I weighed about 135-140 and lost about 15 pounds, my pants don't fit anymore, weigh about 125 now. Would like to get some weight back. In the book it says that 3600 calories is needed generally to start gaining some weight. I am doing smoothies with the whey protein, bananna, two shots of flax oil, maybe some dates or blueberries. I doubt there's alot of calories in that, with rice milk too. I can't figure out how to come up with 3600 calories of anything healthy, I am using pure organic maple syrup in salad dressings/sauces to add some more, but mostly I am eating steamed vegetables with white rice and the smoothies, and trying to fit in 6 tables spoons of flax a day. I was eating soy ice cream but glad to be reminded that soy inhibits nutrition absorption, duh. I tried some raw sesame butter a couple weeks ago and my body didn't like it. What are easy good healthy high sources of calories that won't cause irritation etc.? Seems like I spend alot of time preparing good now, and there's just not enough hours in the day to fit in more than two smoothies, food needs to digest so can't keep shoving stuff down my throat all day. Need some ideas here, thanks all....

Here are some high calorie foods that are healthy, at least from my perspective. But of course that doesn't mean you can tolerate them. Only you know that.

- Nut and seed butters, particularly pumpkin and hemp (I find them easiest to digest, and they're loaded with omega-3s. If you can't find them in your local store, try the omega nutrition or manitoba harvest brands online)

- Coconut oil. High in lauric acid which is antibacterial, antifungal and anti-inflammatory. Cook everything with it (it's the only oil that doesn't oxidize when cooked at medium/high temperatures) and eat it raw with other foods. 125 calories per tablespoon.

- Raw dairy products. I can't tolerate milk or cheese, but I can tolerate raw butter and again it is an excellent source of fat and calories. I live in California where it is possible to buy raw dairy products at the store. If you live elsewhere, you might try a local farm.

- "Alternative" grains like quinoa, buckwheat, amaranth and millet. Make sure to soak them for 12 hours before cooking. Many people can tolerate these grains even if they can't digest wheat, oats, etc.

Hope this helps,
Chris

Sorry, my brain is a little slow this morning.

Forgot to mention avocados. They are excellent for gaining weight and usually well tolerated.

Also eggs if you can tolerate them.

Finally, 3600 calories is not necessarily what you need to gain weight. The number of calories YOU need to gain weight is a function of your current weight, your activity level and your metabolism. You need to use the formula in Jini's book to calculate your daily caloric needs, and then count on the fact that you need an additional 3600 calories above your baseline intake to gain one pound of weight.

That doesn't mean you need to eat an extra 3600 calories in one day! It means that it will take 3600 extra calories to put on one pound of weight. So, let's say your baseline caloric need is 2500 per day. Say you aim to eat 3100 calories per day. That means you'll gain one pound every 6 days (600 extra calories per day x 6 days = 3600 calories = one pound). If you want to gain weight faster, you'll need to eat more "extra" calories per day.

Finally... Jini has often said, and I agree, that with natural healing it may not be possible to do everything at once. In other words, you might have to heal your digestion/gut first, then focus on gaining weight back once you can handle more foods. Make sense?

Chris

Oh man I need to read that thing again, I bought the E-book so am doing some bouncing around using the search function, I love that part! Yes avocados I love and made an easy sauce to use on my veggies, just blending an avocado, flax oil, a big spoon of yogurt, some maple syrup, then chop up some cucumbers and stir them in. Really good, kinda raw raita type sauce.

Duh, I thought I needed to eat 3600 calories a day! If was in my beer drinking days that would be no problem but beer is what helped knock my colon into submission too, been doing some reading and alcohol definitely contributes heavily to gastrointestinal problems, beer in particular since the good microbrews are malty heavy which is a laxative. Now I have to figure out how to go to the blues jams and have one non-beer drink to calm the anxiety of getting up and playing with varied members of the jam world. thats gonna be hard....

I know about cocoanut oil, its almost a miracle oil, but its also a laxative type oil, I am staying away from it right now. When I got knocked down by this stuff (I've had it in various intensities for 25 years or more) I was trying soups because they were easy to fix and cheap food, I tried Amy's new cocoanut milk soup and was in agony the next day, so if you're in inflammation or bleeding (I don't think I ever had bleeding but how do you really tell?) I would stay away from cocoanut anything. I do use the good stuff extra virgin. When I first tried cocoanut oil when I was healthy I have about 3 tbsp's a day and I had a massive diarhea epsisode that wasn't fun. So be careful with that stuff. I'll go back to it later on when I know the inflammation is overwith and most of the healing is done. anyway, thanks a ton for the good info, much needed here....

Sorry to hear you had trouble with coconut oil. It certainly doesn't have a laxative effect for me, but as everyone knows here we're all different and so we have to find what works for us. I will point out that virgin, unrefined coconut oil will have a VERY different effect on the body than coconut milk (which is full of sugar).

