Weight GAIN after CPAP?

I have gained 8 very unwanted pounds in the month I have been on CPAP. In general I am feeling better, more energy, no three hour naps Saturday and Sunday. Life is good, but with no change in eating habits I am gaining weight. Exercise levels are the same, also. I am baffled. Help, anyone?

Maybe you are eating on Saturday and Sunday during the time you would be napping.

Thats a lot of weight to put on in a month without any explanation.

Wish I could help you. I, too, gained about 20 pounds in my first few months of CPAP. Can't figure it out, and can't seem to lose it. Maybe I will once I start sleeping through the night.

It is easy to gain weight with the renewed energy. You feel better and everything tastes better. A few extra snacks can add a lot of weight. The secret is to turn the renewed energy into excercise and/or other physical activity.

At least, that is what I keep telling myself.

amos

pap4life wrote:Maybe you are eating on Saturday and Sunday during the time you would be napping.

LOL! My wife has me doing more chores! No time to eat.

amos wrote:It is easy to gain weight with the renewed energy. You feel better and everything tastes better. A few extra snacks can add a lot of weight. The secret is to turn the renewed energy into excercise and/or other physical activity.

At least, that is what I keep telling myself.

amos

Gonna go next door to the mall and walk 3 miles! (92 degrees outside)

amos wrote:It is easy to gain weight with the renewed energy. You feel better and everything tastes better. A few extra snacks can add a lot of weight. The secret is to turn the renewed energy into excercise and/or other physical activity.

At least, that is what I keep telling myself.

amos

Yeah, I'm still waiting for the "renewed energy". I haven't even hit the first energy, yet. And I'm not "overweight", just more than I'm happy with.

I gained 20 lbs over about a 4 month period when I started on CPAP. My doc told me that was normal. He said he if I had lost weight he would know I was lying about using my machine without even looking at my data. He said the body is healing itself. Be patient and the weight will start to come off as things settle down....well, I am still waiting! lol

I expected positive results, and I am seeing them; I just never thought taking care of apnea would present another challenge! Life ain't fair.

msradar65 wrote:I gained 20 lbs over about a 4 month period when I started on CPAP. My doc told me that was normal. He said he if I had lost weight he would know I was lying about using my machine without even looking at my data. He said the body is healing itself. Be patient and the weight will start to come off as things settle down....well, I am still waiting! lol

I wonder about your doctor. I quickly lost weight after starting cpap therapy. Though everyone is different, most folks do lose weight after starting cpap. The renewed energy burns off weight that you would normally have not lost because you were inactive, tired, napping, etc...

Sheriff

I have a theory. Many of us ate extra food to keep ourself going before CPAP therapy. Once we are on CPAP, we do not need the extra calories to push ourselves. Those extra calories are turned to fat once we start CPAP. Therefore, once we start CPAP, we need to stop eating the extra calories that we felt we needed to push ourselves when we were exhausted all the time. The key is to eat what we need NOW, not what we ate before. Obviously, even if this theory is true for some, it is not true for all. Your mileage may vary.

I have lost 11 pounds in one month by using an iPhone app called LoseIt! to control portions, track caloric intake and exercise, and change my eating behaviors. The app can be synced with a web site of the same name. These results are after my weight went up, down, and up again in the 8 months after starting CPAP. Tracking everything I eat with the app and web site has been an incredible eye-opener. I'm sure I was regularly eating 4000 calories a day before I started using the app and web site. It takes a lot of calories to maintain a weight of 285 pounds with a height of only 5'8"!

Breathe Jimbo wrote:I have a theory. Many of us ate extra food to keep ourself going before CPAP therapy. Once we are on CPAP, we do not need the extra calories to push ourselves. Those extra calories are turned to fat once we start CPAP. Therefore, once we start CPAP, we need to stop eating the extra calories that we felt we needed to push ourselves when we were exhausted all the time. The key is to eat what we need NOW, not what we ate before. Obviously, even if this theory is true for some, it is not true for all. Your mileage may vary.:

That and WHAT you eat might be processed differently too. Sleeping aids digestion and sugar and carbs turn to fat easily. When we are tired we crave carbs to give us quick boosts of energy. Habitually we probably still crave carbs - bad habits seem to entrench them selves more easily then good ones.

Same thing happened to me. I gained a lot of weight after CPAP. Now I'm overweight where I wasn't pre-CPAP. In the last three years I've tried a lot of different things to lose it, nothing works.

I have read someplace that the reason people gain weight with untreated sleep apnea is because they are oxygen deprived and their mind/body interprets this deprivation as starvation. It causes the body to store fat because the mind perceives that the body is starving for food or that the person is facing a famine, as was a common occurence during the Ice Age when food was scarce.
Therefore, no matter what you do to lose weight you will not be able to if you don't treat your sleep apnea first. I don't know if that is correct or not but it's one theory. I personally have not lost any weight since starting CPAP but then again I can't wear the mask all night because it's so annoying.

My sleep doc said that it is widely accepted that someone with untreated sleep apnea cannot expect to lose weight until the sleep apnea is treated.