Full day eating as a nursing home resident who tried to get creative with what they can get

Breakfast was an avocado a staff member brought me (mashed with a bit of lemon juice, salt and pepper) and four slices of Swedish crisp bread I bought from Amazon, plus a coconut cream pie flavoured protein coffee I semi-invented and made with the help of own personal knockoff brand k-cup brewer.

Lunch was cream of tomato soup, half a grilled cheese sandwich and one piece of pepperoni pizza, all from the dining room, plus two dates (from Amazon) as my daily “mental health tax” which consists of any small treat (often a mini Halloween candy) of between 45-90 calories that I don’t count in the MyNetDiary app I use.

Supper was 1/3 of a Nanaimo bar I saved from dessert a couple days ago when I didn’t have the calories to eat it right then (the other 2/3 went to my favourite staff member, who is the same one who occasionally treats me to the random avocados), all the leftover garden salad the dining room had from lunch yesterday that was otherwise going to go to the garbage, 9oz of ham being served up to everybody in the dining room for supper (only I asked for an extra large portion and was also the only one who chopped mine up and thought to mix it into leftover salad greens because I’m the residential inventor and this is what I do) in a calorie wise spicy mustard ranch dressing (also of my own invention).

1430 calories, 150g carbs, 75g protein, 60g fat for a well balanced day of eating at maintenance (I am mostly bedbound so have a fairly low TDEE).

I know it’s nothing fancy compared to a lot of the meals you all can wrangle up with the help of air fryers, ovens, stovetops, etc, but I’m pretty proud of the day, especially considering my limitations on food essentially boiling down to what is being served (usually very oily, buttery, highly palatable foods intended to keep weight UP for extremely sick and elderly people) and what I can get delivered from Amazon. I’m especially proud of my salad concoctions because the cooked vegetables here are not exactly “lite” and are served dripping in butter, and most of the fruit is canned in syrup, so I largely limit my fruits and vegetable intake to the very occasional garden salads and daily fresh apples. It’s always an exciting day when I can stock up on fresh salad, otherwise many days the best I can do for produce is 3-5 raw apples (which I chop up and mix with a bit of Splenda and cinnamon). Many days I also have to supplement my protein intake with shakes or bars from Amazon, so this was an especially impressive day for me in which I managed to meet my minimum protein goals with relatively little supplementation.

by MySockIsMissing