Why the f*** can’t I lose weight? I’m doing everything right

I disagree that those comments are advocating a short-term regime; a lot of women are saying explicitly that this is how middle-aged women need to eat to maintain.

And for those who are suggesting it as a short term thing - crash diets are fairly universally recognised as a bad idea and something that for most people will lead to weight regain. People drop to extremely low intakes and the weight comes off - but they lose muscle mass doing so, and the body fights to get back to where it was. Only when people put the weight back on, their body composition and metabolism have been compromised and it's harder to lose the next time, and the next and the next.

I understand that you've said you have done it to lose weight and never regained which again, good for you. But it's very widely accepted that for 95% of dieters, they regain the weight plus more within a couple of years of doing any kind of diet, especially a crash VLCD which are the most harmful (and a 1k or less calorie intake is a crash VLCD). It's how the weight loss industry sustains itself, most people get stuck in a lose-regain cycle because they do something that's unsustainable going forwards and compromise their health in the process. Congratulations that this doesn't apply to you personally, but looking at the general population, it's usually the case.

I find it takes a long time for weight loss to show on the scales, even when I can see inches gone. It’s disheartening but don’t give up.

And as I said there’s nothing inherently wrong with much of what you’ve quoted as long as it’s short term and means to an end.

A short term diet in the context of normal eating habits is not actually disordered eating. You’re not distinguishing between the two.

Thank you. My sister started massively under eating and running to get back 'into shape' after having a baby in later life. She ended up a skinny size 8, but her hair went really brittle and straggly. She cracked a rib after going on a fairground ride and found out she'd weakened her bones. It took her years to get back to healthy eating, and she still has issues with food.

The crazy thing is that she was a perfectly healthy bmi to begin with, and she's an intelligent teacher. Sometimes perfectly 'normal' people can get sucked in to disordered eating when they get bombarded with these messages. I'm glad that there are people on here that will keep countering them.

Why would you laugh?

Ever heard of Fast 800?

Like I said here @mirabai from a quick scan of the thread, here's a selection of comments that stand out. These are the kinds of comments I have been arguing against; I have at no point said that everyone on the thread is saying this stuff but that there is a lot of it on here - and there is!

I don't know what the prevalence of obesity has to do with it because it's not advisable for obese people to adopt disordered undereating habits in order to lose weight either unless in specific circumstances under medical supervision. So it's not as if we can justify telling people to eat extremely low amounts on the basis that this will counter obesity levels; it won't. And all of this 'advice' has come up on a thread where the OP isn't even overweight anyway!

It’s not fair to imply that that’s the whole heft of the thread though. You can take those posters to task individually rather than dragging everyone else in.

While anorexia is a serious mental illnesses, its incidence is nothing like the scale of the public health challenge of obesity. There are far more seriously overweight and obese women on MN than anorexic. And we also need to factor in the normies in the middle.

I wouldn’t interpret that as prizing thinness I would interpret it as having an aversion to exercise - not the specific comment I quoted in my previous post @Mirabai - that 'eat less move less' snippet was from a comment advising the OP to give up exercise solely in order to be able to eat as little as possible. A later comment said the same thing.

Yes, the comments I picked out can be described as outliers from undereaters whose advice should be ignored, but I still think it's fine for me and other posters to challenge them anyway as there turned out to be quite a lot of them. So many that I think the word 'outliers' is quite a stretch!

I should have put my paragraph about WLIs in a separate post rather than the one quoting you as that was in response to different posters and I merged them together.

I wouldn’t interpret that as prizing thinness I would interpret it as having an aversion to exercise - which is surprisingly common on MN.

I don’t know the threads you’re referring to so I can’t comment. Perhaps you’re spending too much time on them, I’m simply responding to this one.

A short burst of a slightly reduced version of OP’s current diet kick start her weight loss and achieve her goals won’t do her any harm in the context of her current regime. I’ve done it and I’m fine and I even put a disclaimer that it shouldn’t be tried with a history of ED.

These kinds of threads can attract outliers on the over and under eating scales and I’d just ignore them personally just as the OP seems to.

I cannot agree with you about injections being “incredible” I think they’re deeply damaging, and the only people who should take them are obese or diabetic. But they’re not actually good for them either.

