weight loss and long term ttc

hi there everyone, my story is that i got married jan 2000 and started ttc immediately... after 12 months of trying my specialist put me on a course of clomid to no avail..... years later i got more tests done (and partner too) and was told that we were both norm and healthy.... still no bubs. in april 2004 i finally concieved, 4 years and 4 months later.. funny thing is just prior this i lost 24kgs...i was 78kg and got down to 54kg. my family believe that it was the weight that was affecting my hormones and stopped me from concieving... i now have a beautiful daughter..i am ttc again (6 months) and at 68kg i am thinking about losing the weight again (arrrggggg). does anyone have a similar story or information on weight loss and ttc.... i'd be interested knowing.
p.s. my sister went to ivf (due to cancer her husband has no sperm count ) at 74kg they told her they will start when she loses 6kg....hmmmmm

Hi,

Excess weight has been known to hinder ovulation or be related to other hormonal problems so it's not uncommon to hear of someone having success after a weight loss or being advised to lose a few kilos to help the process. I'm glad it worked for you and I hope it helps your sister too!

Cheers,

Mel

I have heard that some weight loss is a good idea. I'm not sure that anyone knows exactly how it helps, but it does. I have several friends that were quite overweight, all had noral blood results, and when they each dropped a stone in weight, bingo! Hope this helps. x

Hi there,

I thought i would put my two bobs worth in. I have just completed 6 cycles of clomid. Prior to this i lost 16kg, however the clomid has made me put all this weight back on, plus more. I am quite overweight and asked my FS is this was part of the reason the clomid wasn't working. They told me that it could have an impact. They wanted me to try AIH, but i told them that i would take a break for a while and lose a heap of weight to give my body the best chance.

They actually commended me on my decision and said that so many women who pass through my clinic, don't accept the fact that their weight is playing a part in their infertility, so yeah, i do believe that a weight issue and infertility certainly go hand in hand....

Hope That Helps....

my ob-gyn advised me that I needed to lose about 10 - 20 kgs to help me fall pregnant when we start on our ivf journey

Yes I strongly beleive weight has a part in concieving. I lost 10 kilos after the clomid failed at the end of last year and have managed to get pregnant twice - ok one wasn't viable and am hoping and praying that this one is - but I really do think the weight loss helped.

thx everyone, a nice positive response..... i'm going to try and lose 10kg....fingers crossed.

I have been told this aswell.. But you also have to look at all the beautiful larger woman out there that have fallen pregnant straight away that didn't have any problems..
Alan's aunt is very overweight, but has conceived naturally 4 gorgeous children.
My nanna was the same and a lot of my dad's side aunts aswell...

I know I have to lose weight before I go and start TTC again, but there are a lot of woman out there who have done it my size.

I think it also depends on your genes as well, as both my Nan and my Aunty (on my dad's side) both had to lose heaps of weight before they could get pregnant. I was talking to a naturopath about my cycles and about my Nan and Aunty, and she said that one ovary has your father's genes and one has your mother's genes and because i was only having a normal cycle ever 2nd month that my father's side was the one that was anovulatory....i thought that was quite interesting, although not sure how true it is....

AAAAAAGH! No, that's not *quite* right there.

OK, first off I shouldn't have read this thread because I wanted to look up why larger ladies had trouble TTC and all I could find was that "oooh, you're so thin and don't eat enough so you don't even ovulate" for me - which really upsets me, especially as it takes me months to put on any weight and has anyone tried finding full-fat food these days? I don't eat lo-fat through choice! :angry: - I'm so upset I even need to use an emoticon! And as for exercise - if I owned a car I wouldn't get anywhere near as much exercise! How did women of my grandparent's generation manage to have children? I guess they had full-fat stuff. I can't have much of that even if I wanted it because of an hereditary cholesterol problem.

Anyway, I do know that excess fat and cause pregnancy complications such as gestational diabetes, but nothing in particular about how excess weight affects TTCing - although we all know it does to some degree.

Now, for the genetics. You don't have a "daddy" ovary and a "mummy" ovary. What you have is one chromosome from dad and a corresponding chromosome from mum. Both of these are marked so we know from whence they came - there's in interesting thing with C16 - 2 daddy C16s and no mummy C16s gives you Prada-Willi Syndrome, 2 mummy C16s and no daddy C16s gives you Angelman's Syndrome. Really interesting - happens when there are 3 C16s in a newly-fertilised embryo and one is kicked out, but the imprinting still affects the baby. Also daddy genes make the placenta, mummy genes stop the placenta being so invasive and make baby grow as well as placenta. No daddy genes, no placenta; no mummy genes, no baby grows - it really is all placenta! Anyway, fascinating as this all is, the X chromosome works a bit differently. All the imprinting is wiped off in the ovary, so all your eggs are mummy-imprinted.

You still have a daddy X and a mummy X, and XX makes us girls and XY makes a boy. So how can boys do with just one X? That's because in every cell one X is inactive! It curls up into a little ball and just isn't used apart from when the cell divides. The inactivation is random and doesn't happen in boys (unless they're XXY). So that's why we can also have girls with one, three or four Xs (though they have seperate fertility issues). Genes such as colour-blindness are on the X, which is why it's more prevalent in boys than girls, although if your son is colour blind you're actually half colour blind: about half your active Xs will be colour blind, the other half not, so you don't appear to be colour blind (or only slightly colour blind). The X is fantastic!

