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?

This is almost identical to my week although I'm running easy, boring base miles for the next few months with no speed work etc. I'm getting 3 decent strength training sessions in though (not so boring) and doing some easy flexibility work. I eat intuitively. My runs are all done fasted and the only macro I count is protein. Works for me!

Nuts are very very high in calories! Avocado is very high in calories. Wine horiffic - empty calories. Sugar in drinks - adds up to a lot of calories. Lot of bread

you don’t need to cut down to 12/1300 calories

google tdee calculator and that will tell you how many calories you need

track everything that passes your lips on a tracking app - I use Lose It as I can scan bar codes - you’d be really shocked as to how much you’re actually eating

you need to eat high volume, high protein to remove the urge to snack

no food is bad food (nuts are healthy but high in calories, same for avocado) but you need to learn portion size and wise calorie choices. If you make sensible choices, you can have the odd normal size bag of crisps or a biscuit. No food should be banned but you need to make different choices

Swap to xylitol in tea and coffee. Sainsbury's sell it and it’s great for gums. Other research has found no link between sweeteners and cancer, so maybe revisit updated nhs recommendations.

Swap your alcohol to herbal tea?

More protein

Weigh salted nuts so you have reasonable portion sizes, much healthier than crisps and the same salty hit.

So I think it’s the compounding effect of the :
sugars in teas and coffees ( 5tsp per day = 80cals x7 days=560cals)
large crisps = 900 cals
pack of biscuits = 400 cals
2 bottles of wine = 1200 cals.

altogether these alone equal over 3000 cals which is 50% over the recommended amount for a woman for a day. So in essence even if your good diet has you at 2000 cals per day, over the week you are eating 8.5 days’ worth of cals.

The walking cannot offset that surplus.

Why don’t you trial switching sugar for sweeteners, cutting out the crisps and biscuits, and reducing your alcohol and see what happens after a few weeks? You might be surprised that it’s a relatively simple tweak. Also try reallly tracking your portion sizes - are you within recommended portion sizes or way over?
If you really want something sweet consider a couple of squares of dark chocolate instead of the biscuits. Rice cakes/ ryvita with houmous instead of crisps. It’s a bit boring but you do get used to it . Just don’t buy the other stuff so you don’t crack.
If you need more food then go for nutrient dense, low calorie, high fibre, high protein.

Honestly, the people I know who are in their 40s not younger as I don't think it's the hard under approximately 40 to lose weight, they don't really eat that much. The skip meals (fast) and when they do it it is small portions, lots go in the bin. I know loads of things women as well. Alternatively, they do every exercise going, wild swimming, running, yoga, Pilates etc. especially if they don't go to work.

Frustrating as it is walking won’t help you lose weight, but it has so many other health benefits it’s still good to do.

I would ditch the sugar in hot drinks (try xylitol - it is a natural sweetener but less calories than sugar and tastes good), wine, crisps, biscuits and nature valley bars and replace with lots of veg and salad to fill you up and things like kefir and kombucha. A gin and naturally light tonic instead of wine as a treat.

I do 7 gym tough classes a week but never lose any weight unless I restrict my diet, but I look smaller and fitter than at the same weight without exercise which is some consolation!

How old are you (in relation to menopause?). I was always able to lose weight with normal diet/calorie counting until I was 50 and then it piled on out of nowhere, sadly I resorted to WLI after several years of trying everything else.

You're overweight because your body hormones are holding onto calories not burning them. How you fix that, you might have to try some different things. Maybe try something along Mediterranean diet/intermittent fasting lines? Try more fibre and reduce the sweetened drinks. It's a nightmare though. What worked for one person often doesn't work for another.

Sorry loads of spelling mistakes one of which should read, thin not 'things'.

Frustrating as it is walking won’t help you lose weight, but it has so many other health benefits it’s still good to do.
Agree.

You are eating and drinking a lot. You are kidding yourself as that amount of walking is not enough exercise. You need to eat less calories to weigh less.

This is the best advice on the thread OP.

It doesn’t matter whether your calories come from processed food or avacados.

This is terrifying. Is this the messaging that public health professionals are giving out?

No wonder we’re all screwed.

It absolutely DOES matter. Everyone knows avocados are healthier than processed foods, but they are also a whole food as opposed to a manufactured one.

Have you read any of the research we now know about how processed foods affect the metabolism?

Hi OP, just wanted to pic up on a few points in your response.

RE the link to cancer and sweeteners - the risk to your health from being significantly overweight and not engaging in any exercise that raises your heart rate significantly and/or helps build muscle is FAR higher than any risk of having one or two sweeteners a day. Don’t strive for perfection, just swaps that will help you progress for now. This doesn’t mean you’ll be having sweeteners forever, but if making the swap in the short run help reduce calories then great.

RE ‘too may carbs’ - yes in a perfect world you’d eat the perfect balance of macronutrients (fat/carb/protein) but to begin with, losing weight just boils down to calories in vs calories out. Basically you need to burn more calories than you eat to lose fat. If a slice of sourdough keeps you satisfied then fine, the butter on top will be adding a lot of calories tho. Point is, don’t start cutting out or demonising certain foods or food groups, your focus should be on reducing your calories. Where that reduction comes from in the early stages really doesn’t matter too much, once you get into the swing of things you can focus more on balance. Sounds like your plan to reduce alcohol will hugely help here.

and finally, swapping your nature valley bars for nuts. One bar has approx 150 calories depending on the flavour. That’s the same as about 18-20 cashew nuts. Nuts are super high calorie and yes while they have lots of health benefits, whilst your focus is to lose weight they are probably not a great option. You’ll be eating such a small portion if you want to eat fewer cals than your nature valley bar, which means you’ll probably feel hungry and then eat more to compensate. Look up ‘high volume low calorie snacks’ on google/instagram for some inspiration.

you’ve got this!!

