To think that people who say diets don’t work aren’t really trying

Speak to any personal trainer and they'll tell you the same thing. Diets don't work long term. It is fucking hard eating 800/1000 calories a day, hard and depressing. Imagine doing that for the rest of your life. It's not sustainable for most people. You need to refrain your mind, rethink how you eat.

There's nothing wrong with having a piece of cake or bar of chocolate (my old gym instructor liked the odd slice of cheesecake). There's nothing wrong with a slice of bread. But have it all in moderation. Add in exercise, which whilst it doesn't always help with weight loss, it does help change your mood and mind so you subconsciously start eating better.

It is hard being menopausal. Now I am mid 50s I have to eat very little from Monday to Thursday and then I relax and eat normally at the weekend. I hate it and think about food all the time. I weigh probably 6 or 7 lb more than I did when I was 18 and I am luckily still slim. If I am honest, my driving factor is vanity rather than health, as I love fashion and buying clothes, which is often easier at the lower size ranges.

I yearn for the days in my 20s and 30s when it was so much easier to stay slim.

Other peoples weight does not really interest me. And there is nothing worse than going out for dinner with friends who are constantly talking about diets and commenting on your food intake.. So boring!

I think the weight gain in menopause is partly about slow metabolism. But it is also in my case due to activity. When I was younger, I was rushing around with the kids, taking them to activities and play dates. I no longer do that now. I now work from home a few days a week which I didn’t in my 20s. I think the incidental general activity in my day-to-day life has gone down in my fifties even though I still do some dedicated exercise.

I think as you get older, it's not just about eating the right number of calories, but also keeping up with exercise, as diet only takes you so far. Since hitting 40, I'm surprised by how few calories I need to eat and how much I need to walk each day to not become overweight, so I can see why lots of people struggle.
Modern life isn't really easily set up to easily accommodate a healthy lifestyle as most of us are needing to work long hours, often in sedentary jobs just to survive.

Tell me what I should do then.

go on.

tell me what to do that I’m not doing.

I restrict my calories as much as I can but I’m on antidepressants, beta blockers, antispasmotocs, corticosteroids, daily antihistamines, I’m also on slow release morphine with oramorph for breakthrough pain.

I can’t exercise and spend a fair portion of my day in significant levels of pain. I have limited use of my legs and use crutches or a wheelchair day to day. I have no proprioception in my right leg from the knee down. I also now have shoulder problems due to long term crutches use.

I restrict to 1200 - 1500 calories a day every day bar a treat day once a fortnight where I will have a cooked breakfast / brunch, or a small bar of chocolate (fruit n nut) or a donut (glazed, from Greggs).

So, smart arse, tell me what I should do. I’m all ears.

@amijumping , actually all the current scientific evidence points to the fact that calories in v calories out is not the entire story of weight loss and gain. I’m telling you this so that in the likely event that at some point in your life you want to lose weight and employ your present method and it fails, you won’t beat yourself up in the way that I assume you hope people who are struggling will when they read your post. What a lovely person you are.

It means they're not trying hard enough to stop, yes.

Behaviors like that can be a lot easier/harder to stop based on personal circumstances, obviously.

Or they have underactive thyroids like me. Yes I’m medicated and the meds deal with the symptoms like tiredness, brain fog, feeling the cold etc but they don’t make my thyroid act normally with regard to regulating my metabolism.

@spoofyuser , No one says, ‘give it a year and you’ll be smoking again’. They do.

‘You’ll pile it all back on again’ is the cry (if the person is using weight loss drugs) or, as this thread and a previous PP have said, ‘I once lost 5kg and you can too if you just try harder’.
The people using weight loss drugs probably will pile it back on if they don't make changes to their lifestyle.

Many people reducing calories don't reduce by enough, like in @HappyByTheRiver 's example.

I find it so weird why this topic makes people so angry or so opinionated. I’ve never heard someone tell a smoker who is using nicotine patches, ‘no, you just have to try harder…you lazy thicko’. No, there’s just a shared understanding that smoking might be related to long formed habits or used as a coping mechanism and hey, if you need to use nicotine gum or whatever, you absolutely should. When a person then gives up their 30 a day habit, everyone applauds them. No one says, ‘give it a year and you’ll be smoking again’. Likewise with alcohol, people are encouraged to get help and if they do conquer the booze, they’re (rightly) applauded.
When it comes to weight though, forms are littered with people shouting at overweight people - telling them they’re thick, stupid and lazy. ‘You’ll pile it all back on again’ is the cry (if the person is using weight loss drugs) or, as this thread and a previous PP have said, ‘I once lost 5kg and you can too if you just try harder’.

So many double standards which must surely be rooted in the idea that if you’re overweight, you’re basically just lazy or think (or both).

Ime, a lot of people hugely underestimate their calorie intake. They often don’t count drinks, or that bit of bread they ate whilst preparing dinner, or the pack of sweets whilst they were out shopping.

Other people are like a woman I worked with. She would diet all week, she worked out she had a 500 calorie deficit daily, then felt she deserved a treat at the weekend. That treat was basically an extra 2000 calories, the majority of her weekly deficit. When she only lost half a pound every couple of weeks, she’d declare that ‘dieting doesn’t work’.

I think the statement 'diets don't work' isn't about the initial weight loss, it's about yoyo dieting and people putting the weight back on after the diet. I take the statement to mean that a healthy lifestyle is required to maintain the weight loss, the diet is just the starting point. Going back to old bad habits will just bring the weight back.

Exactly.
and because my comorbid conditions don’t hit the “rules” I can’t get Mounjaro or Wegovy on the nhs and I can’t afford them
myself.

Think people need to change their foods they eat. If eat the same foods, week in, week out, body does not lose weight. Then heard people who ate different foods of a similar nv value and - they lost weight.

