Daily walking 45 minutes at a moderate pace or fast as you feel comfortable. The exercise and sweating burns calories. It keeps your tendons and muscles strengthened to support your joints too. Less stiffness. The cardio is most beneficial and helps keep the plaque out of our arteries and oxygenates our blood and improves circulation to our extremities. It also helps strengthen our pelvic muscles.

Increase your water intake to help flush fats out. Black coffee and unsweetened tea are good. Squeeze half a lemon or lime in your water and drink 8 glasses a day. This helps hydrate our skin and hair and a bunch of other things I won't list. Many ppl don't drink enough water.

One fresh fruit for breakfast. A banana kick starts your metabolism. We need potassium from bananas.

A reasonable lunch.

For supper, eat a salad with lemon or lime juice mixed with 2 tablespoons of plain yogurt, and choice of herbal seasonings. One boiled egg with salt and pepper. Or one avocado. The fats from avocado is beneficial unlike other animal fats.

No snacks in-between meals unless its plain raw vegies. No snacks after supper.

No dairy, no sugar, no sodas, no chips or crackers, no breads, no desserts, no candy, no alcohol, no wine. No bacon, fatty or fried meats. All of the above are carbs, fats, sugars, cholesterol. Alcohol converts to sugars and gets stored in our fat cells.

Absolutely no restaurant food bc its laden with fats, cholesterol and sugars.

This is the best diet I ever found. It's probably mostly vegan. If you can't give up something on the 'no' list, that's prob the thing causing your weight gain. Mine is dairy, bc I love cheeses, yogurt, icecream, butter. I have 10 pounds to lose yet. I feel better when I'm at optimal weight, have less pain, move around easier, breathe better and look better without these bulges and rolls that don't belong.

I have friends who lost weight on Jenny Craig and Weight watchers. That might be a convenient, time saving thing to do.

None of this is meant to criticise or offend anyone. Weight loss is not that fun. But I have do go through it every couple yrs. Once I meet my goal, I'm more careful what I add back in to my meals. But losing 8 to 10 pounds a month is usual doing this diet.

I lost 15lbs. doing the keto diet, intermittent fasting, & phentermine diet pills, couldnt drop any more weight after a year on the above diet, so I tried semaglutide (for diabetes) shot & I'm down another 15lbs.! Good luck:)

Tazzdh, the RA doctor told us... blood work every THREE months since being diagnosed. Did NOT you doctor tell you this when you STARTED MTX?. That is awful to go through! That is why I say, be your OWN best advocate and research EVERYTHING you put into your body. Especially with a life time disease. I keep a list in my wallet of ALL the bad doctoring I have had, a list of SIXTEEN bad doctoring (in case someone does NOT believe me AND to remind myself to be VIGILENT). Glad that you are recovered!

I've gained at least 20lbs :-(. Its a struggle

Unfortunately for me, I have GAINED weight, about 20 pounds since this disgusting disease hit full force. When I was able to work, my job entailed walking quite a bit (according to FitBit, my personal best was almost 40,000 steps in one working day!). I would average around 29,000 to 32,000 steps a day.
Now, my knees and feet start to hurt just walking to the mailbox and back (about 400 feet round trip).
I've tried to exercise on and off, but I just can't. I find myself mostly sitting in my recliner, not exercising, and slowly putting on weight.
If I found myself losing weight, as you are, I would bring this up with my rheumatologist as soon as I was able to.
Sorry for the long answer, but I wanted you to know that changes in weight usually happen, whether + or -.

Best of luck to you!!!