Just like everyone's lung health is different with CF, so are everyone's dietary needs. Some people struggle with both. Others can have fantastic lung health but struggle keeping a healthy weight. Others cans have not great lungs but never have to give calories or weight gain a second thought. And still others may have had both healthy lungs and a healthy weight, but now struggle with keeping the weight on as their lung function declines and their body has to work harder.
I happen to fall in the next-to-last category. My lung function is not stellar, but I've never really struggled to keep a healthy weight. There was a brief period of time around 2011 when I first got very sick and refused to get help (see my last post for more details on that) that my weight dropped significantly, but it popped right back up again once I fought off the infection and my appetite came back. Otherwise, I've always been a very average-sized person who loves food and happens to get to eat anything she wants. :)
Fun fact: getting older has meant a slowing metabolism and a little extra pudge around the middle for this gal. It's been an internal battle between my inner-CF patient which cheers and considers it a victory, and my womanly pride, which cringes and balks at buying bigger clothes, haha. I just find it so interesting when I have moments of realization that my body is changing in a way completely normal and unrelated to having cystic fibrosis.
I do have to take pancreatic enzymes (Zenpep, not Creon) every time I eat or drink something with fat in it, or else I don't absorb any of the fat or fat-soluble nutrients. Plus my stomach gets upset. :( But you know what's a little crazy? I was diagnosed with CF when I was 2. I'm about to turn 31 at the end of this month. That's roughly 29 years of needing to take enzymes with every single meal and snack I've ever eaten. AND I STILL SOMETIMES FORGET TO TAKE THEM. How does that happen?? I really just don't know.
That's all for today. Stay tuned for tomorrow's post!
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