Breast Cancer / Chemo / Weight Gain

BethCW101

I’m not technically new, but back. I was getting to grips with my health and life following a break up, the. Was diagnosed with breast cancer November 2022, I have just finished chemo, steroids and inactivity mean I put on about half a stone, taking my need to loose up to 3 stone. Not impossible, but my next regime of preventive drugs mean I’ll likely put on more. I need some help and motivation, more important than the weight loss (although this is important not just for recovery but preventing reoccurrence as well), is to be as healthy as I can. At 41, I wasn’t expecting cancer, so I will do whatever I can to help my body fight it off and stop it from coming back. Please add me, particularly if this is something you have been through or are going through, I would really appreciate the motivation 😊 thanks if you made it this far!

joans1976

Hi there, I am 46 and just finished radiation 3 weeks ago. I’m starting Tamoxifen this week. I was actively losing weight last year and then got diagnosed October of 2022. My weight loss came to a screeching halt although I continued to eat the same. I had lost 45 pounds and I definitely don’t want to gain it back all because of this stupid disease. It has wreaked enough havoc on my life! I’ll send you a friend request later when I’m on my computer (can’t do it from my phone.) Have a good day!

AnnPT77

Hello, and welcome to you both!

I'm a long-term survivor of stage III breast cancer and its treatment, diagnosed in 2000, had bilateral mastectomies (one simple, one modified radical) with no reconstruction, 6 months of chemo (with the steroids), 6 weeks of daily radiation. Still NED so far. I was age age 44 at diagnosis, 67 now.

FWIW, I did take Tamoxifen for 2.5 years, then Arimidex for 5 years, and didn't see noticeable weight gain from those drugs. But I was pretty overweight already - somewhere around the border between overweight and class 1 obese. I was also diagnosed as severely hypothyroid a few months after finishing breast cancer treatment, which is not statistically super unusual, so that's a thing to look out for if you do find some unusual issues with bodyweight.

Also, starting shortly after treatment, I started getting much more active with exercise. I was super depleted physically after treatment, and I believed I needed to get more active if I ever wanted to feel strong, energetic, and maybe even happy ever again. (I didn't lose weight from doing that; I'm sure I ate more when active, since I wasn't calorie counting. I lost weight much later, back in 2015-16, maintaining a healthy weight since then.)

I was a regular participant in a breast cancer support group for around 10 years, and didn't see evidence there that weight gain is universal or inevitable. Some people gain, but some people don't. I suspect it's more about appetite or fatigue, things we can take some steps to manage, and calorie counting is a good tool in that situation. I know it's common to put on some weight during treatment (unlike with some other cancer types), but I do think that's more about the fatigue, plus some water retention . . . and I don't know about you, but my doctors didn't want me losing weight during treatment.

I'm a pretty sub-par MFP friend, not very active on that side of things (more of a Community forum gal, I guess). But I wanted to stop by your thread, welcome you, and offer some hope that the anti-estrogen type treatments aren't weight management doom, in my experience.

Best wishes!