Slow Down on the Sugar
If you’re experiencing a flare and find yourself gravitating toward comfort foods laden with sugar (which is totally normal, by the way!), try going off sugar for a week and see what happens.
Experimenting with only eating natural sugar can help reduce your cravings in the long run. While it may be difficult at first, and seem impossible in the first couple of days, your body will eventually reboot and stop craving it so intensely.
After your sugar detox, you’ll likely find yourself not reaching for the sugary goodies so often, and thus making it easier to keep the weight off during your period of inactivity.
Tracking Your Food Intake
One way I like to ensure I am eating healthily is by using free eating tracking apps like MyFitnessPal. Many of these apps allow you not only to see your daily calorie count, but also your daily intake of things like sugar, protein, sugar and sodium to ensure you’re getting enough of all of the important nutrients you need in the day.
If you’re used to leading an active lifestyle, and therefore used to eating a large amount of food, an app like this is particularly useful. Simply input your height and weight and the app will tell you how many calories a day you need to maintain your current weight.
Although everyone is different, I find a mixture of carbohydrates (found in breads and pastas) and proteins (found in meats, cheeses, beans, eggs, lentils and nuts) are the best in helping curbing hunger and increasing energy levels — two things that are necessary in order to maintain a healthy weight with lupus.
However, you may need to experiment to see what works best for you when it comes to helping keep your appetite under control.
Exercise
Lastly, exercising with lupus is very important. During a flare this may likely be impossible, so don’t beat yourself up if you’re unable to do more than feed yourself and shower in a day.
However, when you are feeling up to it, try and get in some low-impact exercise like simply walking around the block or even around the house.
Make it a goal to do simple weight-bearing exercises every day to keep your weight down and your bones and joints healthy. If you can, join a gym and swim some laps or bike on the stationary bike.
Listen to your body and make the effort to keep moving if it is possible. The ripple effects are a bit more energy and entering onto a path of better overall health that may help you during the next big battle with lupus.
Other Lupus Weight Gain Tips
- Don’t diet, just eat healthy: Don’t think of it as a diet, because it could make you want to eat more! Simply eat healthy foods and plenty of them. Create large healthy meals with mostly veggies filling your plate.
- Imagine your dinner plate like a clock: 45 minutes is veggies while only 15 is a lean meat. I try and eat plenty of cucumbers, cauliflower and broccoli and stay clear of heavy salad dressing, cheese or butter.
- Chew slowly and savor meals: Eating on the run takes away that much-needed savoring of food, which I find makes me want eat again. There is something about sitting down to dinner that is part of the overall feeling of being satisfied by what you ate.
- Choose only healthy types of take-out: In the midst of a lupus flare, take-out may be my go-to option to get dinner on the table. Make it healthy food, like a grilled chicken salad (vinaigrette on the side), not fast food or soda.
- Allow yourself small snacks: Yes, snacking can be our pitfall in controlling weight, but not if you put together baggies of healthy snacks that make the portion and snack choice quick and easy to stick to.
- Drink lots of water: The more water you drink (I put lemon in mine to add to the anti-inflammatory effect) the more you flush out your body and also create a sensation of fullness to curb that increased appetite. Cold water is said to also work better at curbing the appetite.
Don’t Let It Get You Down
Many times you will gain weight during a lupus flare simply because of water retention, despite all of your best efforts. This can feel infuriating and make you feel out of control of your body.
Remind yourself during these times that lupus is only a part of you and doesn’t represent who you are as a whole. You are so much more than your illness or any temporary water weight you gain!
