Blood Pressure Meds and Weight Loss

I was on a beta blocker and some other meds for a lot of years and that was when I gained a lot of weight. I felt very slow and lethargic and all I wanted to do was sit and eat...I think there is an argument to be made that any drug which slows heart rate is also going to have energy-suppressive side effects.

Are you over-weight? Or is the blood pressure due to something else like genetics? The best thing I did was lose weight and focus on daily moderate exercise alongside a good nutrition routine. I'm off all my meds since I did that. It's worth a try.

AnnieH_4512 wrote: »

Hey there! I’ve been taking the same blood pressure meds for about five years now (after having to change from my old one due to an allergy). Since that time, I’ve sloooowly but steadily been increasing in weight (it wasn’t very noticeable at the time), and started to really kick my exercise and diet regimen I to full gear last month. I never thought that maybe my blood pressure meds had anything to do with my weight gain and my body’s stubbornness to lose that weight. I’ve been working VERY hard for the past four weeks and I’ve lost ONE pound. Could my blood pressure med be the culprit?

You may be retaining water from the new exercise, which is masking fat loss on the scale. Do give it another month.

neanderthin wrote: »

kshama2001 wrote: »

AnnieH_4512 wrote: »

Hey there! I’ve been taking the same blood pressure meds for about five years now (after having to change from my old one due to an allergy). Since that time, I’ve sloooowly but steadily been increasing in weight (it wasn’t very noticeable at the time), and started to really kick my exercise and diet regimen I to full gear last month. I never thought that maybe my blood pressure meds had anything to do with my weight gain and my body’s stubbornness to lose that weight. I’ve been working VERY hard for the past four weeks and I’ve lost ONE pound. Could my blood pressure med be the culprit?

You may be retaining water from the new exercise, which is masking fat loss on the scale. Do give it another month.

Water retention is included in lean body mass and not sure if it has anything to do with fat loss per se, overall weight loss, yes, but I could be wrong, I haven't really looked into it.

Overall weight is what we see on the home scale, right? And the home-scale estimates of body composition have a relatively high error factor. What she said was "water . . . masking fat loss". It's a thing.

As a practical matter, it can do that for a surprisingly long time, especially in people who are losing fat relatively slowly. It's more likely to be distorting among pre-menopausal women (because the timing of hormonal water retention vs. start of new routine increases distortion), those who don't use a weight trending app (though even those require at least a month of daily weigh-ins to start providing reasonable statistical results IME), and among those who weigh infrequently (because it's possible to hit a relative low on the start date, a relative high on a subsequent date).

Though I respect theory, this particular thing is not so much about theory of fat loss, as about the practical matter of how to know it's happening in one's own body. From reading posts here, many people misinterpret water's (and digestive contents') effects on scale weight during weight loss.

OP, it may be worth semi-comprehensively considering the most common mechanisms through which medications may trigger weight gain (or slow/no loss), and thinking about which might potentially apply to you, then what you might do to counter them.

I'm not suggesting there's a panacea here, but I feel like weight loss is challenging for most people in one way or another, and that analysis and problem-solving are key pieces of eventually reaching success for many. (Sure was for me, though not specifically meds-related. That said, I have taken meds in the past whose side effects can include weight gain, and am severely hypothyroid (medicated for that).)

Generically, if a medication leads to weight gain, the mechanism is usually one or a combination of these:

* Water retention increase, or perhaps unpredictable fluctuation. It may or may not feel "bloated", it depends on whether the retention is general (over the whole body) or localized (maybe in an internal/non-obvious place).

* Fatigue (perhaps subtle), so moving less (daily life and/or exercise intensity) therefore burning fewer calories. (Fidgeting alone can burn in the low hundreds of calories daily, and noticing reduced fidgeting in oneself is pretty hard.)

* Appetite increase, so maybe portion creep (if a person is calorie counting/logging carefully, they'd likely know if this is happening; if just "watching what one eats" or logging with some estimating and approximating in the mix, this also can be a pretty subtle effect).

Bottom line: CICO - the calorie balance formula - still applies. Get calories below calories burned, weight loss happens. With medication, calorie counting may experience some bumps in the road, if calories burned drop due to fatigue, or calories eaten increase due to portion creep. (A few meds could even cause peaks and valleys in fatigue or eating, make counting even more confusing, even those CICO still applies! But that's rare.)

If the issue is water retention, fat loss is still happening, just being masked on the scale by the extra water weight. Some (unusual) things can cause creeping increases in water retention, up to a surprising total amount. It's more common for water retention just to move a person from X pounds of water, to X plus a couple or so pounds of water, then stop increasing. In that common case, fat loss will eventually outpace that couple of pounds or so, and show up on the body weight scale.

I don't know much about blood pressure meds (dodged taking them by losing weight, because my high BP was not familial). I know that some meds (of other types) can affect heart rate, and that side effect could distort activity and exercise calorie estimates from any kind of tracker that relies on heart rate as an important proxy for calorie burn.

It can be the case that some people will need to eat fewer calories than MFP or another so-called calculator predicts, in order to achieve any given weight loss rate. That's unfortunate, but it can happen even if medications/side effects aren't a factor, just because of statistical variability amongst people who are similar on the few data points those "calculators" ask us about.

The same is true for fitness tracker calorie estimates: It's a very nuanced estimate, but it's still based on population-average kinds of statistics about how movement correlates with calorie burn in people of a certain size, age, gender, etc. (My good brand/model tracker, one that others here have said gives them good estimates, is incorrect by hundreds of calories daily, compared with nearly 8 years now of logging experience and results.)

If you do turn out to be a statistical outlier (because of meds or otherwise), there will be some calorie level at which you can lose weight. Finding it and sticking with it could be more of a challenge, but usually the differences from the average are fairly small (single digit percents) in situations I know about.

I'd also encourage you to think about any other factors that can lead people who are not on meds (or experiencing distorting medical conditions) to find it hard to lose weight, because those can apply to anyone. Not diagnosing you here, but just giving an example list, that's things like inexperience with logging, exercise calorie over-estimates, suprisingly large impact of off-plan meals/days (whether intentional or unplanned slips), including exercise in activity level then adding it separately if no tracker synched, not enabling "negative adjustments" if a tracker is synched, etc., etc.

It can feel unfair, but those of us with relevant med side effects or medical conditions can also be subject to the same challenges as any other person trying to lose weight. If you read the forums for a while, challenges are common (but overcoming them is possible).

Clearly, if meds are involved, the person should be consulting with the doctor who prescribed the meds, too, to ask about alternatives with fewer or different side effects (or treatments for them), or to ask for referrals to a registered dietitian for help with eating in their individual health context and maybe even a physical therapist for appropriate activity adjustments (though it sounds like you have much of that pinned down really well already). But bodies are pretty subtle, complicated things - the pros can help us sort things out, usually.

Best wishes!

My husband was on amlodipine as well and it caused him to have edema really bad. They switched him to chlorthalid along with losartan and it’s done the trick. Chances are that your weight gain is water weight. But you should discuss it with your doctor of course!