That's great for you, but there are plenty of adults who are vulnerable to pro-ana rhetoric for all sorts of reasons. Not everyone can laugh it off. It's fair enough for people to counter posts that recommend 700 calories a day and to say it's a really bad idea.

You don't know who is reading the thread and who might take on the bad advice.

The OP is not vulnerable and everyone here is an adult.

If someone suggested to me to eat 700 cals a day I’d just laugh.

When I went through through the thread and realised there were at least two posters advocating not just giving up weight training but actually not moving at all - the 'eat less move less' comment plus another similar one - I don't know how you could interpret that as anything other than prizing thinness above all else. It's literally advice saying you should eat as little as possible and take no exercise in order to reduce hunger so that you can starve yourself.

And as for people on WLIs eating sub-1k cal diets, I think that's also pretty fucked up. The 'what I eat on MJ' threads where some posters are surviving on one or two protein shakes a day and upping their doses to levels of total appetite suppression are really scary. People can and do have disordered eating whether they're obese, normal BMI or underweight and it's not OK at any level. Maybe there will be very specific circumstances under which a doctor will supervise a patient doing a VLCD for medical reasons, but people deciding to lose weight by reducing intake to almost nothing and using injections to do it aren't losing weight in a healthy or sustainable way. The injections can and do form part of healthy weight loss and I think they're life changing and incredible, but that doesn't mean that they aren't being misused in some cases.

I detailed what I thought was skewed in that poster’s interpretation of the thread and I’m not interested whether you agree.

And and in terms of posters being influenced:-

’I am going to emulate minimal eating and fasting in the week’

Really quick scan of the thread - these comments stand out:

*basically you have to eat like a bird

You are stuffing your face with far too many kcal

5"2 and eating 1350cal a day is TOO MUCH.

It’s actually shocking how little an older woman needs to eat. No wonder so many are overweight. What we think of as “normal” is far far too much

1350 cals at 5ft 2 is way too much

Just eat less and move less

Try just one meal per day at lunchtime and at most a small plain yoghurt in the evening. No sweet things at all. This will work.

You need to eat around 500-1000 per day!

Try to stick to under 1000 calories - less if you can*

Not just menopausal women talking about their own bodies - this is all advice offered to the OP. I didn't even look for the posts advising her to stop weight training but there were plenty of those too.

I certainly hope the OP takes no notice of comments like this, but I don't think it's reasonable to assert that nobody will. It isn't finger wagging to say that posts like these ones are seriously fucked up.

Exactly.

Again, disagree, as there were literally posts telling op to stop weight lifting and dropping calories unhealthily low, with several posters saying the had to eat at approx 1000 cals for maintenance

All myself and other posters want is for vulnerable people reading here not to be influenced. We’ve had people suggesting 700 calories and less, just eating lunch, not eating any complex carbs, etc etc.

This is dangerous advice and I won’t apologise for pulling people up on this.

👏

OP, you are a healthy weight, and with all the resistance training I bet you look amazing!

This made me wonder too. 9st 2 lb is not very heavy even for somebody of 5ft 2. Probably a half starvation diet would be needed to get below that once you are over 50 and finding it difficult to lose weight.

No you appear patronising. I’m merely saying that 1000 calories or less is unhealthy and unsustainable.

The studies in longevity have men in them. Men do better with fasting and calorie restriction. There are studies that show for hormone health and bone health women should not under eat and they need muscle mass for bone density. It’s really that simple.

The studies on longevity do not recommend 700-1000 calores. We just need to eat a bit less as we get older. Many people become sedentary and eat more so this is addressing them.

If you are not very active then no you won’t need as many calories. If you’re slight and short then you’ll need less than a tall woman. But I am arguing with posters who suggest 700 calories and a few oat cakes for lunch!

The post I responded to was a skewed interpretation of the thread.

@bluescallop 's posts have not been remotely skewed and they have provided the most sensible, level, responsible and evidence based advice on this thread.

This is a very skewed interpretation of itself. There’s zero evidence of anyone “prizing thinness” over everything else. No-one is promoting anything, this is not a clinic or a PR outfit. Middle-aged women are discussing the impact of menopause on their bodies. I haven’t seen anyone suggest 500 calories a day as a long term plan and if I did I wouldn’t take any notice and neither will the OP.

@Nota60sChick is right this kind of po-faced finger wagging to adults is tiresome.