gaining weight back!

hate to be a nega-nellie but me n the dude kinda touched on this subject earlier - i lost about 30 pounds when i got sick - still haven't gained much back after 10 yrs :-(

hopefully your bf will have better luck, but it is a slow climb out of the skeleton basement for some of us -

about 10# of the 30 i lost was my gluten gut - seriously, i could never get rid of it no matter how hard i worked -

and i did - i was at the gym at least 4 days a week and running, skating, hiking, biking, etc the other 3 days - i was toned to say the least - so the other 20 pounds i lost was pure muscle - i was always a hard gainer in that department so the chances of me ever getting much of that back are zippo !

but the longer i feel better, my hope is to start making some gains - time will tell !

During my last flare three and a half years ago, I lost sixty pounds; as luck would have it I had been about sixty pounds overweight.

I have been blessed to be able to keep that flab off since then.

Thanks soystud. My poor grocery bills are insane from my food consumption haha

It is possible to gain weight back but the key thing is your body needs to be healed enough by the medication to allow that to happen. How long does that take, well that really depends on how quickly you are healing and only your GI can tell you conclusively through a flexible-endoscope (could take months, 1/2 a year, or more). I think it took me about 6 months before I was able to regain weight after my initial diagnosis with uc. In subsequent uc flare ups, I've been able to regain weight within a couple months time. Everyone is different though, some heal quicker than others, others take longer...

If you still have lots of active uc disease and active inflammation (symptoms such as having frequent diarrhea, blood, and mucus) then it is going to be very tough if not impossible to regain weight lost. However, if you've healed a lot more are only going to the bathroom (3-4 times a day or less) and bms are mostly formed then it should be possible, at least for me it was (even though I was still mildly flaring with my uc). The key thing, as with anyone trying to regain weight, is to make a concerted effort to consume more calories than your body needs in the average day. You are not going to magically regain weight once you are healed, rather you gotta do something like eat an extra meal per day, have a really big second serving of your supper, and so forth. It is important to eat as much healthy, nutritious food as you can, as your body has been through hell and back loosing that much weight, that fast.

Maintaining a healthy weight can be a challenge with uc. Just be as healthy as you can diet wise and when you can bulk up your weight, do so. My weight certainly has had its ups and downs since uc manifested itself:

I was a slightly chunky 155 pounds before my initial diagnosis with uc which shot my weight down to 128.5 pounds (a loss of 26.5 pounds) on my 5ft 5 inch frame. I was able to regain 8 pounds and get my weight back to 136.5 pounds by xmas 2012. I don't ever want to get back to 155 as it was a bit to much for me to weigh.

I then had a flare up of my uc at the start of 2013 which dropped me back down to 122 pounds (a loss of 14.5 pounds) which put me in the kinda unhealthy skeletal-looking kinda place Soystud was talking about. I am now back to 131.5 pounds (regained 9.5 pounds) so far which is a bit more healthy for me and I am currently working on regaining more. As a plus, at least with uc you can eat whatever junk (cake, chips) you want guilt-free on occasion as retaining weight is not always easy haha.

Here's a couple posts which I and a number of regular board members talked about their experience of weight gain and loss with uc:
Gaining weight again 12/4/2012
Coping with weight loss and uc 10/3/2012