So, what could be happening is that if your daddy X isn't doing the business, you'll only ovulate half the time, because half of the time that X will be the active X. While it is theoretically possible that one ovary could be only daddy-X active and the other only mummy-X active (really should use the words maternal and paternal, but too late for that now I guess) that's the equivalent of throwing a coin 10'000 times and getting a head every time.

Anyway, both ovaries have both sets of parental genes, just the active X-chromosome may different in the cells that stimulate the follicles. I don't even know if this is sex-linked, I'd just assume so because it's to do with fertility and also because of the stupid "mummy ovary" and "daddy ovary" comment.

Anyway, genetics lesson over! Any questions?

Yes lot's of larger women do fall pregnant easily but it just isn't the case for everyone, unfortunately. :(

I am on a mission to loose about 25-30kg before we head off to IVF. We have been trying to concieve for about 4 years. When we first started ttc and nothing was happening the doctor said to me to go and loose some weight. I was so angry & upset that this is what my doctor had to offer me. But now I look at it differently, because maybe he was right. I am so motivated and determined to drop the kg's now. I want to head off to IVF with the best chance possible of concieving, I don't want to rush there now while I am overweight. I accept that my weight could be playing a part in us not falling pg and I am doing something about it!!

Id like to add that there are no right or wrong answers here. There are conflicting opinions about many areas of TTC and this is one of them.

I dont think we should be commenting on who's ideas are "stupid" or otherwise.

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I don't even know if this is sex-linked, I'd just assume so because it's to do with fertility and also because of the stupid "mummy ovary" and "daddy ovary" comment.

Anyway, genetics lesson over! Any questions?

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I've got a question Ryn....are you implying that what i wrote was 'stupid', because i don't thing that is a very nice thing to put. All i was told was that one side of your body relates to your father and the other relates to your mother.....i'm sure genetics don't play a part in it, and yes i do know about genetics, but spiritually i believe that it can be true...but we are all entitled to say what we believe, i guess

Oh, sorry Shan, that's not what I meant at all! I just really don't see how you can have a "daddy" ovary and a "mummy" one - biology just doesn't work like that. I've never heard of having a side of the body related to one particular parent - as our bodies aren't perfectly symetrical I'd remember something like that as I'd want to know how it worked! Actually - and I don't want to have a go here - is it that each organ is half-and-half, or only each pair of organs, or just the body split down the middle?

I'm so sorry - I thought someone had tried to explain things to you like that and I have huge problems with my mum believing half-baked science (she won't understand genetics or anything "complex" like that) so it riles me a bit that people just try to explain things away without a full knowledge of it or giving you a full explaination.

due to pcos I started a low GI diet and read a few books on it, which said 'studies show that losing as little as 5 percent of body weight can help control blood glucose levels, improve menstrual function, reduce testosterone levels....blah blah.'. You probably dont have pcos (surely you'd know by now) but if it helps us with it to conceive, then it might just work for you too. Are your periods regular? Anyway, good luck!

The theories relating to weight and fertility indicate that increased body fat can alter the hormonal levels and make ovulation (or egg / follicle development more importantly) less than ideal. It is hinted that a weight loss of 5% can make the difference when trying to conceive (which is not as much as I need to lose but a good start).

It is annoying when I am much smaller than my sister and yet she gets pregnant in a heartbeat and I am STILL trying to get to the final goal. It isn't the size of the woman but how her hormones (and her fat!!) interact that is the issue. So .... it's back to the gym for me (3 clomid cycles to go!! Fingers crossed)

My GYN says that losing 6kg will have a 60% increase in your fertility. He has been at me for a year to lose weight (I was 72kg). After resisting, thinking I'm not overweight, and 3 attempts at Clomid without conceiving or even having o'd, I joined Weight Watchers - I just couldn't do it on my own. In 2 months I have lost almost 4 kilos. Go back in a month to the Dr. By then I hope to have lost at least another 1.5kg. All up I hope to lose 10kgs (not if I put weight on in the meantime IYKWIM).

I figure that this is the one thing that I do have control over so I should try that and see if it does help me conceive naturally before going onto more serious doses of Clomid.

Good luck all.

AAAAAAGH! No, that's not *quite* right there.

OK, first off I shouldn't have read this thread because I wanted to look up why larger ladies had trouble TTC and all I could find was that "oooh, you're so thin and don't eat enough so you don't even ovulate"
in regards i do not recall "oooh, you're so thin and don't eat enough so you don't even ovulate" being a topic of discussion here.. i was simply sharing my story with others who may relate to "long term ttc and losing weight". it may help some and it may not, when in my case the excess fat caused my testosterone levels to be too high. like it or not, thats how it was. no need to jump on your high horse. thanks all the same ladies for your replies.. goodluck to all ttc..

Amitiria, I didn't have any trouble with what you posted. For my information, I decided to see if there were any data out on the internet about weight and fertility issues, and all I found was a load of articles having a problem with slimmer people. Which did rather annoy me, but your post didn't at all.

Good luck with the rest of your weight loss.

thankyou ryn-frog for clearing that up. if you were referring to information elsewhere then i must apologise for the missunderstanding. ttc is no fun when it drags on and neither is trying to lose weight. but all i wanted to mention to you all is that it seemed to help me the first time... goodluck all... just found out that this month was unsuccessfull..grrrrrr.