Bodies get bored of the same stuff.

@CeciliaDuckiePond, The suggested serving size is often tiny. I can't be doing with the calculating it either.

@LoveMySushi , If i order pizza one night and chinese the next evening i have to skip dinner for the rest of the week, otherwise the weight piles on again.
Same here, but given how many calories in the takeaways, it shouldn't be surprising. You're doing the right thing.

The average calories in a Chinese takeaway meal typically range from 1,500 to 2,000 calories, depending on the specific dishes and portion sizes chosen.

The calories in a takeaway pizza can vary significantly based on the type and size. Here are some general estimates:

• Standard Pizza (9-10"): A standard pizza can contain around 1,800 to 2,000 calories for the whole pizza.

I think trying to control your weight long term through calorie restriction is misery and the high failure rate speaks for itself.

My appetite seems to be modulated by exercise so I do that, dont eat processed and sweet stuff is an occasional treat. I appreciate that won't work for everyone but it's great not having the obsessive misery of a "diet".

Dieting is fine anyone can lose weight keeping it of is the hard part.

I agree that sadly many of us as we grow older are more prone to put on weight, at least not be able to lose it as easily as we once did. This coupled with massive societal change since the 60s - fast food outlets on every high street, unhealthy & addictive UPF being stocked & pushed by the food industry, pressure from universal advertising campaigns, snacking between meals totally acceptable… none of these things were ‘the norm’ in past decades and dare I say it, there was less obesity. So a slow but steady rise in convenience eating has been introduced, which has impacted us all to a greater or lesser degree. But despite this the idea of willpower/personal responsibility is not just a mythical beast, it’s just so much harder to maintain these days. Trauma, stress, disability & finance are some of the factors that also play a part in our relationship to food. However, it’s ok to pose the question, it’s how we learn!

I have tried high protein and I was still hungry. I have tried 16:8 fasting - I put on weight as I ate more in the 8 hours than normal

I have to eat a lot of fibre as I tend to be constipated otherwise so have bran flakes/psylliumhusk/berries/yoghurt for breakfast then sometimes sandwich or lentil Dahl for lunch. I am a carer and make what suits the patient and my kids for tea- mainly meat or fish and loads of different veg , with rice and potatoes. I know it works (with no snacks) but my hunger is off the scale some days. I’m hungry again 5 minutes after the biggest meal - I think I may be misreading hunger but I can’t stop it!

Its all mental and willpower. But you cant really control that. I was overweight for almost 2 years after my DD was born until i finally found the strength to go on a very strict diet. I was hungry for 2 years, got all the weight off.
DD is almost 10 now and i still cant eat like i used to. If i order pizza one night and chinese the next evening i have to skip dinner for the rest of the week, otherwise the weight piles on again.
If i know im going out for dinner, then i only eat a small salad for lunch and no breakfast.
I rarely eat sweets etc.
I used to always be borderline underweight, then overweight after the kids. Ive now found the sweet spot at bmi 21 where im still happy with the way i feel and look and i dont have to suffer too much. I can afford a treat every now and then, but i definitely cant have treats every day.
Its worth it though for me, because i feel much more energised and healthy at this weight than when i was heavier.

I can't speak for others but my mental arithmetic goes into overdrive when I'm shopping to calculate the actual calories in a packet rather than a 'serving' 😆

Then there's the "loose" issue.

They're not trying hard enough. 1500 calories a day is not enough of a deficit for many.

The recommended average daily calorie intake in the UK varies based on age and gender:
Men: Approximately 2,500 calories per day.
Women: Approximately 2,000 calories per day.
For weight loss, it's recommended to reduce daily calorie intake by about 600 calories.

The recommended intake is based on the average woman or man. It doesn't take into account age, height, weight, level of actvity etc.

What someone eat is probably much higher than what it actually is.

People often don't pay enough attention to the nutritional information on packets.
As an example, Vegetable Flavour Instant Noodles 90g

Quick nutrition guide
Per 1/2 pack (cooked) Typical Values
Energy
805kJ
192kcal
10%

Who eats half a packet?

For comparison: Pot Noodle Original Curry 90g
One portion is one pack.

(i don't normally eat such junk, but will occasionally, but I'll add soya chunks and spinach to make it more meal-like)

I’d recommend the Fat Science podcast. Metabolic health is very poorly understood still. It debunks a lot of the stuff trotted out on this thread too.

Nah it's not the diet or not trying hard enough, it's the "fucking hard... Hungry... Rubbish for ages..." bit that people don't want to have to keep up for their entire lives. Who needs more fucking hard and rubbish shit in their lives?
OP you've said how horrible dieting is, and that's exactly why people can't do it forever. And as soon as you stop, weight goes back on. THAT'S why horrible, rubbish, punitive diets that make you feel shit don't work long term!

Going to get flamed on here, but it's true. I can lose weight when I want to. I have lost weight when I want to.

I just have to eat a hell of a lot less. Cut out the chocolate and the sugar.Because I have a terrible sweet tooth. But it's just having the will power to do it.

I also have pcos which makes me prone to gaining weight easily. So it can be very disheartening that I can eat a normal amount of food and still put weight on.

I lost 5kg by May this year I only had another 7kg to go. And i've stalled, and put a couple of kilos back on. Work was very stressful.I had a holiday, you know, it's been difficult to get back into the swing.

It's like everybody using weight loss injections.Now they re just replacing willpower with a drug. They can't stay on those drugs forever. As soon as they stop taking them, their appetite wwill eventually be back. It's just a quick fix.

You have to want to do it, and it is a choice to eat foods in quantities that make you overweight or obese. .And I say that as somebody who needs to lose weight myself.