My Meds Made Me Fat

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Right up there with “I’m not that fat, I’m big boned” is the other falsehood that “My meds me fat.” God, I hear that all the time or someone will write that on the initial questionnaire they submit: “I was skinny my whole life and started birth control last year and gained 50 pounds” or “I’ve always been 115 pounds but meds I started to take made me gain 80 pounds.”

Listen up, folks. It ain’t the meds!

“Weight” is added to our bodies as follows:

1️⃣ Fat cells expanding due to excess calories.

2️⃣ Water retention (bloating): water not released “weighs.”

3️⃣ Constipation: stool not released “weighs.”

4️⃣ Muscles (building, expanding, with minimal to no fat).

5️⃣ Pregnancy (and if done correctly, the only thing that grows is your fetus, not your fat! Healthy pregnancy gain is about 25 pounds.)

The women in the above two scenarios conversation are NOT holding onto 50 or 80 pounds of water, or 50 or 80 pounds of stool; and they certainly did NOT put on 50 or 80 pounds of solid muscle.

They gained 50 or 80 pounds of fat: Fat cells expanded with all the calories their bodies didn’t burn because they were extra!

Their medications absolutely DID NOT make them gain 50 or 80pounds of fat; their knives and forks did.

Can certain medications make you more susceptible to retaining fluids (i.e., steroids)? Yes.

Can certain medications stimulate (or suppress) appetite? Yes.

And so, what?

You must work around that. You must compartmentalize that in your head, put it aside and forget it. In other words, while of course you must do what your doctor prescribes you to do, that is separate from what you must do of your own free will. The doctor controls the type and dosage of your meds. You must control the type and portion (and pacing) of your foods.

Too many people hear from a doctor that they may gain weight from a certain med or from a birth control pill. Bullshit. Doesn’t have to be the case at all. These folks are looking for, and latch on to, that excuse or rationale as to why they started to gain weight: “I started taking meds and my doctor told me I might gain weight from it.”

Oh, really?

• Did he talk to you about changing your diet?

• Did he tell you how much food you should have every day with specificity–how much protein, how many veggies, etc?

• Did he talk to you about planning all your meals and snacks?

• Did he talk to you about eating every 2-3 hours to keep blood sugar in check so as to MINIMIZE any appetite stimulation?

• Did he tell you how much water to drink all day and that your first pang of hunger is almost always thirst?

I could go on, but you get the picture.

Anything that we add to the body that isn’t our “norm” – be it a prescribed drug during an illness, an over-the-counter cough drop for a scratchy throat – may in fact (and usually does) affect the metabolism, but only for a short while until (a) if it’s a med that you’ll need to take for the long-term, until your body adjusts to its “new” norm; or (b) until you stop taking it and it leaves your system entirely.

Either way, you need to go about doing what you need to do, controlling 100% of what you can, and forgetting about the rest. You will get the results, perhaps a little slower in the long term, but you will get the results.