Hi,
I’ve had several posts on here going back to the early days of clever guts. As my name suggests I Keep Trying – to sort out my digestive health, my weight and fitness 😀

In February I was diagnosed with acid reflux, hiatus hernia and and inflammation of the oesophagus as well my usual IBS issues. All this was following a fairly stressful time where we’d had a year long drawn out building project to do an extension and new kitchen, we had no kitchen for a large part of this time and too many ready meals and overly processed foods.

Six months on, I’m much much better – I just have be careful and not to eat too many carbs. I want to lose some weight to help reduce the reflux, and get myself fit and healthy. So I’m wondering what would people recommend as the best approach to help me lose weight – 2 stone. I’m thinking of a combination of Fast 800, 5:2, and Clever Guts diet.

The advice I got from the hospital was to eat smaller, frequent meals and to try to lose weight. I was prescribed omeprazole, and once I started to heal, I weaned myself off them because I’m concerned about the long term use of medication. Doing a low carb Mediterranean style diet helped too.

I’ve kept to a more or less low carb mediterranean diet and I enjoy it and I think it’s why I feel so well, but I’ve not lost weight, nor have I put any on. I think doing fast 800 programme 5:2 might help me shift the weight but I’m worried about fasting and reflux symptoms returning. Does anyone have any experience of reflux and hiatus hernia and weight loss methods? Thanks for reading

Does anyone have any experience of doing 5:2 with acid reflux and a hiatus hernia? Would it make it worse or not?

Although all prescription medications have potential side effects, some are very safe over the long term. Please discuss the implications of going drug-free with your pharmacist and/ or the prescribing doctor beforehand.

As far as I can tell, Dr Michael Mosley’s ‘The Fast 800’ is the updated version of ‘The Fast Diet’ (5:2) and the ‘Blood Sugar Diet’, so you would not need to combine them.

Have you got back into maintaining your detailed daily food, activity and symptom diary as recommended in the ‘Clever Guts Diet’ (p.187)? If you have you could use this to review the balance and variety of your current diet, what calories and macronutrients (carbs/ sugars/ protein/ fats/ fibre) you consume on average, and how your serving sizes compare to recommended ones. Only once you know where you are can you determine where to go next.

In both the ‘Clever Guts Diet’ and ‘The Fast 800’ Dr Mosley suggests extending overnight fasts as a way of easing in to longer or stricter fasts. You might (re)read the two books, mark out sections and discuss with your hospital consultant, registered dietician or family doctor.

HTH!

Thanks for your advice, Firefox. I will start keeping a food and symptoms diary as you suggest and also re-read the clever guts and fast800 books. I’ll look what MM says about the night fasts too as I hadn’t thought about that

Ps I’m discharged from the hospital. I discussed with my GP easing myself off omeprazole as I didn’t like the risk factors of its long term use and he told me to stop them – no tapering off. He said, well if you get the symptoms again, you can always come back here. I got rebound symptoms for about a fortnight and it’s all settled down now

Hi IKeeptrying,

Have you looked into the high intensity training that MM suggested to try lower your weight?
It seems to be a good thing if you doctor agrees, as its less time consuming than spending hours at the gym or slogging up the pavement.
I prefer team sports, but have found this has helped to move things along before.