Why am I so overweight? Help me to understand

[PomegranateVase]

I’m 3.5 stone overweight (over the top end of the ideal weight to height guidelines), but would be around 5 stone over the lowest end of the guidelines, and I’m a size 16-18.

I cook from scratch using fresh ingredients everyday, including lots of vegetables and broths. We typically eat lots of healthy Japanese food that I cook from scratch at least 3 times a week, and only eat meat, chicken or fish around 3-4 times per week.

5 days a week I do a 20 minute brisk walk.
Twice a week I walk for 2 hours at moderate speed.
3-4 times per month I walk for around 3 hours at moderate speed (so around 9-12 hours walking - in addition to the above).

I drink 2 cups of coffee daily with a little milk and 1 sugar, as well as 3-4 cups of tea with 1 sugar. I also drink sugar free squash, and only very occasionally treat myself to a sugar free fizzy drink.

I drink 1 or 2 bottles of wine per week, eat one share size crisps packet to myself, and eat a few biscuits.

A typical weekday looks like this:
•Avocado on 1 slice of sourdough toast with a coffee
•1 Nature Valley snack bar and a coffee
•Baxter’s carrot and butter bean soup with 1 slice sourdough toast and butter
•A couple of biscuits
•Homemade Japanese vegetable, tofu and noodle soup.
•3-4 cups of tea and squash.

My best friend is a size 14 and it as overweight as me. She drives everywhere and never walks and doesn’t do any form of exercise. She eats lots of processed foods daily, also takes sugar in her hot drinks, drinks the same amount of alcohol as me and eats 1 large fry up breakfast every week.

Another friend is a size 10-12 and eats lots of pasta and processed foods, drinks about the same amount of alcohol as me and walks probably about the same amount as me.

My thyroid is functioning normally.

I fail to understand how I’ve become so overweight by leading this lifestyle.

Please can you give me any advice or tips on how I can lose weight as I feel my diet is quite healthy already.

Could something be wrong with me medically if I am this overweight?

Cut down to one coffee a day with sugar, and replace with a sugar free drink or even coffee without sugar if you can. Cut the wine down to maybe once a month, and eat more protein to fill you up.

Try intermittent fasting. If you fast for 16 hours per day and only eat during an 8 hour period your body has no glucose to feed off so it burns fat instead.

You are eating too many calories. You don’t gain weight from eating just bad food. Track what you eat for a week and make some swaps.

At the end of the day bread is bread. Sourdough will break down into sugar just the same as white or brown bread and if you’re burning insufficient calories it will turn into weight gain.

You’re also not exercising anywhere near enough. Maybe start doing weights at home, building muscle will help you burn fat.

@PomegranateVase your body is use to what it takes in and how much exercise you do.
So you have to change it.
If you drop the sugar from your tea over a year you loose a stone.
There are 200 calories in a glass of wine.
crisps are fattening too .

Do you really feel you need to ask what the issue is or do you need motivation to change it up .?

Don’t eat after 7pm as metabolism slows down if you do have an apple. it’s also good to do exercise after this time to speed the metabolism up again .
Cardio is good for the heart . Weights burn more fat . Also if you did hit training instead of walking . It gets the heart up and down and burns fat . Weights also have your metabolism running at a faster rate for 48 hrs . Cardio is 24hrs.

I’d limit treat days to one day a week for crisps and wine. I’d also incorporate some of the stuff I’ve mentioned above. Stop the sugar in your tea and no chocolate .
You can’t have it all (sadly)

Unfortunately for some people it’s genetic and body type.
To lose weight I need to reduce my calories to about 1200 which isn’t much at all. The older I get the easier it is to put weight on!
Cutting carbs works best for me - fill up with salad or veg instead of pasta/rice etc.
Exercise is important of course but it’s hard to lose weight just with exercise, you really need to control calories too.

Everyone's metabolism is different op, and our own metabolism changes as we age, have children, etc.

Up until my mid 30s I ate whatever the hell I felt like and my God, did I eat! Enormous portions, salt, sweets, alcohol, snacks all of it and more and I had a body like Kate Moss in her heyday. Now I have to seriously consider if that small pack of crisps is worth feeling bloated for the next 3 days. I can't have sugar in drinks, have to stop eating before I feel full, and I'm still a stone heavier than I was 10 years ago 🤷‍♀️

I am and have alway been 54kg give or take, am 5,4 an menopausal

I lift weights and exercise most days as well as walking the dog.

breakfast-
Greek yog, banana and blueberries with some home made granola sprinkles. Tumeric shot (home made) and a coffee. 2 pints of water. Green smoothie home made
or
2 eggs, avocado, toast, green smoothie- Home made

Late lunch lunch-
home made chunky vegetable soup with bone broth and lentils
or
soup dumplings, cucumber salad or edamame

snack
celry sticks and peanut butter or nuts and some fruit

Tgats it.

2 biggish meals. Monday -Friday then at the weekend I eat whatever I fancy.

