Mental Health Drugs and weight loss

I don't take any meds such as these but I actually don't think it's true that the meds don't cause weight gain. I know several people on them that had quite significant weight gains and they did not increase their food intake. Surely, that does happen as people feel better, but it's not always the case. I don't think it's black and white for everyone, but many of these drugs do have metabolic effects or effects on seratonin which then effect other systems.

elphie754 wrote: »

Don't take this a wrong way, butosynof the medications do not directly cause weight gain. The cause an increase in appetite which is what leads to the weight gain.

I agree, based on my own experience of antidepressants (I have no experience of mood stabilisers though). I'm on several that are supposed to cause weight gain, the worst being mirtazapine (remeron). If you google it, you get post after post saying, I went on this and ballooned, despite my eating habits not changing. I don't agree. I gained weight due to overeating (partly due to self medicating my depression with food, partly due to the munchies that seem to be a side effect of the meds). I lost weight when I took control of my eating. End of story.

The only psychoactive medication that can cause issues outside of appetite increase and some initial water retention is seroquel/quetiapine. In a small subset of users it can cause metabolic syndrome but even then it is possible to lose weight. In fact that was the drug I was on when I began losing weight. I was already overweight and a couple of appetite increasing meds caused me to gain more due to me not caring what I put in my mouth.

So, in short, there is nothing the medications can do that magically change your body into a fat storing machine without an excess of calories.

They can cause aforementioned appetite increase and a lot of them are sedating which will reduce incidental daily activity which will lower your NEAT but with careful tracking there is no reason not to maintain or lose weight whilst on any psychoactive medications.

My brother is on several psyche meds with weight gain listed as a side effect. When he was in a hospital setting, he gained weight. Now he's living with Mom and lost the weight and kept it off for almost two years. He doesn't count calories, but he exercises more, including walking miles at a time multiple days per week, and eats differently than he did in the hospital.

(I'm not saying one needs to walk 20 plus miles per week to lose weight - my point is that he was sedentary in the hospital and active at home.)