Every doctor/expert article I've read states HRT won't make you gain weight and in fact you're more likely to lose it, because the lifting of brain fog/more energy makes you want to eat better and exercise more.
Yet if you read menopause forums so many women anecdotally say the opposite. I'm 53 and I've just come off HRT after being on it for four years. At the beginning it did help with brain fog and other symptoms but I also gained 2.5 stone and felt constantly bloated, particularly during the 12-day oral progesterone cycle. My boobs became so dense, in fact, that the breast clinic had trouble doing a mammogram and so I decided to come off it because I was worried about the breast cancer risk.
Since stopping last month I've lost 8lbs without trying and my appetite has reduced massively. Before, I felt hungry all the time. Now I get that the chances are my medication had become unbalanced and I may have developed a sensitivity to progesterone, but the only thing I've done to change my diet to lose weight is come off HRT. Yet according to health professionals HRT wasn't responsible for me gaining weight in the first place.
Why do they make out there's no link between weight gain and HRT when there's so much anecdotal evidence that says otherwise? Is it because they know women might baulk at taking it if it was a listed side effect?