Difficulty maintaining body weight after Covid

Hello @waverider89, Welcome to Connect. I had not seen any other posts similar to your symptoms and did a search and found there is a clinical study on weight loss related to COVID 19. Hopefully if there are other COVID long haulers out there that share your experience they may be able to provide some additional information.

COVID-19 is associated with clinically significant weight loss and risk of malnutrition, independent of hospitalisation: A post-hoc analysis of a prospective cohort study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7598735/

You mentioned having many different test but they all checked out OK. Have you talked with a nutritionist or dietician to see if some minor changes in the types of food you are eating may have an impact?

Thank you for the link to the study. This gives me hope that at least this issue is recognized and under investigation.

My Dr has not yet referred me to a dietician, however, I did ask about seeing a nutritionist...I may need to seek one out on my own.

Thank you again for the response and information.

Same thing has happened to my already skinny 14 year old grandson after Covid. Just can’t gain the weight back. The doctor doesn’t know what to do. Says it will eventually resolve.

Hello @waverider89

When you asked for a referral to a dietician was your doctor agreeable to that? If not, it might be a good thing to remind him of that possibility.

Do you feel OK or are you fatigued from the weight loss? Is your appetite severely reduced?

@sears How long ago did your son have COVID? Has he had any return of his appetite? If not, you certainly might request help from a dietician. Your son's doctor can probably give you a referral.

How is your son feeling otherwise?

Interesting. I feel like I had Covid before they came out with announcing what it even was. This happened to me in Nov./Dec. 2019. The doctor didn't know what was wrong with me. Shortness of breath, malaise, just not well but not super sick. I'm athletic and exercise 6 days a week and do my best to take care of myself. This phenomenon eventually passed and I have also had a weight loss of about 10 pounds. I thought it might be because I contracted C-diff after taking Clyndamycin for a dental issue. That was horrible and very scary to survive. I am much better now but am still maintaining the lower weight. Not necessarily trying to, it's just happening. Maybe it does stem back from the "Covid", I really don't know. I still feel also, like I have rapid heart beat at times that I never had before. I guess only time will tell. I also deal with a tortuous intestine and this has added complications. I'm doing well and I hope that you do too. It will be interesting to see if there are others that share their experiences. I hope so.

Hi @hopeful33250

Thank you for the response.

I didn’t press my doctor about the dietician referral...she wants to give me 2 months to see if it will resolve on it’s own since I had Covid just 2 months ago.

My cardiologist put me on a low dose of beta blocker and that has helped tremendously with the elevated HR, insomnia and fatigue...these symptoms all appear to have been related to my HR. So, any fatigue now is very minimal.

My weight has gone up a few pounds over the last month but I’m also eating more calories (compared to pre-Covid) to give me a boost. I have a good/normal appetite now after my initial recovery..I have no problem eating and no digestive issues (at least that I can tell).

At this point, I’m going to try to maintain what and how much I’m eating and see what happens. My Dr did give me a contact at a local university that’s conducting studies around post-Covid health issues and I’m going to be involved with that so hopefully that’ll provide some answers.

Thank you for replying and anything I learn or can pass on to help then I’ll certainly do so here in this forum.

Thank you!

My Dr has the same outlook...that it’ll resolve in several months once the body fully recovers from the inflammation caused by Covid.

Thanks for sharing and hope your grandson gets back to normal soon.

Hi @euqcaj

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Have you seen a cardiologist? I wore a 48 hour Holter monitor that provided some good data and was reassuring that nothing major was going on with my heart.

The beta blocker that was prescribed by my cardiologist has really helped and I’ve had no negative side-effects.

I hope you continue to improve and, yes, it’ll be interesting to see if others have similar experiences to ours.

Thank you!

@waverider89

It is so good to know that you are beginning to gain weight and are able to eat more. That is a good trend! When you had COVID, did your sense of taste diminish? If so, could that have contributed to the weight loss?

Since your COVID diagnosis was just 2 months ago, waiting a while longer seems like a good idea. I will certainly be interested in what you find out from the local university that is studying post-COVID-related issues.

I appreciate you keeping in touch and I will look forward to your next post.

@hopeful33250

I never lost smell or taste during Covid...I think the weight loss was due to a combination of just not feeling well with not much of an appetite plus (and this is my theory) the virus possibly increased or impacted my metabolism.

I’ll posts updates as they happen.

Best to all!