Weekly Weigh-In & Suicide Note #3
Starting weight: 215
Previous weight: 205.5
Current weight: 219
(No, that’s not a typo; it’s the fucking prednisone. In one week, I *gained* 13.5 pounds. If my apartment weren’t on the first floor, I’d be jumping out a window right now.)
November 14th, 2007 at 12:45 PM
But it’s all water weight, so it’s “temp” weight. You’ll come down eventually. Don’t be too hard on yourself.
By the way, if you search on Amazon, there’s a listing for a $100 Howard the Duck Omnibus coming out next year. Didn’t know if you knew. Hope you did!
November 14th, 2007 at 7:46 PM
Looking at the wiki on Prednisone, the weight gain seems par the course, but I don’t know the best way to combat it as you are trying to lose weight for the purposes of the transplant.
Can the sawbones take into account that this weight gain “water weight” into their figures and adjust your “fightin’ weight”? Or does it have to be 179 or the highway? It’s like a no-win situation… unless the Predisone is just a temp drug you’ll be off in a short bit.
To make a torturous pun, it’s like you are trapped in water weight you never made! Dr. Bong is obviously behind it all… or at the very least, Count Cowula!
November 14th, 2007 at 8:36 PM
I just want to echo Ray Cornwall: “Don’t be too hard on yourself”. Every time I try to lose weight, I run into the “water wall”, wherein water weight trumps every gain… or in this case, every loss.
Are you using a nonoral form? Apparently this delivers the prednisone directly to the lungs and has less complications, as far as water retention is involved.
The “perfect” supplement at a time like this is to eat grapefruit. Burns more calories and partakes a little zip -all with no undue side effects.
Best wishes!
November 14th, 2007 at 10:59 PM
I’m on a high dose of prednisone (60 mg. a day; it was 70 until yesterday), as well as antibiotics, to deal with what may be a small but stubborn pneumonia. Over the next 25 days, I’m to step back down, in 5-day/10-mg. increments, to 10 mg. a day, which is what I was taking when I started the diet.
After the transplant, I’ll be back on a very high dose for some time and probably on more than the 10 mg. for the rest of my life. Prednisone is used as a rejection-suppression agent in all kinds of organ transplants.
179 is my goal, for my personal comfort. The surgeon wanted me to lose 15 pounds from my starting weight.
November 14th, 2007 at 11:57 PM
This doesn’t sound good, but it doesn’t sound so bad either. If you will cut back on the prednisone you should also loose the water again, and if I’m not mistaken the water gain is worse at the beginning, so it shouldn’t get any worse.
Perhaps the combination of this:
http://www.marvel.com/digitalcomics/titles/Omega%7Ecolon%7ETheUnknown.1976.1
and this:
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=136274
Last sentence:
Could get your mood up a bit.
November 15th, 2007 at 6:41 AM
Um, yeah, but you can’t eat grapefruit if you’re on lipitor and some other pills.
Steve, I’m going to speak as Mr. Diabetes again. One of the things I learned early on is that I have to be realistic. I can’t lose weight the way I might on, say, that Atkins diet. The insulin that keeps me alive also results in weight gain. I took off a total of 45 pounds over a three-year period, and I keep it stable now. That’s pretty much all I can hope for. Sure, I’d like to weigh 175, but I’d rather be (relatively) healthy.
Your doctor’s goals are good ones. Lose the 15 pounds. Take care of business (like the transplant). Then re-examine the territory and see what kind of reasonable weight loss you can expect on a long-term diet, one you can maintain.
November 15th, 2007 at 7:51 PM
It’s TOTALLY and COMPLETELY the Prednisone – Don’t blame anything other than that steriod. I speak from the experience of when my wife had to take it for awhile – it’s necessary for what it does, but it makes the user gain 15 lbs in a very short batch of days. At least you had lost the 8 or 9 lbs and shot back to within a few pounds of where you started, as opposed to the starting weight and THEN gaining 15 lbs.
Sucks though…