Finally introducing myself, super restricded diet challenges

Hi there, I'm a big dude, 6'5" 339 at last weigh in. I was 380 at my worse and was dealing with health issues, and I still am. They started around 2005-6 and slowly got worse, we thought we knew what it was, symptoms were consistent with diverticulitis, and I'd have a flare up once or twice a year. A couple weeks of antibiotics and pain meds and I'd be ok again. We never looked any further because the treatments seemed to be working and I have family history of diverticulitis

In September of '09 that changed, I woke up about an hour after going to bed, and feeling like I was on day 5 of the flu and ended up spending the next 8 hours in the bathroom, losing a lot of blood. I'll leave all the details out, but I'm sure you can put 2 and 2 together. I woke up on the floor in a pool of sweat, after passing out from pain and exhaustion. I cowboyed up and drove myself to the ER, not the best choice as my roommate was sleeping through this 10 feet away, and he is nearly my size and a body builder and he could have easily carried me if need be. Anyway I drove myself to the ER, wait a couple hours to get called back, during that time I had a couple more "episodes" in the waiting room bathroom. When I finally see a doc the first thing he tells me is I should have called 911 and if I hadn't come in when I did there was a good chance I would have died. I was admitted and given all sorts of meds, dilaudid was amazing and I went from worst pain of my life to not caring and finally able to sleep. I didn't get the dilaudid until 12 hours after being admitted and over 24 since my issues started. I was in the hospital for 4 days, couldn't eat any food and was sent home without any more explanation than I had a bad infection. I spent the next 3 months in bed on pain meds and on and off of antibiotics. I went 10 days no food, including the time in the hospital. after that 3 months I had lost over 80 pounds, still had massive pain and spasms.

I gained most of that weight back, and dealt with this horrible pain everyday and got little more than "unexplained inflammation" and IBS from the doctors. We finally got it somewhat under control with massive doses of meds. My pharmacist uncle said he has never seen anyone take the doses of the meds I take. Unfortunately high tolerance to most medication also runs in the family.

After dealing with this for so long I switched doctors, hard to do when you are unemployed because of your illness. Now I go to the Cleveland Clinic, which is one of the best hospital systems there is. It was with them that I have finally found some relief. I still don't have a diagnosis I like, but I am on a very restrictive diet, basically an elimination diet, that I can expand every couple weeks with something new, but I have a huge list of otherwise healthy foods that I cannot eat. For example I can only eat a handful of veggies and they cannot be raw, the only raw fruit I can eat is banana. I don't mind though because I've gone from horrendous chronic pain every day to mild pain a couple days a month if I eat the wrong things.

When I'm feeling well I cheat a bit but still try to stick with healthy stuff, but sometimes that craving for fast food or sugary stuff gets me and I cave. I managed to not gain any weight over the thanksgiving/christmas holiday and weighed in at 350 on new years day. I joined MFP about a week or so later.

The other great thing about the new diet is I actually WANT to go to the gym, where before even if I wanted to I just didn't have the energy or I was too depressed to do much of anything.

And anyway here I am now, happy motivated and losing weight in a healthy way, and MFP is a great tool, since I was logging all my meals before anyway. I just ordered a food scale, and it will come in handy because even though I was on a diet I didn't have calorie limit. It was to learn how to eat correctly all over again. My health issues would cause me to not eat for several days as that was the only thing that would make the pain go away, then I would eat huge amounts of food, and even when I was eating it would tend to be one huge meal a day.

I've got some goals set, can't wait to reach them and can't wait to not be a giant fat dude anymore, but a giant healthy dude instead.

Oh yeah, I'm 33 years old, so I spent 30-33 in bed sick and 25-30 felling really bad most of the time.

Sorry if I rambled or repeated myself, I kept getting distracted.