My mother is 78. She is in fairly good health, though she had a stroke a few years ago (she recovered well from it and it mainly affected her vision, not her memory or speech - you can't tell she had a stroke just by looking at her or talking with her).
She has always been tall and slim - she is "long boned" but with a medium size frame, maybe even bordering on a large-ish frame (her hands and feet are on the large side but she's tall so they look fine). When she was very young, she had a tiny waist and was quite slim but for most of her adult life she weighed between 150 and 160 pounds. At 5'10" that weight has always looked great on her. She's been an avid walker (three miles a day) for most of her adult life, till recently.
She's always eaten a healthy diet. She's one of those people who has always had a pretty voracious appetite, and a very high metabolism. She ate heartily, and apparently burned it off by walking vigorously and by virtue of the fact that she's always been "naturally slim." She's always had a sweet tooth. I'd say on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the most natural, organic foods, balanced approach to a daily diet, she has averaged about a 7.
A year or so ago, she suddenly began reading every single label and looking up everything she ate online. She became convinced that she was hypoglycemic/hyperglycemic/anemic/diabetic/fill in the blank and was always voluntarily going on a diet for those specific health issues, even though her lab work has always been PERFECT. She even started telling people that she had these different conditions (this was the first sign of some sort of weirdness).
She has no filter when it comes to whatever she reads online, so of course she thinks that just about every ingredient or process to modern foods is unnatural and unhealthy. So over the course of a year or so, she's restricted her diet more and more, till she barely eats ANYTHING. Consequently - OF COURSE - her weight has dropped to about 134 pounds - and it's still dropping.
Her skin has begun to hang on her. Her clothes are all too big and she refuses to go buy clothes that fit - instead she walks around wearing clothes that look ridiculous on her frankly. The skin on her face has developed TONS of new wrinkles. Her hip bones literally jut out. She wears a scarf all the time, because the skin on her neck has suddenly begun to hang as the weight falls off of her.
My dad became so alarmed that he made her go to the doctor, who ran all sorts of tests, all of which came back completely normal. The doctor's advice was "EAT MORE FOOD."
So now she "acts like" she's eating more, which isn't fooling any of her family. Going out to eat with her is excruciating. She stabs at her food, pushes it around on the plate, but actually eats miniscule amounts. Today they came over for Easter dinner and I had a home cooked meal - which she barely touched. She put literally ONE spoonful of each (very normal) dish - dishes she would be used to and would have liked till recently. When the whole family said, "Why are you eating such a small amount of food?" she said, "I'm going to go back for seconds." What she really did was take that food back to the kitchen, scrape it down the disposal, and put a few more tiny spoonfuls of food on her plate, which she pushed around during the rest of the meal. Then she said, "OH MY - I'M SO FULL!" In other words, she is faking.
Consequently, she also has a much lower energy level. She gets very tired very easily, which is a new thing. She falls asleep in chairs - at church, in waiting areas, in family gatherings as people laugh and talk around her, etc.
She is hyper critical of any sort of food or grocery store - nothing is pure enough for her. Then she complains about the price of the few specialty food items she buys.
I made a red velvet cake a few weeks ago (a specialty of mine) and I know she has a sweet tooth so I brought half of it to their house. She immediately said, "Does it have food coloring in it?" Well, of course. She immediately said, "You may as well take it back home with you - we don't eat things with any food coloring in them." GRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!
WHAT IS GOING ON WITH HER? I don't understand this sudden obsession and what seems to be self sabotage - can't she see or tell that her self imposed dietary restrictions are actually aging her and sapping her energy? Can't she see that she looks ten years older now than my dad - suddenly? (Her vision problems are a narrow field of vision - she can still see things pretty clearly.)
Besides being worried about her, our entire family is also irritated with her over this. I swear, it's like she's got anorexia! When we sat her down and said, "You are too thin. We are all worried about you." she said, "But I enjoy being slim."
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