I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease a few days before my wedding in 1990. Over the last 24 years, I've suffered from many but certainly not all of the complications that Crohn's inflicts on its victims. Until recently that had never included a loss of appetite.
When I had my Crohn's flare with abdominal abscess, I suffered from random bouts of nausea and nearly constant pain. Although I had constant pain, certain activities caused that pain to spike - sometimes severely. One activity that caused a lot of pain was eating. Although eating any food caused problems, eating vegetables made my pain much worse than eating anything else did.
From the beginning of December through the end of January I developed an aversion to food. My body craved the food and wanted to be fueled. However, no matter how hungry I felt, I just couldn't make myself to want to eat. When I did eat, I rapidly reached a point of not wanting to eat more. It was not satiation, since my body wanted more food.
The nutrition strategy I worked out for myself during this painful episode was to limit myself to low residue solid foods and only liquid (or pureed) fibrous foods. To aid with nutrition and consuming calories, I started drinking 1 Ensure/Boost every day (which seemed to cause terrible diarrhea, who knew?). Despite my somewhat ad hoc nutrition plan, over 4 weeks or so I lost 15 pounds.
For the first time in my life I began to understand what it must be like for people suffering from this chronically.
Over the last 1.5 weeks, I've begun to recover from this loss of appetite. Just a couple of days ago I found myself hungry, sitting down to a meal, and really looking forward to getting to eat. I realized that the worst of my loss of appetite was over (at least for now). I'm gradually trying to add non-low residue foods back into my diet. I had a hamburger with lettuce, tomato, and onion yesterday for lunch. I ate some asparagus last night.
One of my GI doctors explained to me that I need to spread the fiber out through the meal and intermix it with low residue foods to reduce the chance for bowel obstructions. I'm doing my best to follow this advice without deviation.
So far the lack of appetite hasn't affected my running very much. This is simply because when my loss of appetite affected me the most, I was feeling so bad, that I couldn't run anyway. As I've started feeling good enough to run, my eating problems also resolved. I have not had to deal with a loss of appetite while I felt good enough to run. The key to dealing with this will be to consume the calories that you need. Calorie dense foods like Ensure/Boost can help with this. Just make sure that you don't consume drinks like this loaded with fiber.
When I had my Crohn's flare with abdominal abscess, I suffered from random bouts of nausea and nearly constant pain. Although I had constant pain, certain activities caused that pain to spike - sometimes severely. One activity that caused a lot of pain was eating. Although eating any food caused problems, eating vegetables made my pain much worse than eating anything else did.
From the beginning of December through the end of January I developed an aversion to food. My body craved the food and wanted to be fueled. However, no matter how hungry I felt, I just couldn't make myself to want to eat. When I did eat, I rapidly reached a point of not wanting to eat more. It was not satiation, since my body wanted more food.
The nutrition strategy I worked out for myself during this painful episode was to limit myself to low residue solid foods and only liquid (or pureed) fibrous foods. To aid with nutrition and consuming calories, I started drinking 1 Ensure/Boost every day (which seemed to cause terrible diarrhea, who knew?). Despite my somewhat ad hoc nutrition plan, over 4 weeks or so I lost 15 pounds.
For the first time in my life I began to understand what it must be like for people suffering from this chronically.
Over the last 1.5 weeks, I've begun to recover from this loss of appetite. Just a couple of days ago I found myself hungry, sitting down to a meal, and really looking forward to getting to eat. I realized that the worst of my loss of appetite was over (at least for now). I'm gradually trying to add non-low residue foods back into my diet. I had a hamburger with lettuce, tomato, and onion yesterday for lunch. I ate some asparagus last night.
One of my GI doctors explained to me that I need to spread the fiber out through the meal and intermix it with low residue foods to reduce the chance for bowel obstructions. I'm doing my best to follow this advice without deviation.
So far the lack of appetite hasn't affected my running very much. This is simply because when my loss of appetite affected me the most, I was feeling so bad, that I couldn't run anyway. As I've started feeling good enough to run, my eating problems also resolved. I have not had to deal with a loss of appetite while I felt good enough to run. The key to dealing with this will be to consume the calories that you need. Calorie dense foods like Ensure/Boost can help with this. Just make sure that you don't consume drinks like this loaded with fiber.
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