helps you to understand just how her current diet needs to be adjusted in order to keep her as healthy as possible.