I am going to share my personal experience with medication related weight gain.
I’m sorry for the long post, this is just a topic I’ve seen over the year and a half or so that I’ve been active on this forum and I felt it necessary to share my thoughts on it. Hopefully I haven’t disrespected anyone in this post.
The structure may seem a little strange in this post. I tried to break it up into smaller sections so that it didn’t look like as daunting of a wall of text.
Before I was first put on Risperidone at age 15 I weighed 115lbs. I was in incredible shape and ran 8 miles a day every day as I was also running cross country. I ate a very healthy balanced diet and I had a body fat percentage of 8%.
It came to a point where my doctor wanted me to gain more weight because I was considered underweight at the time. I started consuming 3000+ calories every single day but I still did not gain any weight.
Fast forward 3 months of being on Risperidone. I had gained 24lbs. I didn’t change my exercise routine and I did not change my eating until I realized that I no longer fit into any of my jeans. I cut back my calories down to a 500 per day caloric deficit.
I was changed over to Zyprexa. I was maintaining my caloric deficit and still running every single day like I had been doing for years. Over the course of 6 months of being on Zyprexa I gained 85lbs.
Now I know this number isn’t very high compared to some of the members of this forum. But keep in mind, this means that in less than a year I almost DOUBLED my body weight on medications while still running 8 miles per day and eating 1500 calories or less a day every day.
I know that meds are different for everyone and not everyone’s body reacts the same way to meds. But if you truly think that people only gain weight on medications because they’re “lazy” or “not trying hard enough” then I have nothing to say to you other than to open your eyes a little bit
Even after getting off of Zyprexa my metabolism has never recovered. I still haven’t even lost half of the weight I gained in those 9 months. I am currently on Abilify and I am slowly losing weight again luckily.
I want every member here that is struggling with weight gain, body image issues, negative symptoms, metabolic issues, or anything that you may be experiencing because of these medications to know that you are not alone in this. You’re sadly always going to run into people who think they have the answers as to why you’re gaining weight or why you can’t lose weight. The best thing you can do with this is to ignore them and focus on doing what is best for YOU.