weight gain

Still Compliant, Still Gaining Weight

May 21, 2011

As quite a few of you on Twitter and Facebook are aware, I had another intestinal scare on Thursday. You see, Beautiful wrote about enzymes on Wednesday and every time she or I write about anything to do with blockages, something happens. Without fail. It’s really quite creepy and must stop this time. I’ll get to my lungs and weight soon, but first, it’s story time.

Thursday morning

I woke up feeling out of sorts and shrugged her off and indicated that I wasn’t feeling well when she came to wake me up on Thursday. I got up around 8:30 and started my treatments, but was feeling sore and crampy, only it wasn’t in the usual blockage area indicated from my long history of blockages. Like a seasoned veteran, I weighed the pros and cons of having an omelet for breakfast and just went for it with plenty of enzymes.

I got upstairs to start work around 10:00 and was more or less completely unable to concentrate. The cramps were coming in waves and in harder and harder force, but I can tell the difference between a resistance cramp and an uncomfortable cramp. These were the latter, no nasty, tight ball of crap anywhere to be found by exploratory pushing of my squishies. Sore, yes, but I didn’t have the tell-tale knot of disaster. Beautiful went back downstairs seeing my clear distress and got me a 20oz Gatorade and an extra Dulcolax to hydrate and flush anything that was in there.

Thursday afternoon

I was feeling better by dinnertime and insisted on eating despite Beautiful’s firm reminder that I “felt fine” before our Outback dinner for my birthday 2 years ago. [Read more…]

10 Basics of Gaining Weight With Cystic Fibrosis

January 14, 2011

Do you have any tips for me to help me gain weight?

This question keeps popping up via my contact form, so I guess it’s time to put my best tips that are spread out in various articles into one place to make it easy. Keep in mind that these are general tips for CFers that are approved for me by my doctors and nutritionist, so please check with your team if there’s anything here contrary to what you’re doing or what you’ve been advised of in the past. Shoot, check with them no matter what, okay?

Having a healthy BMI is crucial to having a healthy lung function. Check out this study summary for a fresh look at how you can turn your life around by gaining weight.

I don’t have CFRD, but I do my very best to keep my sugars as low as I can while still getting enough carbs to help boost my caloric intake some. The overall rule to gaining weight is: bring in more calories than you burn – exactly the opposite rule of losing weight. It’s really more of a second full-time job if you already have one or a first full-time job if you’re in school or on disability – make it a priority.

The first step to to try to find out over the course of a week how many calories it takes to add some weight, any weight, without losing any. You absolutely must be consistent with your liquid intake or you will significantly throw off your calculations with water weight, especially if you’re on a high sodium diet like many of us are. We are probably NOT talking about 2,000-3,000 Calories here. For me to gain weight, I need to pack away 4,000-6,000 Calories per day. You’ll want to use a phone app or spreadsheet to track your intake for accurate numbers.

[Read more…]

Fatboy Is Back After Losing 21 Pounds

October 26, 2010

I have lost 21 pounds since Labor Day

Time to honest up: my weight story has flat out stunk since business/personal crunch time began around mid-August. This photo was taken on Father’s Day. Notice how my polo is stretched tight over my gut. My shorts also wouldn’t button up at this point. After hitting a high weight of 135 just after vacation in mid-June, it was time to shift priorities from gaining weight to building our business so we could live more comfortably (i.e., get out of what debt we had and allow Beautiful to stay home if she so chooses) and stop spending a fortune on extra food. Now that it is there, it’s okay to back off, right?

Apparently not.

I dropped to a pretty steady 120 (20.6 BMI) for quite a while. Then it was time for surgery… which was desperately needed, as you will soon see by what happens next. After surgery, I had a really awful time with my antibiotics and nausea. I now have a much greater appreciation and empathy for all of my new transplant friends who had stomach issues after surgery for their various reasons. Seriously – how disabling!!

This progressed until I got on the scale Saturday morning and was horrified to see that I once again had plummeted to an embarrassing 113.5 (19.5 BMI) – right where I was before I started this site in March. All of that work for nothing! I don’t look like I’m that thin again, but I’m not going to stand for that. I have a site to write for – my credibility is at stake.
[Read more…]

Fatboy Is Losing Traction

September 9, 2010

Fatboy is losing traction with his weight and fortitude. I started this site on Posterous as self-accountability and then moved it to here using what I do every day for my business for global accountability and to better the CF community with my experiences and to connect with others. Today it’s time to cash in on accountability because Fatboy is losing traction and in need of community support.

I just don’t feel like going through all of the effort of making a huge omelet every morning just for myself and eating it by myself for the 200th time. It’s getting old. FAST! I’ve got work to do and hate starting each morning with yet another time-consuming chore done alone. I’m maintaining the weight I had after my cold (124lbs) but not gaining any of it back with my current appetite and eating.

It’s not a bad weight, but it’s not what I was nor where the doctors want me at. Our budget is stretched to the max with co-pays and pre-deductible medical expenses for the next month or so, so no matter how much I’d love to, going to the nearby pizza place for an 8″ personal pizza and drink for $7 every day to make up for a lost breakfast isn’t an option for a while. I know a certain Californian will suggest McGriddles, but that comes to an issue of time and money, as the nearest McDonald’s is with the flow of rush hour traffic and would end up being at least a 30-minute round trip.

I’ve made do for a few days by drinking my breakfast with extra Boosts, but that’s a more expensive option than eating my breakfast. The only thing that I can think of at the moment is to buy a few packs of bacon and pre-cook them in the oven when Beautiful doesn’t have to smell them and put them in the fridge to reheat with some sunny side up eggs that don’t take the extra time that an omelet does. I know for sure that it has to be protein-based because I crash seriously hard from a carb breakfast.

Does anyone have any other quick breakfast ideas? One no-no: I can’t do oatmeal or grits – my gag reflex won’t stand for that texture. 😉