You’ve overlooked the most important sentence in the post - “calories are not king when it comes to your health”

the fact is you can drop body fat by eating McDonald’s every day for a month if it puts you in a calorie deficit. Will your body be healthy and well nourished? No. But you’ll still have dropped fat. That’s just thermodynamics. Sometimes focusing on this to begin with is needed for people who don’t have a strong understanding of diet and nutrition and need to lose fat. Once you start to get your head around it, then you can focus on macro and micronutrients. But if you bombard people with calorie info AND rules around where those cals must come from, you risk disengagement. Progress not perfection.

You are eating carbs every mealtime - cut it to once
cut the wine
cut the biscuits
drop the sugar from tea

For example:
swap avo on toast for fat free yoghurt, bran and a piece of fruit
drop the processed soup and have a chicken salad
change the noodles for puy lentils
instead of a snack bar, have a handful of plain nuts

walk longer and lift some weights

It’s your metabolism - I have a very, very similar diet and lifestyle and am healthy weight. It’s luck of the draw. If you want to lose though, of course there’s stuff to cut out but I appreciate you’re more bemoaning the unfairness that you’re doing so well with your diet and activity but still not where you want to be, than asking for advice.

This is pretty obvious. Depending on the wine, there’s typically at least 650 calories per bottle so 2 a week is a lot. Walking isn’t intense enough either, 20 mins of walking a day is just nothing. You need to do intense exercise- running, swimming, strength training, HIIT workouts. You also need to drop the biscuits and crisps.

Op you massively have misunderstood nutritious whole foods and fat loss/weight loss foods. Your diet (other than some of it) is fairly unprocessed and nutritious (great). It isn't a fat loss diet though. You can also eat tons of sh*t and lose weight, so long as your calories out are higher than calories in. As an example, a big mac is 650 calories, and a ceaser salad with full fat dressing is over 1000. Is the salad better nutritionally, yes. Would the big mac be better for losing weight (ignoring all the other nutritional issues) yes. Dates are packed full of calories, avocado hugely calorific, if you're eating more than your required daily calories of it, it's turning to fat. Sure you're getting great nutrients, healthy fats, plenty of veg and fibre but you're eating too many calories. Most of it comes from your treats like wine, crisps etc but you need to change your opinion on how food works. Simply going "look at my healthy avocado" then eating that, plus some biscuits, plus a nature valley bar, plus free pouring olive oil in your stir fries, plus wine, plus sugar in drinks - its too much.

Lots of "healthy" things need portion controlling to lose fat. Nuts are very healthy but if trying to lose weight you need to have small portions. Dried fruits are packed with vitamins but high in sugar and calories. Avocado and olive oil are a fab source of healthy fat but super high in calories. All your non nutritious stuff is also crazy high in calories (crisps, wine, nature valley bars). These can easily be switched (my little treats are twister ice creams and a gin with slim).

You need to track, don't compare to anyone else's diet (we are all different), get a fat loss calorie daily allowance based on your height and activity level. Then eat to it. Add in every hot drink, weigh stuff, measure your oil (you'll be horrified). Don't worry too much about processed foods whilst losing fat, yes whole foods are better for you but some low fat or processed options can massively help you out - I switch to low fat yoghurt when losing weight (as an example) which has less nutrients than full fat yoghurt, and is more processed. You can switch back when you're maintaining your weight. Egg whites instead of avocado or whole eggs, low fat sauces and dressings rather than homemade full fat versions etc etc.

Don't stress too much about the gym, of course it's better to train, lift weights and exercise more but you can't "out train" your high calorie diet, you make abs in the kitchen and I'd get your diet right as the priority and build in more exercise as/when you can as I do know it's hard. If walking works, just build it up more as/when you can.

Also, it doesn't take into effect the thermic effect of food. Protein takes a lot more energy to digest than carbs and fats. So if 100 kcal of protein is consumed then this will result in a net kcal intake of around 70kcal.

It’ll be the wine, crisps and biscuits AND portion control.

walking isn’t enough exercise, where is the impact for your bones? What about muscle health?

You need to overhaul everything bit by bit.

you can do this, but you need to make changes

Exactly. This is what most people don’t understand.

The ‘laws of thermodynamics’ work for burning a peanut in a Bunsen burner. They don’t work for the human body because we’re NOT CARS.

It’s honestly so frustrating that this information is being peddled and hasn’t been updated.

6 sugars per day just in coffee / tea - cut that and the biscuits and will drop quickly.

Sorry op, it’s quite obvious why you’re overweight. Wine, crisps, biscuits, bars, sugar in hot drinks…. As well as some calorie rich choices (avocado), very little protein and no exercise (walking doesn’t get your heart rate up).
you need to cut down calories. Stop drinking wine, cut out ALL bars, crisps, biscuits and sugar in your tea.

Alcohol, biscuits, crisps, sugar in tea, probably your portion sizes. Skinny people tend to just eat less without realising they are eating less. I do think if you have always been skinny it is easier to stay skinny, without trying just down to eating habits. But also maybe you don't realise the amount you are actually eating, you have a lot of empty calories particularly in drinks, it adds up.