Interesting post from GFS today making the point that people with gluten sensitivity can react to the disease, and to the treatment, with either weight loss or weight gain.
Traditionally, doctors look for gluten sensitives as people losing a lot of weight, failing to thrive etc etc but that view is outdated and many gluten sensitives are actually overweight.
Some people following a GF diet will lose weight, whilst others will gain weight. It all depends on the nature of the sensitivity.
Dr O has done a useful diagram looking at the two different mechanisms of gluten-induced weight gain and gluten-induced weight loss which I thought you might like to see:
I think, from my own personal experience, that there is one process missing from the weight gain section.
The Inflammatory Reaction
I wrote here about the weight issue generally, here about my own personal experience with sudden loss of what I called ‘cushioning’ as the allergy fluid reactions left me 8 months into grain free and here about the link to leaky gut.
Basically, I think we hold onto a lot of fluid as part of the inflammatory reaction to gluten (and other allergens) and it is only when the allergen causing that ‘cushioning’ comes out properly that the need for the fluid is reduced. Think of when you bang your knee for example – it swells as it heals doesn’t it? Well, the knee inflammation is temporary but an inflammatory response to an allergen is chronic and the fluid will remain as long as the inflammation and allergen does. That’s one of my theories anyway.
Anyway, have a read of Dr O’s piece here on the blog. I see also that he has some free reports you can get which I think are aimed at people trying to lose weight rather than gain it. Might be useful if that’s you.