I know this is long, and I'm sorry, but sometimes is takes a little to explain.
I've been in the hospital 3 times since April 7th for a total of 24 inpatient days. The first 2 times, my doctor kept me for 5 days, ran tests, switched me from IV fluids to soft solids in 48 hours and sent me home. I didn't trust my GI when I got my 3rd attack in less than a month and no one could reach him. So I changed doctors. New doctor said my Crohn's was extremely active in 2 places and a fistula and formed at some point, but appeared closed with scar tissue. He said my colon needed a break and put me on liquids for a while. It's been almost a month and I'm still afraid to eat too much. I've been drinking Ensures, eating yogurts, and recently went to a mix of baby food with mashed potato, then soft-cooked pasta mixed with soft cooked chicken breast. The other problem I'm having is I went into this flare 30 pounds over weight. During the IV treatments, I lost 10 pounds but then I started gaining weight. I was drinking too many Ensures and eating too many yogurts compared to my activity, especially when I started adding the soft foods. I'm trying to balance everything out and it is so difficult.
Mollybean, my experience is if you are trying to gain weight when you don't want to eat, drinking Ensures can help. Personally, I like the chocolate and vanilla. Also everydayhealth.com offers a food journal that is awesome. I have found it very user friendly and it does automatic calorie calculations for both losing or gaining weight. It's very easy and useful for calculating calories and maintaining a food journal, which I am very bad at. Porter89 and Silvermoon, sounds like you guys know what your talking about. Although you don't feel like it, you need to drink/eat something unless you want IV fluids. And then walk it off. I know how hard this is, but it does help. Drinking ensures, eating yogurt, and walking around the nurses station helped me off IV's and get out of the hospital. I came home and drank ensures, ate yogurt and walked up and down the hallway. But as least I'm home! Now it's just slowly advancing the diet. It helps to know there are others out there going through the same thing and that I'm not alone. I know we are all different and what works for me may not work for you, but I hope someone gets somthing useful out of my ramblings.