ME Diet and Weight Gain

by Mark F
(Swindon, Wiltshire, UK)

Big thanks to Mark for this comment on diet for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and weight gain.

I have added in the links, so you can find the articles he is referring to.

I too have Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME).

Interesting stuff on hypoglycaemia!

I think I have the opposite! I rarely actually feel hungry... In fact a few weeks ago I experimented with a 3-day fast... my energy dived, as expected, but not a single tummy grumble! Maybe my metabolism died and went to live at the bottom of the garden :-)

The only time I get peckish is when junk food is displayed too close to me... I guess my belly's ruled by my brain!

Actually though I only eat junk food when I'm feeling low and stressed... I've been off work for a couple of years now, and the junk food mainly stopped at the same time as work.

Perhaps more importantly, I was having a lot of coffee and sugar back then (apparently a lot of people with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis fall into this trap - trying to keep the body going via artificial fuel).

I've met a range of body types with ME, but anyone on the large side seems to have been in the same "coffee + sugar + bad food" boat. For me, cutting sugar out of my diet seems to have helped clear my brain - I was amazed when I could suddenly do maths again!

Unfortunately playing with the diet doesn't seem to drop the weight... Currently I'm doing all the right things (careful diet; gentle gym work at the Ridgegway MediSpa) ... but the scales refuse to budge. I do wonder if the "right" things that the doctors recommend are actually the wrong things for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis.

I will read up on Vi and maybe go for that next. I definitely did recognise myself in this line from your website: "I am not effectively digesting and absorbing the nutrients in the food I eat." (When getting diagnosed, I spent over a year telling docs that I wasn't getting energy from my food.)

Thank you for your website

All the best, Mark

Note from Katherine Owen

Mark lives in Swindon, as do I.
His comment has led me to put together an article on Swindon ME groups (CFS groups) . Click through if interested.

What’s your experience with weight gain or weight loss?

Having hypoglycemia meant that eating sugar products made me feel worse, so I haven’t done the coffee/sugar thing. In the early days – before I thought of myself as unwell –I had my own ways of pushing through the fatigue!

Living off sugar and coffee corresponds to the profile of someone with adrenal fatigue, so for those in this group do take a look at that article.

Mark’s comment on the brain working better without the sugar sounds like a symptom of candida which gets a mention in the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome diet article.

Good luck to Mark and all of you with your weight management. It is tricky, isn't it, when you can't exercise as much as you would like.

Wishing you all a healing day :-)
Katherine

tags: diet for myalgic encephalomyelitis, diet for cfs, weight gain, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome