Weight Gain?

A lot of sources recommend getting on a endometriosis diet to help alleviate symptoms as well as combat weight gain, here is a great article I came across:

Essentials of an Endometriosis Diet

A few hallmarks of healthy eating are at the core of an endometriosis diet. Find out which foods can help.

By Julie Davis

Medically reviewed by Lindsey Marcellin, MD, MPH

Dian Shepperson Mills, MA, is a British nutritionist who pioneered a dietary program for endometriosis and has spoken around the world on the subject of endometriosis and diet. She is director of the Endometriosis and Fertility Clinic in London and Sussex, England; chair of the Nutrition Special Interest Group at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine; and author of Endometriosis: A Key to Healing and Fertility through Nutrition.

The theory behind her endometriosis diet: “The diet aims to reduce internal inflammation within the body, improve pain responses, and support estrogen excretion from the body," Shepperson Mills explains. She says that 20,000 women have tried the diet and many reported improvement in pain levels and fertility.

How Diet May Affect Endometriosis

“Women with endometriosis should avoid fatty foods, such as red meat and [high-fat] dairy foods that may be high in PCBs and dioxins, to reduce their exposure to these estrogenic pesticides,” she suggests. Use organic food whenever feasible, or peel fruits and vegetables, she recommends. Some research suggests a link between dioxins in the environment and increased levels of estrogen.

Shepperson Mills also cites studies that found an association between oxidative stress — which includes the formation of cell-damaging substances called free radicals — and endometriosis. Additional research found that a lack of antioxidants may contribute to endometriosis, while absorbing key antioxidant nutrients like selenium and vitamins A, C, and E may help keep it under control.

What to Eat for Endometriosis

The core of Shepperson Mills’ diet for endometriosis includes these hallmarks of healthy nutrition:
Freshness. Buy the freshest food you can find and eat it while it’s fresh. Avoid highly processed foods full of additives. Cook with fresh foods, but also eat some raw vegetables and fruit every day. To minimize exposure to pesticides, eat organically grown produce whenever possible.
Variety. Eat a wide variety of foods every day. “Make it fun to try new dishes on weekends and expand your horizons,” says Shepperson Mills.

Your daily diet should provide 75 grams of good quality protein from sources like meat and game, fish, eggs, and low-fat dairy products. Also include nuts, seeds, and legumes (such as beans), two portions of red or orange vegetables, two green leafy vegetables, and two fruits, including berries, which are high in antioxidants.

Specific Nutrients at Work

Certain foods rich in key nutrients contribute direct effects to a diet for endometriosis:
Vegetables with B vitamins. “A healthy liver with a plentiful supply of B vitamins can degrade estradiol to estriol,” Shepperson Mills says. “Estriol is the form in which estrogen can be bound to fiber and excreted. The diet needs to have sufficient fiber and B vitamins from green vegetables to help the body deal with the constant breakdown of circulating estrogens. Green, leafy vegetables can also help the nervous and immune systems, and magnesium relaxes smooth muscles found in the intestines and uterus.”. The best vegetables: those in the cruciferous family, such as cabbage, sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, turnips, radishes, horseradish, and watercress.
Iron-rich foods. “With endometriosis you may experience heavy bleeding, so replacing lost iron is important,” she says. Two types of iron are available in the foods we eat, heme iron from protein sources and non-heme iron from plant sources. Non-heme iron is available in green, leafy vegetables, beetroot, dried apricots, and plain chocolate. Heme iron comes from red meat, eggs, and fish.
Omega fatty acids. Include 1 tablespoon of cold-pressed vegetable oil in your meals daily. Avoid trans fats, and keep saturated fats low. Sources of omega fatty acids include oily fish such as wild Alaskan salmon and Pacific halibut, and tree nuts, seeds, and extra virgin cold-pressed olive oil.
Fiber. Shepperson Mills suggests getting 30 grams of fiber from fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, and whole grains including rye, oats, rice, corn, millet, and buckwheat to keep your intestinal tract healthy and promote the excretion of excess estrogens.
Water. Drink four to six 8-ounce glasses of water a day. Avoid caffeine, refined sugars, sweeteners, soda (including diet), and alcohol when struggling with endometriosis or trying to get pregnant.

The Role of Supplements in an Endometriosis Diet

“Obtaining nutrients from food sources is obviously best,” says Shepperson Mills. “The judicious use of nutritional supplements may also improve reproductive health. Use only good quality supplements, free from yeast, gluten, wheat, dairy, and sugars, and stick to the dose on the carton or bottle.”

What About Gluten?

Shepperson Mills is investigating the role gluten might play in endometriosis. “Eating a wheat-free diet seems to help many women with endometriosis symptoms. Whether this is a result of gluten or another component of wheat is unclear,” she believes. “It may be worth excluding wheat for one month to see if it makes a difference to your abdominal pains at periods and ovulation. You could also try to exclude dairy foods if you have excess mucus problems.”

Another food you may want to skip is citrus fruit, like grapefruit and oranges — they can irritate your stomach and upset the way in which estrogen is excreted by the body. When excluding foods from your diet, make sure to eat alternatives so you avoid any nutrient deficiencies.

“If a food is upsetting digestion and causing an immune system response, then that food should be avoided,” says Shepperson Mills.

