Kidney stone/weight gain
March 24, 2011 | 30,00 EUR | answered by Dr. med. Ralf Berg
In June 2010, I had a kidney stone removal. About six months before that, I started losing weight. By the time of the removal, my weight had gone from 82 kg to 61 kg. I felt very good (aside from the kidney colic) and I have been and continue to eat a balanced and very healthy diet, with little meat and lots of fruit and vegetables.
After about another half year passed, I began steadily gaining weight again, and now I am back at 80 kg! Despite exercise and a vegetarian diet! I can do whatever I want, but the weight keeps going up.
When others go on diets and exercise, they lose weight, but it doesn't work for me. The only time it worked was in connection with the kidney stone.
What could be the cause and how can I lose weight again? Possibly a problem with the adrenal cortex or whatever else the reason could be.
I am 49 years old, female, 1.69 m, 82 kg.
Karin
Dear Questioner,
A weight loss of over 20 kg with well-being and a similar diet to what you have now is not easily explainable at first. However, if your kidney stone, which has caused colic episodes, was a kidney pelvic stone and also caused a kidney pelvic infection (pyelonephritis), then the weight loss can be explained by the chronic (!and dangerous) inflammation in the body. But I don't need to mention that this is not a recommended method for weight loss!
I cannot assess from here if there is a hormone problem, an examination of thyroid hormone and cortisol by your general practitioner can provide clues or give assurance.
These hormonal causes of obesity do not account for 5% of all cases. Most commonly, it is simply an excess of food/calorie intake. What you should also measure in the blood test is the level of blood fats, including both triglycerides (normal fats) and cholesterol along with its subfractions (can be determined for free by most statutory health insurances as part of the biennial health check-up).
If these values are above normal, you must further reduce fat intake. Keep in mind that regardless of how much other people eat or how little or much exercise they do to lose weight, this is unfortunately not relevant for you. There are significant differences here. However, in my many years of practice, I have always found that it comes down to the amount of food consumed when weight does not want to decrease. Even in patients who struggled with the same "genes" as you, weight decreased with higher calorie expenditure due to pathological causes, such as chronic inflammation or tumors.
If nothing abnormal is found in the blood diagnostics, it unfortunately means you need to move more, faster, and sweat more, and then ignore your appetite and "starve" a bit. Otherwise, your body will not decide to melt away the fat reserves.
As the old saying goes: You get out what you put in, and too much of a good thing is still too much.
Best regards,
Dr. Berg
