Fibro and Weight Gain

I am talking about the difficult topic of fibromyalgia and weight gain and sharing some simple suggestions I have discovered.

Many people with Fibromyalgia are overweight including me. 
For me, it is the most humiliating side of this disease because people in our society judge you for being overweight and think you are lazy. 

Some people, including doctors, even think that Fibro is caused by our weight gain and that if we lost the weight we would no longer have our symptoms! 

When I first got Fibro I gained over 25lbs and have found it very difficult to lose this extra weight. I have tried many weight loss programs including Weight Watchers, Optifast and a hospital dietician program. After putting a lot of effort in and doing these programs for many months I had no lasting success. I feel these programs have caused more health problems than the small amount of weight lost and then regained!

I was very pleased to find a simple, good article about Fibromyalgia and Weight Gain from Health Central. 

It gives 4 reasons for weight gain in fibro:

• Lack of Sleep.


• Neuroendocrine Abnormalities. This is to do with hormone deficiencies.


• Decreased Activity. Because of the level of pain.


• Medication.

It also gives good and different Weight-loss Strategies that I have not tried before :

• Eat a High-protein, Low-carbohydrate Diet.


• Eat proteins first.


• Eat until you’re full.


• Give yourself a Break from a diet on weekends.

To give an example of how complex an issue weight loss can be for people who have fibromyalgia I will just share one excert from the article:

One of the primary symptoms of FM is the inability to get the deep, stage 4 restorative sleep we need. Recent studies have shown that people who do not get adequate amounts of sleep are more likely to gain weight. Lack of sleep causes a reduction metabolism and an increase in appetite, particularly a craving for high-carb and high-sugar foods.

 

Cycle of sleep and weight problems in Fibromyalgia

So as you can see it is a vicious cycle and everything is interconnected and conspiring against maintaining our weight. And this is just the sleep side of things!

You can read the full article here . This article is written by a doctor who has Fibromyalgia since childhood - Dr Mark Pelligrino - and I am going to follow these suggestions and hopefully lose a little weight. He has written a book about fibromyalgia which has these weight loss tips in it called Inside Fibromyalgia.

Thanks for reading this.

Have you had success with losing weight and have fibromyalgia? I would love to get any of your suggestions to help me here.

Fibromyalgia and Weight Gain and what I am trying to reduce weight.