How does birth control affect my weight loss journey? 

Could it be the reason I’m not losing consistently?

Short answer: yes.

Complicated answer: it depends.

A lot of women, specifically 18-30 take birth control and for a lot of different reasons. Yes, we are trying to prevent unwanted pregnancies, but it can also be used to help teenage girls regulate their cycles or control their acne. I did learn in a podcast, however, that until your early 20s, using it to regulate your cycle can actually be harmful to your cycle’s rhythm long term.

Birth control is super effective in doing these things, but it also has some huge risks, possibly the biggest one being putting you at an increased risk of cervical, liver and breast cancer. That should scare you.

Another side effect, though, is often an increase in body fat, specifically in the lower body and upper arms, and extreme difficulty losing fat in these areas even when increasing exercise or decreasing calorie intake.

I read a few case studies, and came across a few where the client had been on birth control for years went off of it, and their body fat decreased in two months, and that’s without changing anything with their exercise routine or calorie intake. Now, these girls were pretty lean to being with and didn’t have a super hard time staying in shape, but if they EVER went off track, they’d immediately backslide in a way that made it seem almost impossible to come back from. And if they tried to get leaner, like for a competition, they couldn’t do it.

A lot of the other side effects go far beyond physical health, and I’d argue that they’re worse.

First off, many women report a decrease in their sexual desire and arousal, and discomfort during sex. This is tough on us emotionally and can really strain our relationships, which as we know, can affect our physical health.

So what exactly causes these side effects? Hormones. If you are taking a pill, or have something in your body that is affecting your hormones, you are chemically preventing one of the principle functions your body is designed to carry out, and you’re doing that by altering your hormonal environment. Because everyone’s starting point is different, the pill will affect everyone differently. For some people (me), it’s terrible and I will never do it again. For others, like my sister, an unwanted pregnancy would not go over well, and she has no side effects. And for some, it’s fairly neutral, you use it for a time to prevent unwanted pregnancy or whatever you need it for, and then have an easy time transitioning off of it. 

So, even though they work great as contraception, you are still altering your hormonal set-up which has effects to your physique as well as your overall health. Interestingly, many women report a depressive and “down” mood when on birth control, and many of the symptoms we deal with are the reason that men’s hormonal birth control was actually denied approval by the FDA.

• Things that CAN happen as a result of birth control:
  • You aren’t losing weight no matter what you do exercise-wise or comply with your diet. This COULD be why.
  • The trade off of gaining a little weight or not being able to lean out might be worth it to prevent pregnancy, say for a college student or young professional.
  • Sexual desire COULD decrease which strains relationships and thus strains health.
  • It COULD be hard to lean out if you’re working really hard, and it also COULD lead to fast weight gain if you took a break from working out or eating clean, and you COULD see this reverse pretty immediately when you go off of it.
  • You COULD see a change in mood, just not feeling like yourself, feeling sleepy and tired a lot of the time
  • If you take progesterone, you know that feeling before/during your period? That’s how you ALWAYS feel

 

• What do I do?
  • Research what options are out there and don’t just go with the first things your doctor recommends, there are non-hormonal methods like the copper IUD or condoms
  • Not every birth control will give you every side effect. Some people do fine on the pill, but don’t respond well to injections, etc.
  • Remember: no bikini contest is worth an unwanted pregnancy, but no prescription is worth years of hormonal disruptions