Most of us will definitely want to avoid coconut milk, but the oil is full of lauric acid which has anti-fungal, anti-viral and anti-bacterial effects. It is also a medium chain triglyceride (MCT), which means that it is directly absorbed by the small intestine without the presence of lipase (fat digesting enzyme) or bile salts. In other words, it's much easier to digest than other fats and a source of quick energy for the body.

Chris

For those who want to have coconut milk but avoid the added sugar, etc. in commercial brands, it's really easy to make.

Mix equal parts of nonsweeted shredded coconut (look for certified organic, non-GMO, ideally) and filtered water. Heat until the simmering point, stirring occasionally. Stick it in the blender and whip it up for a minute or so and then strain it. Voila! It's delicious over homemade granola.

Nicole

Hey Possum,

New to the forum and since it's Jini's forum perhaps this is a stupid question but did you try AbsorbPlus with Udo's Flax Oil as she suggests?

According to the product information http://www.absorbplus.com/PDf/APproductInfo.pdf

Each shake is 485 calories with the Udo's oil.

Additionally, in the product info link above it states that each pound is equal to 3000 calories. So, one of the two is either wrong or I'm missing something.

I've personally been using the AbsorbPlus, one shake a day with aloe vera & flax oil added as well as a scoop of raw cacao powder because I love my chololate and this seems to be one of the few forms of it that I can have w/o adverse reactions (read the big D).

Here's one sorce for the raw cacao powder although I purchase it from a local health food store, Down to Earth, and in larger bags: http://www.sunfood.com/cgi-bin/order/in ... 004&m=home

Hope this helps & sorry I didn't have any other suggestions to add.

Robert

Sorry, I too must have been sleep typing but it came to my right after hitting submit.

Another Crohn's forum that is really active is found at: http://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=17

The UC forum is at:
http://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=38

I'd be very surprised if you don't find threads at either or both related to gaining healthy weight.

Not that I'd want to steer anyone away from this great resource / forum that Jini has so kindly put together for us but I feel that there is enough room in cyber space for both as they are both great resources. Hopefully she and Nicole will agree and not edit out this post.

Sincerely,
Robert

That stuff is about what $5 for one serving? Thats really expensive for some of us. One thing that probably gets forgotten for alot of you who are lucky enough to have some kind of health insurance or paid for care is that, like me, if you become disabled by serious digestive problems, and happen to be self employed, you're not covered by any health insurance, and you income is now suddenly mostly GONE. For almost two months I could not work at all though had to do some anyway. Its been very hard for me just to be able to afford flax oil and some of the Natren products, and you can bet I shopped around on the internet for the best deals. I"m sure Absorb is a great product but its just pretty much out of my range of affordability and I don't think anyone sells it at discounts. All I can do is buy alot of bananas, put flax oil and maple syrup, blue berries, some green food supplement and chocolate rice milk in a glass and whip that up. I also use the whey protein but that stuff is $35 for a big tub of it and it doesn't go that far, not sure I can afford to buy anymore yet. I have been really lucky that my wife is now suddenly getting some work after having none for almost 3 years or we would probably be living in our beat up old van with no place to live. The stress of having to support her for that period of time and that we got into a place we could barely afford on one small income created stress that help wreck my health in the first place So, thats where I'm coming from. I do see some people who come to this forum in desperate situations and have no money or resources and they don't stay around the forum very long because most of the suggested ideas involve money they just don't have, sadly.

My two visits to the local medical clinic cost me almost $700 in presciption and doctor fees, they don't do the courtesy of telling you up front what your visits are going to cost, and now basically I have another debt that will be difficult to pay off. they prescribed antidepressants, pain pills, and nause pills, all horrible stuff that made everything worse. The sleeping pills were the only thing that helped much at all, and Ambien is horribly overpriced and can't afford a refill. so for me I had to use Ensure from the grocery store just to stay alive in the initial stages of being completely disabled, unable to eat, or even stand up on my own, sure its horrible stuff but its all I could afford and it did save my life........

Hi, Possum.

I want to thank you for your comments. You make a good point.

And I agree with you that sometimes compromises are a necessity. When that's the case, I think the best thing we can do for ourselves is to accept that we're doing the best that we can for ourselves at the present time and leave it at that as opposed to beating ourselves up that we can't meet our ideal. (By the way, that's not a personal comment, just a general one; you do sound like you have a good handle on that.)

Also, it's important to remember that things can and do change. When my little boy was a year old, I started working full time so that my husband could start his own business. For a couple of years, I wasn't just the main breadwinner, I was THE breadwinner. And I had no background in the industry; I was learning things from the ground up and trying to perform well at the same time. I look back on those days with a certain pride for what I accomplished, but to say that I was miserable for a good couple of years is to put things mildly. It took awhile for my husband's business to start bringing in a profit and I felt absolutely trapped in my job situation. But in the end, things did work out so that I was able to leave that job and embark on the life of a stay-at-home Mom, which was what I'd wanted to do since I had the children.

If we know what we want to do and consistently take what steps we can toward that end, however seemingly small, they do add up over time. Even a tiny, little baby step is better than no step at all and deserves recognition as movement in the desired direction.

