Losing Weight with Kidney Diease

One of the things Dr. Frock, the nurses, and the dietician told me in my first few months of dialysis was not to try and lose weight. They wanted me to eat well, which I figured would help me weather the three days of dialysis.

Since I'm nothing if not a good patient, I ate well. Every now and again I would do some exercise, but it seemed like every time I got started working out, my fistula would act up,or something out of the blue would flare up. Regular readers here will recall my bout with the UTI. I was on a pretty good workout roll at that time, but the UTI derailed me.

Now, here I am with about 30 pounds of unnecessary weight, ready to get rid of it, and still maintain the kind of health I need to withstand dialysis. I've been working out for the past three weeks. Admittedly, I haven't got myself into a great workout rhythm yet, but I have lost 8.5 pounds, so I'm not doing too bad.

The challenge with losing weight with kidney disease is that food that you know promotes weight loss is a no-no on a renal diet. Wheat bread and wheat pasta are not kidney friendly, too much dairy is a bad thing, and you still have to be reasonable when it comes to hydration. Factor in the three days of dialysis, and I think it's clear that this isn't going to be the easiest thing I've ever done.

I've been down the workout/losing weight path before, so I have an idea of what I need to do. For exercise, I've been following the workout routines that the trainer I worked with a couple years ago gave me to follow. I knew it would pay off to keep those workout sheets!

For diet, I've been keeping one eye on the renal restrictions and adding in some food from Chris Powell's latest book, along with his suggestions for mixing up high carb/low carb days.

I also used Dr. Rob Huizinga's book, "Where Did All the Fat Go?" as a blueprint for the kind of weight loss I wanted to achieve. Dr. H is the main medical guy on the Biggest Loser, and he takes the success he's had with at home contestants and put together a nice road map to follow.

Tomorrow is the first lab work that I've gone through since starting my weight loss program. I"m anxious to see what kind of impact my changes have had. Once I have the results, I'll post them alongside my previous month's numbers.