Anyone have experience with weight loss on beta blockers?

zachxcastle

Hi everyone. I'm wondering if anyone can share some knowledge about beta blockers and weight loss. I am a 25 year old male. I take Propranolol 120mg twice a day for hypertension. I am trying to lose weight (current weight--175, goal--155). Before I was on the medication, my resting heart rate was usually around 110, now on the medication it's hard for me to get it higher than 110-120 even when working out hard. I primarily run on a treadmill and ride on a stationary bike.

Is is possible to lose weight when I can't get my heart rate higher? Is there a formula to figure out a new target heart rate? Any thought would be appreciated!! Thanks in advance.

PaulaWallaDingDong

Adjust your diet. Set up your goals on MFP and follow the recommendation it gives you.

Also, just because your heart rate doesn't go up, that doesn't mean the exercise isn't burning extra calories. If you don't have a medical restriction against it, keep at it.

laura2137

I have lost 30 pounds in 5 months, I take betablocker and I'm not exercising.....female 5.4 and 65 years old.

zachxcastle

laura2137 wrote: »

I have lost 30 pounds in 5 months, I take betablocker and I'm not exercising.....female 5.4 and 65 years old.

That's great Laura! Did you adjust your diet?

kpk54

I lost nearly all my 63 excess pounds while on an ACE Inhibitor, the other BP med. My weight loss was mostly from eating less supplemented with some brisk walking to develop the long term habit. My heart rate was intentionally never pushed too high but the weight came off. I'm now off BP meds. Good luck to you. As a side note: my forever thin husband was also on BP meds for years. He started walking for health and is now off BP meds.

JeromeBarry1

I carry a vial of beta blockers in my pocket every day, and am under orders to take one if my heart starts beating 200 bpm again. During this year of weight loss, I've done a lot of cardio exercise and only a couple of times have I gotten my heart rate to 170. I didn't stop exercising to take my beta blocker. I've lost 80-some pounds so far.

CattOfTheGarage

I take Propranolol 40mg 3x daily for anxiety. It doesn't seem to have any effect on my weight loss and I can still get my heart rate up (it just isn't so likely to race at random times for stupid reasons).

I hadn't heard of an effect on calorie burn. As others have said, heart rate isn't a direct reflection of calorie burn anyway. If you run a mile, you run a mile, and that uses a similar amount of calories for a given person, regardless of what their heart rate is doing.

I would guess it might make a fitbit or similar less accurate, though, as you will be outside the normal ranges.

Azdak

The beta blocker blunts your HR response to exercise, but it has only a small effect on calories burned.

HR is only an indirect measure of aerobic intensity; it does not actually cause calorie burn to increase. During aerobic exercise, heart rate increases when oxygen uptake increases in response to the increase in workload. When taking a beta blocker, oxygen uptake still increases to mostly the same degree (maybe a 3%-6% reduction), but heart rate does not.

In effect, the BB changes your HR "scale"--a HR of 120 might now be the equivalent of a HR of 150 w/out the medication.

markrgeary1

I was on a different beta blocker for many years for hypertension. One time I did lose weight on it with no problems. They had to take me off as my RHR was down in the 30s.

Five years later I'm off the beta blockers and on a alpha blocker and a calcium channel blocker for Tachacardia. After losing 55 pounds, I take nothing!

Good luck with the journey I hope you reach your goals.

cwolfman13

zachxcastle wrote: »

Hi everyone. I'm wondering if anyone can share some knowledge about beta blockers and weight loss. I am a 25 year old male. I take Propranolol 120mg twice a day for hypertension. I am trying to lose weight (current weight--175, goal--155). Before I was on the medication, my resting heart rate was usually around 110, now on the medication it's hard for me to get it higher than 110-120 even when working out hard. I primarily run on a treadmill and ride on a stationary bike.

Is is possible to lose weight when I can't get my heart rate higher? Is there a formula to figure out a new target heart rate? Any thought would be appreciated!! Thanks in advance.

I take a beta blocker...your heart rate has no direct correlation to the calories you burn...if you were using a HRM to estimate calorie burn, it's likely your numbers were actually inflated with a higher resting HR as the HRM would perceive that you were working harder.

Taking a beta blocker does not interfere with weight loss.

rileysowner

zachxcastle wrote: »

Hi everyone. I'm wondering if anyone can share some knowledge about beta blockers and weight loss. I am a 25 year old male. I take Propranolol 120mg twice a day for hypertension. I am trying to lose weight (current weight--175, goal--155). Before I was on the medication, my resting heart rate was usually around 110, now on the medication it's hard for me to get it higher than 110-120 even when working out hard. I primarily run on a treadmill and ride on a stationary bike.

Is is possible to lose weight when I can't get my heart rate higher? Is there a formula to figure out a new target heart rate? Any thought would be appreciated!! Thanks in advance.

Heart rate and calories burned are at best a tentative connection. Your heart rate getting higher when not medicated is correlated to harder work, but that is all. In other words, heart rate does not directly indicate calories burned. That means, because your heart rate is artificially limited by the beta blocker, that does not mean you are burning less calories doing the same workout. If you cycle for 30 minutes at the same intensity you will burn the same amount of calories regardless of what your heart rate goes to.

After I had a stroke, when I started to lose weight, I was on metoprolol (sp?) [along with several other blood pressure medications] and it made no different to my weight loss. You are still burning calories. Log your food carefully, ideally weighing all solids including those that are grated and ground and using a volume measure (ml, cups, fluid ounces) for all liquids, and you will lose weight.