Thursday 8 November 2012

Guest Blog - Smart Snacking :)

Everyone with CF knows the relationship with food is very much a love/hate thing so here is a guest blog from the lovely Laura with a little guide on how to pack in the high calorie snack when not really feeling the love!



I think we all have those moments when we don't want to eat anything, but know we should. Too full, too sick, too fed up. Me? I love food, I love eating, but I just can't fit in as much as I used to. The thought of calories and my high calorie diet fill me with a serendipitous joy - sometimes (when other tedious ailments aren't plaguing my mind) I feel like the luckiest girl in the world. Who wouldn't want a high calorie diet?! I have the keys to the gates of Eden where all that forbidden fruit is mine to pluck whenever I desire - a guilt free, fatty paradise. 

I wake up, plant myself at the table in front of the TV, and embark on a long and idyllic journey through the Eden that no doubt every person would wish to visit. Hey, I live there. My favourites at the moment are toasted sandwiches filled to the brim with cheese and ham and more cheese, smothered in butter (both sides), fried, the gooey-er the better. Popping candy chocolate spread is like a new years eve party in my mouth, every day, minus the hangover. Bacon drenched in maple syrup on top of eggy or fried bread, butter with toast, sugar with tea. Double cream cheesy carbonara, with a McDonalds starter. Chicken dippers, garlic baguettes, re-fried chips. Sausage in batter on a whim. Spam. When I do calories I aim to do them on an Elvis Presley scale. My mum bought me an Elvis cook-book once, I should really look that out again... 

But we all know that sometimes it just isn't that easy. Whatever your reasons may be, sometimes we just can't stomach stuffing in those calories. The very thought of food makes you growl and moan - our great pleasure has transformed into a source of relentless torture. But like the ghosts of Christmases past, present and future, an amalgamation of your parents', your dieticians' and your consultants' voices start to haunt your sweetly saturated mind - "you must have more calories, keep snacking, gain weight!", enough to make you puke and run and hide in a salad bar - definitely NOT go buy a big fat Turkey like Scrooge. 

I've been trying to find food that I can eat despite feeling like I'm about to burst, which is becoming increasingly more often much to my despair. My mind is pulling me towards the fridge, yet I can hardly get up off the sofa as I feel so deceivingly stuffed. It is a conflict I don't really understand and utterly boggles my mind, but that still causes me endless grief. My well trained CF appetite is unrelenting in its will to get me munching, but this tiny frame and squished stomach is just not allowing me the space to fulfil these gluttonous dreams. So to banish those haunting, niggling voices in these desperate times, I've compiled a list of snack food that is packed full of calories, but don't fill you up like an expanding sponge! These slip down with unnoticeable ease, and even though they may not be on the same Presley type scale, when not functioning at your best they still pack quite a punch.  

-Crispy bacon (300 cals a pack)
-Juice
-Coke (142 cals per 330ml can)
-Old Jamaica Ginger Beer (211 cals per 330ml can) Fizzy drink with the most cals I've found
-Mattesson's Fridge raiders (140 cals a pack) - airy, light and mushy! 
-Mini pepperamis
-Mini babybell
-Mr Kipling slices (The country slices and lemon icing ones are yum)
-Cashew nuts - all nuts are jam packed with cals, great to nibble
-Sainsbury's peanuts, raisins and chocolate chips - (200g pack has 928 cals. Not kidding!)
-Milky Ways - the mush inside makes them not too dense.
-Milky bars - lovely and thin
-Maltesers - have one, have many!
-Mars Refuel Milkshake - (400ml bottle = 340 cals) Thinner than most other milkshakes, and the sports top makes it easier to slurp/sip.
-McDonalds chips - (Small 230 cals, Med 330 cals, Large 460 cals) So many cals, but hardly any substance...!
-Taramasalata - (A quarter of a 211g pot of Tesco's tara has 275cals) So many calories even a little is perfect... Have with strips of pitta bread for something light(ish).

Just um, don't forget the creon eh, otherwise you may end up more like Elvis than you had planned to. We all know where he spent his last living moments... ! 




Follow Laura's journey on the waiting list for a liver and pancreas transplant on her blog, Ludicrous Bunglings.