Portion Sizes are a Challenge in a CF Family

It’s summer BBQ time! We have to spend a little extra time buying our grilling meats because I need to be sure that Beautiful gets a normal person portion and I get a “are you seriously going to eat all of that?” look from any number of service personnel, including wait staff at restaurants. When I was younger, they would warn my parents that something was a really big portion, to which they informed them that my nickname was “The Insinkerator” and to just bring me what I ordered.

Here is an example of a portion that I give myself in the evening. I believe I took some photos of spaghetti dinners with my phone, too – those should go at the bottom. What we have here is 1/3 of a 4-serving bag of steam-in-bag corn, a 12oz pork chop, and 3/4 of a bag of rice. If you have CF, I don’t know how you can make it without moderate culinary skills, and grilling is an essential skill to learn to get good protein in a new and palatable method after a long, cold winter. We do love our grilling recipes, and I do love my grill that Beautiful everyone pitched in and got me for my 30th birthday almost two years ago! I even got a BBQ recipe/tip hardcover book for Christmas the year I got the grill, and it’s got some good rubs in there and makes me feel grilling equipment inadequate. There sure are a lot of toys to go with my shiny grill that I don’t have yet.

Here’s Beautiful’s plate for a “I’m a normal person who doesn’t eat like there will be no food on the planet tomorrow” portion. See how I have learned my lesson to not make our plates look the same after 3 1/2 years of marriage? Finally! I got the illustration about making a fist and that’s how much food you’re supposed to get… but we sort of made that how much the main thing is, like this 6oz pork chop. I buy food that is the size of her fist and as big as my foot. We, of course, can eat the same amount of corn, but I took the lion’s share of the rice, because that just sits there for hours, making me even wish I hadn’t gone that far, but I have to for my daily goals.

Balancing meal portion sizes has been one of our biggest daily challenges because if either of us ate like the other for too long, bad things would happen to the one eating against medical advice. No normal person is supposed to down 7,000 calories like I accomplished Tuesday (yay!).

I’d say that the best solution for a family with a CFer is for each to be responsible for their own snacking, because being the snack police isn’t very nice. Any man who has ever asked their wife if they are sure they want that bowl of chocolate ice cream during “American Idol” knows what sort of look that will get. Children with CF need to be helped with snacks so they don’t go into a sugar coma or put themselves at risk for CFRD later on, but other than that, everyone should do their best to watch portions at meal time and do what is best for each of their bodies the rest of the day.

It’s a huge challenge when one person is always eating anything they can get their hands on, but remember, they are probably not having fun doing it and would rather just take a break from eating. Eating that much is hard work.