Low carb - nothing that causes insulin spikes, no free sugar. So no wine, no crisps. You'll lose weight.

Alcohol is like drinking pure sugar, so 1-2 bottles a week is easily a days extra calories if not more.
The added sugars to your teas and coffee.
The biscuits and nature valley bars are full of sugar.
Any kind of sauce or condiment tend to be sugar and calorie heavy, so that splash of soy sauce etc, all adds up.

Half your carb intake and stop eating sugar free stuff. If you must have something sweet go for 70% or higher dark chocolate.
If you do this you should notice a difference.

it’s the alcohol

Alcohol is like drinking pure sugar How do you know?
I thought alcohol was about 85% water and about 8 -12 % ethanol.
Sugar is sucrose.

If I liquefy the sugar sitting idle in the cupboard,can I drink it to get pissed? (Asking for a friend. )

I don't understand how your shocked?

I understand eating mindlessly as I've been there. Recently dropped 7 stone on mounjaro and now need to eat mindfully for life if I want to keep it off.

Work out your base metabolic rate (calculators online, just Google) and stick to your calorie allowance rating using an app of your choice. I recommend NutraCheck

You only need to eat 3500 calories extra a week for put on 1lb. (which reads like a lot, but does not go far depending on the foods you choose)

A standard bottle of red can contain up to 750 calories. And a share bag of fancy crisps like kettle chips is 550/600

Basic digestive biscuits are 80 is calories.

2x bottles of wine a week 1500 kcal
Share bag 600kcal
2 x digestives a day 1120 kcal

Boom 3320kcal without even blinking.

I bet you any money!! Truly!!

if you just drank water for a month you’d lose weight

someone told me it years ago and everyone who has ever done it has worked

we neeely all drink our calories.

•Avocado on 1 slice of sourdough toast with a coffee 350kcal all in depending on with/without butter
•1 Nature Valley snack bar and a coffee 200kcal
•Baxter’s carrot and butter bean soup with 1 slice sourdough toast and butter 330kcal ish
•A couple of biscuits 160kcal
•Homemade Japanese vegetable, tofu and noodle soup. 600kcal approx (difficult without knowing exact inredients)
•3-4 cups of tea and squash. 150/200 kcal

Add to this variance dependent on portion size, type of biscuits ect and this could easily be 2000-2200 kcal a day.

Add to this variance dependent on portion size, type of biscuits etc and this could easily be 2000-2200 kcal a day.
And it doesn't look like meals.

It looks like several 'Ill just have this tiny little bit to keep me going'.

That amount of calories could be eaten as 3 satisfying square meals.

Most of them have spent years trying to lose weight i still believe in a group of 50 overweight adults and 50 always slim adults the overweight ones will know more about nutrition from all the bombardment of diet advice from everywhere.

Intermittent fasting is anorexia? Are you fucking kidding. Anorexia is a cruel mental disorder that can lead to death. That’s really dismissive.

Intermittent fasting can be as simple as not eating after 6pm. Which given the OP appears to be grazing all day and night could be useful.

Look at a tdee calculator https://tdeecalculator.net/result.php?s=imperial&age=40&g=female&lbs=168&in=62&act=1.375&bf=&f=1

I put in
5ft 2in 126lbs, light exercise 1-2 times a week and got 1643cals a day
5ft 2in 168lbs (3st more) light exercise 1-2 times a week is 1905 cals a day

only 260 cals difference

2 bottles of wine and 1 share bag of crisps is 2000 approx 285 cals a day extra. Thats why.

Eat more protein and drink less wine.

I can't believe someone with internet and social media in the big 2026 doesnt understand all the sugar in drinks crisps and wine aren't fattening 😂 who doesn't know this in 2026????

Wine crisps snack bars
Sugar in tea and coffee

I’m sure it’s been said several times in the thread - but that is a huge amount of sugar you’re consuming each day in your drinks that you’re adding sugar to, the cereal bars and the biscuits.

depending on your height (it sounds like you’re not very tall if your lowest recommended weight is around 5 stone?)

then you need to massively cut down the sugar you’re eating in its basic form. This is before you’ve even addressed the amount of alcohol. Two bottles of wine every week is a lot of calories.

im short at 5’1” and I had to cut out all sugar and really cut back on alcohol to lose weight and I also run (long enough to work up a proper sweat) 2-4 times per week.

People are delusional. Mumsnet wouldn’t exist if we weren’t. The whole board is filled with people missing the bleeding obvious.

Humans are funny creatures.

She is having 2 coffees and 4 teas and day with sugar. A teaspoon if measured correctly is 16 cals. Chances are she is having more than that as most people will use a heaped spoon, that's 6 drinks at a bare minimum of 16 but probably closer to 20 cals each so at least 96 to 120 cals a day in the sugar added to hot drinks. Thats more than 800 cals a week additional to her needs. Just in sugar alone. This is exactly how weight creeps up. All the little things that people dont think will matter.