Over eating and dementia. Anyone else with this problem?

Good idea with the premade! Thank you

Chloe - I tried to help this for my Mom by creating portion control snacks in sandwich bags, etc., buying pre-packaged portion control item, which was also easier for her to manage. But like others will say, it won't be moderate Alzeheimer's forever. When it gets into the severe stage, you will have a different situation.

A relative of ours found her grandmother standing in front of the refrigerator with a spoon eating straight out of a jar of mayonnaise one night. Who knows what their brains are telling them to do? We sure don't. Obviously too much of any food isn't good, and too much cheese will probably clog up the "works" for a few days. You don't know how long the journey will take, so pace yourself. Try to find something each day to laugh about, take your vitamins and any other meds. Try to find things you can do together. MIL loves to play cards and isn't as good as she used to be, but we play as often as we can. She enjoys dominoes, game shows on tv, old reruns (Beverly Hillbillies, Andy Griffith, Bonanza, that sort of stuff). Just sharing what works for us, of course. Your situation is different.

Thank you for your words. I am quite the control freak and know that I must let up. We need all the help we can get and we know the right thing to do is get a caregiver, because we are already very burned out as it is. It is such a saddening thing :( You are right about the research, everyone is different...so thank you for saying that. :)

OK, I typed out a response and then lost it, so I'll try again.
This is likely a phase. My MIL used to eat seconds and thirds at meals and we laughed that maybe she had a tapeworm. Anyway, now she barely eats and we wish she had her appetite back.

You can research the life out of this disease, and all you'll find is that every person is different and every person progresses at a different rate. However, all information is good, and prepares us for what *might* happen.

Personally, in our household, we needed to cut down on sweets and junk, so I took advantage and just quit buying that sort of stuff. MIL is lactose intolerant and I suspected I was, so cheese and ice cream went easily. Don't even miss it now. Well, maybe a little, but the point is, I've tried to improve all our diets.

Obviously, you can't control every little thing. If you're strung too tight, you will burn out a lot sooner. I was glad to read that you're having a caregiver come in because, with the loss of self-control, Morris may need a little less "free" time. He may move on to medicines or chemicals, who knows. His brain is mixed up.

Best wishes.

We wouldn't lock the main fridge, where all the other items are kept. There is plenty of food for him to eat in the fridge. It just that it's not the junk food that he wants. The purpose of the separate locked fridge would be to keep him away from over eating sweets, cheese, and more high fattening foods. He has really high blood sugar and we are trying to watch what he is eating, by doctor's orders. I actually looked into his condition more and it sounds like he has "frontotemporal dementia" which over eating is common and craving sweets and junk food. So I am a little more at ease now knowing that this is part of his disease. However, after reading I have found that this form of dementia is not as common.

Whoa, locking the fridge is usually frowned on by social services, they see it as abuse/neglect. Very sticky situation, I would discuss this with his caseworker first.