Do Birth Control Pills Make You Fat?

Mumsy Pop March 16, 2023

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There are many good reasons for choosing oral contraceptives as your birth control method, but it’s important to remember that birth control pills are drugs. So are birth control pills making you fat? Women who decide to use them may experience negative side effects.

These side effects can include nausea, headaches, decreased libido, and yes, even weight gain. Remember, not all women who use birth control pills suffer from these side effects. Even those that do, these problems are rarely severe.

Over time, most of these side effects will disappear or at least become less pronounced as the body adjusts to the increase in hormones.

Do Birth Control Pills Make You Fat?

Weight gain is one of the main reasons why many avoid using oral contraceptives. Before starting many women want to know if the birth control pill will cause weight gain.

Most women do not gain any extra weight from the pill.

There is no one answer for everyone. Although some women gain weight while taking the pill, this is not necessarily the result of being on the pill. In fact, most women do not gain any extra weight from the pill.

There are several reasons why a minority of women may look heavier and notice a bigger number when they step on the scale. The greatest amount of blame lies with a hormone known as estrogen.

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Studies show that estrogen can both increase a person’s appetite and tend to cause a person to retain water. However according to a large independent study as of 2014 there is not enough evidence to suggest that the pill will cause significant weight gain.

In the early days of oral contraceptives, birth control pills had higher levels of estrogen than those present in today’s pills. Because of these larger amounts of estrogen in the older pills, many more women experienced negative side effects.

For many women weight gain is a normal occurrence that comes with age.

This is purely a consequence of why other women begin to wonder if birth control pills cause weight gain. It is natural for women to gain weight during their older teenage years through their young twenties and then again when they are in their mid-thirties and beyond.

It just so happened that this was the time when many women were using birth control pills. Therefore, it is quite natural to blame birth control pills for this normal weight gain.

Do birth control pills make me gain weight? Highly unlikely, according to science.

What Can You Do If You Gain Weight While Using Oral Contraceptives?

If you are among the small percentage of women who continue to gain weight even after several months of taking the pill, you should know that there is hope. Your first step is to make an appointment with your doctor to discuss your weight gain concerns.

Your weight gain may be coincidental and not have any link to your birth control. For weight gain due to birth control pills, a doctor can help.

Not all brands of birth control pills have the same effect on your body.

Not all brands of birth control pills use the same dose level of estrogen. Your doctor may want to try a prescription with a lower level of estrogen to determine if it corrects the problem. Alternatively, your doctor may put you on a progestin-only pill.

These pills are sometimes known as POPs o minipills because they don’t have any estrogen at all. A Recent studies who reviewed 22 previous studies found little evidence that POPs cause weight gain.

One thing to keep in mind with POPs is that getting the same contraceptive efficiency as with combination pills will require you to be more careful with timing. Missing a pill here and there will increase your risk of unwanted pregnancy more than a combination of pills.

After you switch to a new pill, you should not expect any immediate changes, It usually takes up to three months before most women notice a reduction in their weight.

For any other medication, women should ask their doctors to understand all the possible side effects that birth control pills can cause.

Mikko Veräjänkorva is a pharmacist and holds a BScBa in International Business. He has more than 15 years of experience in the pharmaceutical field from the pharmacy, medical and pharmaceutical industry. He is one of the founders and board member of Farenta since 2003.

My goal is to write high quality informative articles based on science in a way that we all can easily get the point across. Science and evidence-based research is at the core of my writing. The main purpose of my articles is to provide practical information on healthy living and to provide reliable and practical information about various medical conditions.

Bringing medical jargon to the masses is my mission.