Some doctors aren’t sure that the diet is beneficial in terms of endometriosis relief per se. “Endometriosis is a funny entity in the sense of immunology," says John C. Petrozza, MD, board-certified ob-gyn and chief of reproductive medicine and IVF at Massachusetts General Hospital Fertility Center in Boston. Patients with endometriosis tend to have " problems with asthma, allergies — it’s not uncommon to have irritable bowel syndrome, also lactose intolerance, gluten intolerance," he says. "So is the diet really helping the endometriosis or the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome?”

The bottom line: If you have endometriosis, talk to your doctor or registered dietitian to see if this diet might be worth trying.
(everdayhealth.com)

I would also consider switching your medication if diet alone does not help stem the rapid weight gain. I know it is helping, but weight gain is a side effect of seasonique.

Hope this information is helpful!

-CK

I am personally on the Endo-Resolved diet and I have found that in just one month, I felt so much better. I have more energy and I have lost weight. I was on the diet for a little over 3 months and was supprised to find out that I lost 67 lbs.
Along with following the diet I took up meditation to help reduce the amount of stress, which also helped me feel better. My situation was on going to over 7 years before one day two years ago I collapsed on thanksgiving with so much pain I was vomitting and the pain was unlike anything I've ever felt before, I went to the er and they told me I had a cyst . When I finnaly had surgey the surgeon discovered it was endo and in recovery he told me how bad I had it and how it was all over my organs.
From surgery I lost 13 lbs and after I was home recovering and could eat food I began the diet and had really good sucess with it. Since then though my life has been a mess, I can't find a pcp to see me who believes me even after surgeries, I am having problems working to I lost my job and depression sat in. I can't lift or bendor walk that much with out getting pain I can't sleep right because I am begining to ache all the time. Heating pads work to a point.
I have had 4 deaths in my family in the past year and so that's didn't help much. After I went off the diet I noticed more pain and depression, I am just now going back on the diet, sometimes I just feel so alone and l have no one to talk too so I find it easy to let my depression to get me away from the diet.

I have been on birth control to treat my endo since I was about 26 and the pills have caused me to gain weight. I always have to watch my diet, I too am a small person and it is hard to deal with. I need the pills to keep the endo under control but the weight gain is a big draw back. I was also wondering if anyone finds that the treatment they are on for endo (birth control pills, etc) cause them to be moody/angry at times?

Yeah, I tend to be moody and angry at times. Lately I've been so frustrated about my weight. I can't seem to get past it. I went from a size 00 to a size 5 in a matter of 4 months. I already have confidence issues, I suffered through anorexia for a number of years. So now tis weight gain has made me want to stop eating. But if I don't eat, the medicine makes me sick. So I'm kind of at a standstill.
For me, the seasonique seems to be working at keeping the endo tissue from growing but now its making me gain so much weight that I'm tempted to stop taking it.
I'm so tired of this. I don't know how long I can deal with this. Its been a year. And I'm miserable. How am I supposed to go on with life, make it through college, work a 40 hour work week.. when I can't even function through a single day without being overcome with pain.
And they tell me I wont have kids. That was my dream, every since I was little little. I was going to be a mommy. That's what I've wanted more than anything
How else is this disease going to ruin my life?

Courtney lee,

In the beginning I took a few different types of birth control pills, until I found one that worked well for me. It sounds like you might want to ask your doctor if you could try either a different brand of pill and/or a different dosage. Maybe a simple change could make a big difference, hormones are funny things . You will find that even a little tweak in the dosage could make a big improvement for you. Don't give up!

Chases

I had the same problem, I am 4'10 and 95 lbs, I went on birth control to "help" with the endometriosis, and had some weight gain with it. I learned that my body could not handle the dosage and I had to go on a very low dosage, after i changed I lost all the weight.

I have been on seasonique for 8 years now on a continuous basis, up until I was diagnosed with endo just 2 weeks ago. I am still on the seasonique until I have my hysterectomy in 2 weeks. I have noticed weight gain as well, I have had numerous symptoms of endo but never even thought that I could have it, I also have chron's disease so I thought the symptoms were from that. The main symptom I noticed that didn't fit in with the chron's was the weight gain and gloating....I would buy a pair of jeans and not even a week later the jeans wouldn't fit anymore. I too am depressed and am looking for help. I hope you find a way to control the weight gain.

Today is my first day on this sight, I am glad that I found your post, I knew I wasnt alone but knowing that you have experienced the same thing with the same medication helps me some.

You may want to look into your thyroid function. Low thyroid function and endometriosis are both auto-immune problems, so it would be unsurprising to find them hand-in-hand.

Unfortunately, most doctors are as uninformed about low-thyroid problems as that are about endometriosis. They tend to diagnose based on a blood test that most thyroid specialists denounce as inaccurate. The best way to diagnose a thyroid condition is to review the symptoms and see if you have them.

I've spent a lot of time on birth control and I worried about gaining weight. Someone pointed out to me that sometimes birth control can increase your appetite without you being aware of it. I paid special attention to my food choices, portion sizes, and how often I was eating. You may not realize that you've changed eating habits or portions.

In that vein, you may also want to look for help in developing a healthier body image. Just because you've gained weight doesn't mean you're fat, especially if you were super skinny to begin with. If you're in your 20s, your body could still be developing, not to mention that BC can plump up your breasts (I went up a cup size) and possibly other body parts.