When choosing a contraceptive, you have to consider the side effects. Though it may be a small price to pay for safeguarding your uterus, weight gain seems to be a big concern for women on contraception and there are certainly enough rumours around the issue to make you worry. But which worries are based in truth, and which are fiction?
Unfortunately, it’s not entirely a myth that your reproductive cycle isn’t a positive influence on your waistline. But, with or without contraception, normal healthy women gain weight during their fertile years. However, because of this fact, women in clinical trials report gaining weight whilst on contraception, and so virtually all contraceptives subsequently list weight gain as a possible side-effect. If you’re trying to look after your sexual wellness and your waistline, it can thus be hard to separate the honest facts from the hype. Let’s have a look at how individual methods actually affect your wellbeing.
The copper IUD is more than 99% effective and completely non-hormonal, albeit with some challenges in insertion and adjustment. The difference in weight impact between this and a hormonal IUD appears to be minimal and inconsistent, so you cannot simply assume that either method will prevent normal weight changes, though they don’t seem to exacerbate them.
Again, implants are over 99% effective, but unlike an IUD, implants release a systemic dose of hormone, which has both advantages and disadvantages. There’s a lack of research into implants and weight changes, but as both scientific and anecdotal evidence shows results for weight gain, and weight loss, it appears that other factors, and not the implants themselves, affect weight in individual cases.
Users of Depo-Provera, also known as the Shot (94% effective), tend to gain an extra pound a year when compared to IUD users, and that isn’t the whole story. Some women show signs of extreme, unhealthy weight gain and teenagers who are already overweight may be particularly vulnerable. If you gain five percent of your body weight in the first six months on the Shot, doctors say you are at risk for ongoing, contraception-related weight gain and should consider another method.
Finally, the Pill and related combination contraceptives, such as the Patch or the Ring, are considered 91% effective, and, contrary to popular opinion, the best controlled studies don’t find any effect on weight gain. Other factors, such as ageing, stress, health issues, life changes, and the holidays, seem to be at work in women who claim they’ve gained weight due to these methods, and for every woman who has made this claim, there is approximately another woman elsewhere who has reported losing weight.
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