| finally losing the weight
After putting on 30lbs while on zoloft I am now losing weight after struggling with it and not being able to lose a single pound for an entire year. Here's what I'm doing:
First I got off the Zoloft and switched to Effexor XR. I was hoping my weight would drop just from doing that but it didn't at all.
After 6 months of still losing no weight even after switching to a different SSRI and dieting like crazy I bought a pedometer and a new Kathy Smith exercise video that is designed to help you through weight loss plateaus.
I have found that the key is to do weight training more often. 2-3 days a week I either walk 10,000 steps in a day or I do my Kathy Smith workout. Then 2 days a week I do the first section of the Kathy Smith video or 15 minutes of cardio and then I do 20 minutes of weight lifting or pilates.
For my diet, which I think is what is doing the most for my weight loss, I checked out Kathy Smith's 5-day jumpstart plan on her website and it has worked WONDERS. It is designed to get your body in fat burning mode and it's about 1500 calories a day. I thought I had to eat 1200/day to lose weight and even less since the antidepressants slow down our metabolism sooo much. On the days I work out I eat between 1400-1700 calories and on the days I don't work out I TRY to eat only 1200.
In the past two weeks I've lost over 5 lbs and to me that's a miracle because I've been trying so long. I seriously recommend for people to try the 5-day jump start plan. Even though it's for 5 days I try to follow it everyday but if I don't it's no big deal. I'm so thrilled that I can still be on my Effexor and lose weight now because I didn't think it was possible and now it feels like the weight is just peeling off of me.
Feel free to ask me questions. I know how devastating it is to deal with the weight gain from these meds and hopefully I can help some of you.
take care,
Jess
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