Why TF am I not losing weight?

[Ozgirl75]

I’ve managed to pile on about 4kg this year - solely due to moving to the U.K. and embracing Galaxy, nice white bread and other delicious comfort food, plus stopping my usual exercise routine, although I am still exercising.
Im not dramatically overweight but I have 6kg to lose. I feel like I’ve cut out all the nice stuff and it’s still not shifting!

A normal day looks like:
No breakfast (I never have breakfast, I have a cup of tea)
Lunch - two hard boiled eggs in a salad, cucumber, red pepper, pickled cucumber, beetroot, olives. Followed by one of those naked bars. Occasionally a roll with this if I’m v hungry.
Dinner - normal stuff, stir fry, roasts, fish. Plenty of veg. Not tiny but just normal dinners.
Followed by a frozen yogurt and sometimes a Galaxy Ripple.
Maybe some fruit in the evening later.
Occasionally 3-4 rice crackers mid afternoon.

Is it just because I’m 46 and am destined to be a size 14 for ever more now? I’m 70kg and 5ft 3 and a half.

Start calorie counting. It's the only real way of finding out if you're eating more than you're "spending" your calories on exercise!

For me 1400 kcal a day keeps me in good shape, anything above that and I start piling on the kilos.

It's fine if you add in a breakfast!

Oh my god all these people exclaiming at an egg salad and a few snacks! I mean you could eat less (ie virtually nothing) and you could shift some weight, but then you would have to carry on like this for the rest of your life so it didn't go back on again. How bloody miserable that sounds!
Do some exercise that will help you tone up as well as move a few pounds, and you can have a normal diet with, shocker, snacks as well. I recommend swimming, it's excellent for a leaner body and also a great confidence builder as you will be exposed to women of all shapes and sizes in their swimwear. You might start to view your current body in a different, more positive way.

You should never come on Mumsnet OP looking for advice on losing weight. You'll get the competitive undereaters in their droves. Telling you you're eating too much food.

Only on Mumsnet would two eggs and a bit of salad be described as a very substantial amount of food 🙄

Didn't you know everyone on here survives on the memory of a piece of celery they ate in 1972?

You sound like me. Same current weight and same goal/what I always used to be weight. Before if I felt myself gaining weight I could just cut out obviously calorific and unnecessary things and I’d sort myself out. Alas, three children and mid forties later, no longer. I hate the thought of calorie counting though and my diet overall is fairly good. Similar to yours but without the chocolate. But I haven’t exercised consistently for a while but now my youngest is in school I’m hoping that a concerted effort on that front will help.

but, it’s the figuring out how many calories I need to lose weight that’s the tricky bit.

https://tdeecalculator.net/

Its easy using this. Reduce the tdee amount by 20% to get your calorie target. It helped me go from a size 14 (&getting bigger) 46 year old to a size 10. Calorie needs reduce drastically at this age unfortunately. My maintenance calories are now 1650. Your snacks are nearly 400 calories, that’s a lot of food from your daily allowance.

Yes! It used to be so easy. If I put on a bit on holiday, just cut back for a couple of weeks and I was back to normal. But now, I eat SO much less, never have booze and am so much healthier and what am I rewarded with? A rounded middle aged waist and the inability to eat a fuckin Ripple.

Not such a bad thing.....the 70's didn't have the issues we have these days

This thread is convincing me it might be worth looking at my calorie intake, just out of curiosity. I remain pessimistic it will make my mummy tummy disappear though.

Losing weight is really hard and in reality requires some sacrifice. You can't carry on eating as you were before, you need to cut out snacks, and you need to make better food choices. Not fun. But you can still eat lots of food you enjoy. When I started losing weight, I got my fitness pal and I promised myself that I wouldn't change anything, I would just have a reality check. It was crazy to see how few calories I was advised to eat for my height (only 5'1") and activity levels (sedentary job). I managed to lose weight though - about 12kg in 5 months, and now I focus less on calories, more on nutritious food, and my weight maintenance calorie allowance is higher. I also took up exercise, and work out everyday now. You do need to get rid of the galaxy/naked bar/frozen yoghurt. Pointless calories, basically no nutrition, and don't fill you up.

My diet looks a bit like this now:
Breakfast: also don't always eat breakfast, but perhaps at 10am-ish I'll have fruit and yoghurt/kefit with seeds/nuts OR porridge and fruit
Lunch: 2 egg omelette roll with chicken, spring onion, sweetcorn, tomatoes OR soup and veggie stick OR sandwich (ham/salad, no spread/mayo) and veggie stick
Dinner: veggie/chicken curry and rice, chicken salad, bolognaise, teriyaki tofu (some recent meals - all made from scratch, lots of veggies, smaller amounts of carbs, all weighed)
I'll also have one coffee, a couple of teas, and water.
Chocolate or some other treat once a week maybe.

No breakfast is the worst thing and still eating chocolate everyday. I'm not into dieting but that seems alot of wrong foods there also

Log your food on my fitness pal. And no use everything, cup of tea, sugar, salad cream etc. everything! If you're not losing weight, you're not in a calorie deficit.

I’ve not eaten breakfast in 30 years 😁

Theres no point eating when I’m not hungry, when I spend so much time actually hungry and trying not to eat. Let me enjoy my mornings when I’m not hungry 😆

It is interesting you said the weight gain started when you moved to the UK. What in your diet changed then?

Also what do you drink during the day? I may have missed it but couldn't see any mention.

I lost my peri meno tummy completely by going 100% whole food and low sugar but appreciate that might not be for everyone.

i mean, apart from the Ripple and the naked bar (which is just dates and nuts basically), the rest of my food is very healthy. Which is the problem! If I was busily having takeaways and fried food it would be easy to make changes.

I guess the thing is previously you were maintaining at a lower weight. Now you want to lose weight, you need to lower your intake.

Once you've lost it you can revert to this diet as a maintenance diet.

You are eating enough to maintain - well done for not eating enough to gain. Now you need to reduce in order to lose.

So when I was in Australia I used to have a bowl of yogurt for lunch with fruit seeds and nuts but for the life of me I cannot find one I like over here. They’re either gross and thick or thin and watery.
Then the chocolate is nicer here.
Im a bit more sedentary (work).
Dinners are basically the same.
Used to have a delicious lemon and poppyseed bar that was dates and nuts too.

So not much has changed but enough to make a difference.

I am in my 50s, and have managed to lose over 10 kg recently. I am not British, so chocolate daily has never been part of my diet. I can't eat chocolate daily and have a big dinner and lose weight; most women in peri can't. I don't think that's competitive undereating. It's just common sense!

I think you would be better off eating breakfast and cutting out the chocolate and frozen yoghurt.

I will grudgingly try cutting back on the chocolate 😄

And I’ll do the calorie counting as well and try to make a few good swaps in there too.

Nothing could ever convince me to eat breakfast though!

I would guess the frozen yoghurt isn't very healthy unless it's just plain yoghurt/made at home, otherwise it probably has sugar/sweeteners and is ultra processed. Nakd bars are really high in sugar as dates are very high in sugar and it's processed. Why not just have nuts? I love dates but avoid them and dried fruit.