I got diagnosed with adhd and was prescribed meds so that i can handle college. As a bonus I am loosing weight. I am 60lb overweight so I'm excited by the low appetite and the high metabolism, and I especially love the impulse control. (I used to eat a ton of everything because it tasted good and I wasn't thinking). I hear the weight loss stops quickly though. What usually happens with Meds and weight loss? Is this likely to be sustainable? Obviously it's not the goal here but I like the help.
(cw: dieting, weight, weight loss, weight gain. if these topics stress you out, I recommend hitting ‘J’ to skip this post immediately.)
I can tell you a little because of my own history with weight loss from stimulants but for safety reasons b/c this blog is public I need to say some things first to anyone else reading this:
i'm not a professional. I am speaking on this subject out of personal experience and research. you can easily duplicate my research via google most of the time.
do not ever take stimulants for weight loss purposes unless a doctor tells you to. ever ever ever
in fact don't take stimulants at all unless a doctor tells you to, in case it isn't really damn obvious how bad that can be for you
in general, being 'overweight' is not a function of impulse control failure. in fact, your weight indicates surprisingly little about your health!* long story short the stigma against being fat is bs
I also feel the pressure to Be Thin. but my point is: weight loss is a thing that many people want because society is dickballs. but know that being Thin(tm) is not the same as being healthy.
OKAY.
stimulants tend to suppress the appetite. nicotine, caffeine, and amphetamines all fall in this category. as long as you are consuming stimulants in sufficient amounts, you will not be hungry as often.
in adhd people like you and me, snacking on impulse can be a symptom of feeling understimulated all the time. stimulants often reduce the snacking habit by suppressing the appetite, which makes this type of stimulation less rewarding. in my case it happened without me even noticing for a while.
this often results in weight loss during the early stages of taking medication. but no; it doesn't last forever.
in my experience, many bodies can hit plateaus of both weight loss and weight gain - points at which calorie burn equals calorie intake - depending on a person's lifestyle. there can be more than one weight at which this is the case, and some people's weights are easier to alter than others. (and 'lifestyle' counts in a looooot of stuff besides exercise and how much you eat!)
you probably know a lot of this stuff already, but just in case: when weight loss is caused by low calorie intake alone - such as reduced intake because you've started taking a stimulant that suppresses your appetite, the first weight loss will be quick because water weight drops off, etc etc. but it slows, stops, and can occasionally even reverse when your body's natural tendency towards wanting all systems to be in balance - that is, homeostasis - starts kicking in hardcore. ';asldjf;salj we’re using the stored energy,' warns the systems in charge of keeping your systems in balance, which think they're playing a JRPG and are concerned that your extra energy might be needed for the final boss fight more than right now. 'we gotta cut the metabolism rate somehow!'** (and that somehow is partially ‘eating some muscle too so that the amount of cells that need energy is smaller’.)
if you are not making a concerted, specific effort to continue to lose weight, this is the point at which your body will find its new homeostasis and your weight will stabilize. (but a lot of factors go into what this point is and whether it's actually lower than your starting weight.)
in addition, your body will eventually develop a tolerance for the stimulant and it may not zap your appetite as effectively after a time.
In my case:
I smoked cigarettes for 8 years. no matter how much I ate or didn't eat, my weight rarely varied by more than 5 pounds.
when I quit smoking cold turkey 4.5 years ago, my metabolism dropped and I started snacking more. I gained 25 pounds, whereupon I got stuck again; eating the same number of snacks that had started the weight gain did not continue the weight gain.
I lost a bit of weight when I exercised daily, but when I stopped I gained the weight right back.
when I started taking Adderall, a salt-amphetamine, to control my adhd symptoms, I dropped back to my smoking weight. increasing the dosage of stimulants did not make me lose more weight.
I expect that if I stop taking stimulants, I will gain those pounds back unless I make a specific, concerted effort to avoid impulse snacking. I will probably still gain weight because my metabolism will drop regardless.
so ...
in short, there's no way to use stimulants alone to continue weight loss at a quick rate. it can help you lose some pounds and keep those pounds off because of decreased appetite/better impulse control/higher metabolism, so you might quickly lose more weight than you would without a stimulant. and you can probably keep that quicker weight loss going a little longer if you make a concentrated effort to fight back against the appetite loss to avoid slowing your metabolism.
but nonetheless, your body will figure out how to balance itself with the stimulant in your system and weight loss will slow or stop. after that point more traditional weight loss methods will be necessary to keep dropping.
(notes under cut!)
