My grandmother took it most of her late life for management of COPD. She had a hard time getting off it completely. She had immense self-control and managed to control the weight gain side-effects, but she had some of the moon face appearance.
Right, but it's a well researched drug with a weight gain side effect, so it's probably a reasonable entry point for them to learn about the thing they asked (unless they happened to care about that cancer drug in particular, but that's not what it sounded like to me).
I take mirtazapine for crushing depression and now I have clinical obesity and borderline diabetes. Medicare won't cover obesity treatments other than some lifestyle habits lecturing because they consider it "my fault" with zero nuance. [0]
Usually, aside from water retention, it’s the appetite, I would assume. Lower metabolic rate by itself would lower the appetite because the person would feel less hungry.
Metabolic rate and appetite are loosely correlated at best. Most stimulants simultaneously reduce appetite, and increase metabolic rate. (in fact, that's where a significant portion of their negative side effects come from. Habitual meth users tend to become malnourished, mostly because of the appetite suppression, which combined with teeth grinding jitters, causes the iconic "meth mouth")
