Losing Weight on Tamoxifen

Tracey 1967 said:

Michelle, you give me hope. I am 24 kilos overweight. I have lost 10 kilos very slowly in the last year. It's hard work - really monitoring your food and increasing exercise to get it all off.  I also look bloated around the waist. I am also wondering if it causes water retention.

Hi Tracey,
   AFAIK Tamoxifen doesn't cause water retention, but menopause certainly causes weight gain on the abdomen. When pre and post menopausal women were matched for age, it was discovered that they both put weight on at the same rate, but in different places. The menopausal women put weight on the stomachs. For me, it seemed like 2 weeks after starting tamoxifen my weight was the same, but all my fat had migrated to my stomach. Interestingly, with my high protein diet and lots of weight training, the weight seems to be coming off my stomach first. Or at least, that's where it's most noticeable to me. My muffin top has gone. 
10kg is *amazing*. I hope you're doing weight training of some sort too. Cutting calories without resistance workouts will lead to loss of muscle and bone and then it will be harder and harder to lose weight because your  BMR will have gone down. Also, at our age, we have to start worrying about falls. Muscle mass will help us keep our balance.
And, muscles look nice. That's the difference between young and old bodies; how much muscle they have. At least superficially. After 30 we start to lose 3-5% of our muscle mass per decade unless we take steps to stop it.
One good thing about Tamoxifen, we don't have to worry too much about osteoporosis while we're on it. 
  Perhaps the book "strong women stay young" would be a good place to start, if you're not already lifting weights. 
I don't mean squatting half your own weight in a sweaty gym with scary equipment, (but you'll get faster results if you can do that). My "gym" lives in a box in the lounge room. 

Now I must stop procrastinating and lift my own weights!

take care
Samantha