I'm just wondering if anyone else has struggled with this? I'm on my 2nd round of xifaxan to try to whip it, because all the symptoms came back after a month off the med. I'm finding it impossible to lose any more weight right now, because my gut is so unpredictable. I know part of it has been caused by (or perhaps caused) food intolerances and I accidentally had food with whey in it a couple weeks ago and have been a mess since.

Has anyone had success treating SIBO and also losing weight while fighting this battle?

I can offer some sympathy. I have a lot of other chronic health issues (sometimes I feel like I post in every thread in this forum ), but my stomach problems have recently gone from intermittent to more frequent and severe, and my doctor has for years been concerned about my gut flora situation. I just seem to gravitate towards dysbiosis unless continual intervention is ongoing. So I can empathize a bit with your situation. Once the gut flora is disrupted it is just incredibly hard to "get it back" to where it needs to be.

It's going to be hard to lose weight - more to the point, to SEE weight loss on the scale - when you have this going on. Especially if food intolerances are involved on your end - so much water weight can bounce around because of inflammatory responses. Try to make your primary focus, diet-wise, on eating to support your health and gut - not to lose weight. The weight will follow if you control portions/count calories. But you've gotta give yourself permission to accept that the weight loss has to be the secondary motivation in your food choices for a bit.

After you went off the Xifaxan the first time, did you start on a heavy-duty (expensive) probiotic course? Really intensive and appropriate probiotics, along with naturally occurring sources in fermented foods, will be essential in stabilizing your gut over the long haul.

Desiderata-For some reason, my doc did not recommend any probiotics, so I'm interested in what should be taken. I'm trying to follow the recommended SIBO diet, which seems to indicate that you shouldn't eat anything that can ferment in the gut, but are already-fermented foods ok? Not even sure what those would be, except for sauerkraut, of course. Right now, I seem to live on milk of magnesia-lol!

Sauerkraut, kim chi, kefir - all with live cultures -- those are awesome foods for you! Another very, very helpful food for gut issues is bone broth. You simmer bones in a crockpot for a couple days, along with some apple cider vinegar -- the broth it makes is chockful of extremely good-for-you minerals, amino acids, and gelatin - good for overall health but specifically for healing intestinal lining. Try googling bone broth and the GAPS diet. (The GAPS diet in general might be helpful for you at this point.) Here's one link:
http://www.lovingourguts.com/gaps-ba...why-and-how-2/

Re: specific probiotics, you'll want to do some research if your doctor can't provide you with high-quality ones (better than than you can just grab at the store). A lot of good ones are available online. It can feel like a bit much trying to figure out what's necessary - but if you google SIBO and probiotics, you will probably find some good recommendations. Best to ask your doctor for recommendations - but if s/he isn't aware of how vital they are, you really might want to find a second medical opinion, too.

There's a lot that's still not understood about gut flora and not all 'old-school' docs are aware of a lot of the research that's come out in the past couple years -- it's becoming increasingly clear that a healthy bacteria population is absolutely crucial to our overall health, not just stomach issues. If you want to do more background reading on the subject I'd recommend looking at Chris Kresser's website for starters. (This link might be up your alley at the moment! http://chriskresser.com/a-healthy-gu...to-weight-loss)

Sorry for the novel, hope something's of use! Long story short is that there's so much you can do to help yourself heal with diet and probiotics! It's daunting at the outset to learn so much stuff, but also really empowering to actively help your recovery. Good luck.

Thank you! I'll be looking into more info. I had looked up GAPS awhile back, but forgot about it