Medication and the weight effect

I know from past experience weight loss is not easy but thought I had cracked it this time. Was losing a sensible 1lb a week. There were some daily fluctuations that people said could be due to salt. The additional confounding factor was sleep.
Up till this the weight increases that occurred had been temporary blips with weight going down again. Often a better night’s sleep was involved.Also may be the salt effect had worn off.
Then we come to this week when up till today weight has steadily risen. The known constant factor up to last night being a poor level of sleep.

I know that increased appetite due to atypicals has been cited re weight gain and have experienced it. However in the last week I have eat less while not starving myself to try and stem the weight piling back on again and get back on track. This suggests that increased appetite on its own doesn’t fully account for atypical antipsychotic weight gain. There would appear to be other reasons why weight increases and is difficult to shift on these drugs. Metabolism effects being one. Sleep difficulties due to severe mental illness/medication being another?
Suffice it to say I had a better night’s sleep last night and whilst not dropping to Sunday’s low weight It has gone down by 1.2 lbs. That kind of weight loss or gain can not be logically attributable to increased or decreased calorie consumption. It does rather suggest that if on these drugs whether eating sensibly or not gaining weight/finding it hard to lose weight may be an issue.

The annoying thing is this has been known about for several decades re the atypicals, and to some extent the first generation antipsychotics, but little has been done to combat the problem and produce medications with better side effect profiles.
Is it any wonder some people chose not to take the medication rather than see themselves balloon up and experience related physical health problems.

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I am not going to sugar coat the truth - I realize that this site is pro treatment, but the facts are the facts.

Antipsychotics are terriblle for the body and your physical health, there is no 2 ways about this.

If you have to be on an Antipsychotic I strongly suggest major life style changes, like lower carb dietary changes and adding some kind of movement - walking, biking, etc… to your daily routine.

Also manage your calories - eat in moderation.

If you have to be on an antipsychotic, try to go as low as possible with the dosing - try to stay away from the higher doses.

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