How can you prevent caregiver burnout?
These are some ways to practice tips for self-care!
Make sure you’re eating a healthy diet and drinking plenty of water, joining a caregiver’s support group,
including regular exercise into your schedule,
ensuring you are getting enough sleep,
reaching out to faith-based supports (if that helps you),
most importantly: ask for help when you need it! You need support too, and you deserve it.
Give yourself the gift of good nutrition for YOURSELF. I weekly shop for fruits, greens and vegetables for my special salads. I prep everything all at once, placing serving size slices into baggies and a gallon bag of salad greens mix. When I am tired and worn out, I can make myself a beautiful salad with very little effort - just put the various parts into the bowl and add dressing. This helps me feel cared for. I'm never sorry I had a good salad.
It is great to hear that you make a conscious effort to prioritize your health. It can be difficult in the moment to remind ourselves what we need so having things prepared in advance can certainly help with that. Do you have any go to recipes that you follow or do you just make it up based on what you have on hand? Warmly, Patty, Team Member
I know that by dinner time, between my LO sundowning and asking about his parents and being confused, and my general fatigue it's tempting to just microwave a box dinner. To counteract that, I make crockpot main dishes twice a week, simple stuff like bbq chicken thighs or vegetables and rice, so that I can add a salad and be done quickly. I have stopped dishing food the entree into serving bowls - only put salad and the side veggie on the table to encourage my hubby to eat more of those things. We also eat plenty of salmon, which is easy to cook in my airfryer on foil and then have no extra cleanup. I try to do easy now, like sweet potatoes and a small ham slice or a veggie patty and baked potato, and our salad of course!
These are great tips! Thank you for sharing how you are able to make food preparation easier and more efficient while offering healthy meals. When you cook in the crock pot, do you make larger volume and serve leftovers? Is that a useful practice? Scott AlzheimersDisease.net Team Member
