Need To Gain Weight-maybe It Will Help Me Feel Better?

[tbs19]

i was diagnosed about a year ago, but since going on the diet have not really gotten any better. ive seen countless doctors, nutritionists, and therapists, but no one has really helped me. im wondering if maybe gaining weight would help? i dont know how exactly, but im willing to try anything at this point. im 5'4 and a 102 pounds. any ideas?

[Sophiekins]

Welcome!

Yes, gaining weight will probably help you feel better, but you will need to make sure it is healthy weight. It would be easier for us to make some helpful suggestions (for feeling better and gaining weight) if we knew a bit more about you - how were you diagnosed? How sick did you get? What has your diet been like since? Is your household gluten-free, or just you? Do you have any other med. problems?

My gut instinct if you've been on the diet for a year and "not really any better" is your doctors are missing something. . .could you tell us what you mean by "not really any better"?

[Viola 1]

Yes, gaining weight will make you feel a lot better.

Having said that, keep in mind that everyone is different on this. It took me years to get to a healthy weight after going gluten free.

Part of the problem was, one, living in a house that is not entirely gluten free, and then getting contaminated frequently ... two and this is a big one! Stress. When you are diagnosed, you start stressing out about food, ... is it gluten free... can I trust it to be uncontaminated...do they really know what cross contamination is ... etc. etc. You are burning calories worrying about a lot more than you did before diagnosis.

Next, you are frequently hungry, but don't know what you feel like eating that is "safe" so you go and do what ever activity to give yourself something more to think about. Maybe this is just me.

Protien is important, but because it doesn't taste the same as it used to, we 'don't bother' preparing it as often as we used to.

There are so many reasons that keep us 'skinny' ones from gaining weight, that we just can't blame it on gluten. It's a whole different, more relaxing life style that will do it. And it does take time to get there.

So ... now I finally gained the weight, and this past year ...more than I want. So ... after all those years (from 1989) of trying to gain ... how do I take it off again?????????

[burdee]

  tbs19 said:

i was diagnosed about a year ago, but since going on the diet have not really gotten any better. ive seen countless doctors, nutritionists, and therapists, but no one has really helped me. im wondering if maybe gaining weight would help? i dont know how exactly, but im willing to try anything at this point. im 5'4 and a 102 pounds. any ideas?

I disagree. Gaining weight per se will NOT help you feel better. In fact you may NOT be able to gain weight until you get all the gluten out of your system. I weigh 105# at 5'4", but feel much better after I learned what was causing my ongoing symptoms. At first I was taking probiotics which contained GLUTEN (malt diastase or barley gluten). Then I learned I had casein allergy. So I eliminated that and also soy, after soy substitutes gave me similar symptoms. I got better but did not lose all my symptoms. This year I did the ELISA test for 100 different food allergies and learned I also had egg and cane sugar allergies. Worse yet, I had a bacterial (Klebsiella) infection and no lactobacillus acidophilus (good) bacteria. So my doc treated the Klebsiella and put me on high dose probiotics. I got better, but was not completely normal when I picked up a mild form of e. coli. So he had to treat that and put me on even higher dose probiotics, because I had NO good bacteria at that point. Now that I have eliminated all my allergy sources, treated bad bacteria and replaced good bacteria, I'm almost symptom free.

You may not have as many other allergies or bacterial problems as I did. I went many years with misdiagnosed celiac disease, while I developed other allergies. However, if you STILL have symptoms, you need to consider whether you are still getting gluten, whether you have other food allergies, or whether you have other conditions causing those symptoms. Otherwise you will still be sick at a higher weight.

BURDEE