Just the thoughts that came to me as I read your post.....

Nicole

Nicole: yes things do change, I wasn't trying to be real negative, but just wanted forum members to know that life can be incredibly hard for some of us and there are some who just can't afford to do things that speed healing like buying a truckload of expensive supplements and recommended books and videos etc.

My life the last bunch of years has been very hard financially, one of the biggest stressors that brought me down this time was trying to deal with the IRS, who are disorganized, totally lacking in compassion for human life, and do things that can push people beyond the brink, they just don't care, they cut off my only income, attacked my bank account, which was already shut down due to state tax problems and garnishment. They know I don't make much, own almost nothing of value, yet punish me for being deeply in debt. Add to this the companies that advertise "settle yor IRS debt for pennies on the dollar etc. etc." These companies are misery mills, they promise alot but in fact do very little and are worthless, I've been through two of them and ran out of money, fired one of them outright for refusing to help with a bank levy which the next firm dealt with promptly. Man I ought do some EFT right now this is getting me tense all over again. So my life recently hit the wall in health, in financial debt, in supporting two of us on one below middle income. Stress. Stress stress... years of it.

It IS getting better, now, my wife is making fairly good income and is coming to national attention in her work as brilliant web designer, and will be featured on national TV very shortly in a well known TV show. The IRS has backed off for now. Personally I am not making much money, but I am burned out and tired and low energy, trying to heal. So its working out with wife's timing etc. My small alternate business is giving me alot of personal satisfaction and keeps gaining recognition in the music world among guitar players who like my products.

So life is improving dramatically, but please don't forget those who come here in desperation, these digestive diseases or funcitonal disorders, stop people's lives COLD. Their income shuts off, the ability to function at all mostly is gone. I had a breakdown in the 80s with incredible stress in a meat grinder ad agency, I lost my health, they laid me off and cut my health insurance, I was close to suicide, some how made it out of that, and it wasn't in a healthy way but it worked at the time. But there is no safety net for many and there is no security in ANY job, you only find that out when you go outside the limits of their profit they can make from you. Falling out of the system is a real awakener. I never tried to be employed again after that and though I don't have health insurance, I live by my rules, I work only the hours I dictate and am responsible for my life. Illness, is really a spiritual wake up call. If any of you have ever read the Jane Robert's Seth and the Nature of Personal Reality it details how all this works beautifully. Its funny I was re-reading that book after years, and I was reading precisely how the inner self will cause a health crisis in order to get the conscious mind's attention that how one is living doesn't work I guess my inner self was getting me prepared for a BIG wake up call.....OK I got the message !!! Amen

Hi, Possum.

I truly believe that knowledge is the best teacher. As a result of your experience, doing the best to deal with your health issues under severe financial strain....having to make hard choices as to which product(s) you think will be the most beneficial, because you can't just get them all....you really have something to share with people and I hope you will continue to do so.

Chances are, few, if any, of us here are independently wealthy, so to varying degrees, these financial worries affect us all. Even for those with insurance, most of the therapies they'll pursue under a holistic/naturalistic protocol won't be covered by the insurance company.

When you're recommending things to people, you have to recommend what you think is the best....or at least, that's how my conscience steers me. But I certainly agree, compromises are certainly necessary for many of us. For me, too. As an example, I think that on multiple levels, buying certified organic food is best. However, the truth is, I can't afford to buy everything organic. So I compromise. I buy what I can and even though I do wish I could do more, I try to be happy in the knowledge that any little thing I can do is better than nothing.

So when a recommendation is made, it is made with the understanding that people can only do what they can do, myself included.

I hope that helps and I mean it with complete sincerity that yours has the potential to be a really inspiring story for people. I applaud your doing what you can and pointing out your concern for those who may become discouraged by any costly recommendations. It is a point well made.

Nicole

Nicole, thanks for those comments. Well I don't know about my being an inspiring story. I had an awful time last 2-3 days, pushed my food limit with regular spaghetti in lots of olive oil and some feta cheese with steamed veggies. My body didn't like that, constipation, and dizzy, very depressing. I thought I was mostly over that but guess not. I almost wish I could afford a professional diagnosis of whats actually going on with my gut, a friend who has diverticulitis really bad (enough that he has to have 1 foot of his colon surgically cut out soon) keeps trying to tell me I have what he has, and now I'm not even sure he isn't right, but I dont think he is. I just tend to want to be constipated and I don't really know why. I'm ok if I eat alot of white steamed rice and veggies and alot of the oils, fruit and magnesium or alot of vitamin C to counteract getting plugged up. Brown rice so far is too harsh for my system right now. Maybe this is just how I'm going to have to eat for the rest of my life, at least its a healthy diet and I steam mostly organic veggies and rice. I tried to eat an Amy's veggie pot pie and some other microwave thing I used to eat alot of and that stuff just plugged me up right away, I guess alot of just regular convencience foods aren't very colon healthy really.

Anyway, I'm keeping at it, not giving up. The EFT helps now and then, sometimes it doesn't, I need to work at it more, starting part II now.....