I need your healthy ideas to put weight on my husband. I know the Lyme and Babs is taking its toll, but I need ideas. We are also Gluten Free in the house and do limited Dairy.
Thanks in advance for the ideas.
Posted by canefan17 (Member # 22149) on :
Eat Nuts -- not peanuts tho they have mold on them --Jay--
Posted by BackinStOlaf (Member # 23725) on :
lots of avocados
Posted by canefan17 (Member # 22149) on :
I don't necessarily agree with eating a lot of nuts to gain weight.
1) Nuts are goitrogens (suppress the thyroid) So if you eat a lot of nuts and have thyroid issues.... look out!
2) Nuts are typically moldy (unless you buy RAW sunflower seeds or raw almonds
3) Nuts and peanut butter slow digestion down big time which slows down metabolism which can hamper immune function.
Any coincidence that when we come down with common cold or flu the last thing our bodies crave for is Peanut Butter and Milk! ewwww
Your husband can't gain weight because of malabsorption issues.
You have to attack these issues before you can expect to see weight gain. (Take it from somebody who was eating 6-8 meals a day stuffing his face and not gaining a pound)
The article I attached above is a good start.
Posted by Keebler (Member # 12673) on :
- Yes, even if gluten-free, malabsorption can be a problem for many lyme patients.
If your husband is relatively new to lyme, I'd just be patient as long as good health habits are in place. Weight GAIN often follows an initial weight loss, for no apparent reason - but infections can do that.
If he is getting enough good nutrition - and lifting some weights (no aerobics but gentle exercise and some weight lifting is good) . I think without lifting weights it would be hard as weight gain needs to be mostly muscle gain. There is a good protein link in the thread below - we need far more when ill.
For some safe ideas, you can search past recent threads on the topic here:
Increase the good carbs to gain weight, and protein + weights to gain muscle.
If carbs are low (which is for those fighting yeast, high blood sugar, or trying to lose fat), it is easy to lose fat and hard to gain it.
Even if not exercising, you can maintain your muscle mass better if you are eating enough protein so your body doesn't start consuming your muscles.
When people are starving, on restrictive diets, or not eating enough due to illness, they lose muscle and fat, but when they start to eat a lot again, they gain back fat easier than muscle and have poorer health than before, even when they get back to their former weight.
Lifting weights plus protein fights that.
Pre-Lyme, keeping to a strict low carb diet and lifting small weights a couple times a week caused me to get fatigued a day or two later, and to feel like I might faint when I stood up too quickly right during or after exercising.
Eating more carbs, such as an easily absorbed carb snack right before and after exercising (maybe fruit? high sugar fruit like bananas are good), helped keep the energy up in my muscles, and fixed the problems I was having with fatigue and feeling faint.
The rest of the time, when you're not exercising, you either want to avoid carbs (to not gain weight), or to eat slow-absorbed carbs like whole grains and high fiber/low sugar fruit (to gain weight), and in both cases, to eat protein to build up your muscles.
Lowfat or nonfat anything is high carb, by definition.
Since Lyme, I am on a reduced carb diet but not yet as low carb as I was then, and I mean to start exercising soon but have not been since I got sick, so I don't know how the combination of that diet and weights will act with Lyme thrown in. I hope to feel better in a few weeks and have the time and energy to start exercising.
Just warning people, because many of you are on low sugar or low carb diets and trying to use weights to exercise--if you get fatigued or feel faint, it could be that combination instead of a Lyme symptom or drug reaction, even though Lyme and side effects can also cause both things.
Everyone's diet-related issues are different, and no one single diet is right for everybody, but there is a definite correlation between the grams of carbohydrate a person eats in a day and the amount of weight they gain or lose.
Posted by canefan17 (Member # 22149) on :
Rice and Shine Cereal Quinoa Brown Rice
^^^ winners
Posted by pryorka (Member # 13649) on :
It might help to take digestive enzymes to make sure the food is being digested and absorbed. Probiotics also help with digestion, and foods like kefir have loads of them. Aside from that.. avocados like one person said are helpful.