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?

Same reasons as me op 😆
Wine, sugar, sourdough
And only exercise is walking. 20 mins is nothing. A fitness watch is useful
Calorie counting works. Include the sugar in drinks.

Then you would be losing less than 1lb a week. Weight loss means shifting to a negative energy balance - it’s a requirement. Metabolic adaptation will happen, but if you don’t eat less than you use you’ll simply never lose any weight.

Do you count calories or anything at the moment, OP?

I would say keeping a food and drink diary would be the first step. Nutracheck is very good if you want to do it online or on an app, it's UK food databases so much easier to find things you are actually likely to eat if in the UK. It costs about £30 a year.

It will give you an idea how much you are eating and what the macros are. I have got to goal but I still log food on it to check I'm on the right track and that I have a good balance.

Your age will also make a difference to your weight. If you are peri/menopausal its definitely harder to lose weight.

Honestly - stop eating bread.

and I say that knowing I couldn’t have soup or an avocado without bread - so you simply may have to skip meals. Intermittent fasting is probably the only way you’re going to see a change.

its painful I know - I’m in the same boat

Op could you just carry some weights while you're walking? The walking is such a healthy habit to have, and can be much better exercise than a lot of people on here are making out. If you do it with good posture it can really work your core muscles. I reckon if you just try to walk as fast as you can at like break-neck speed you will get more cardio and burn a few more calories and if you carry a heavy back pack or maybe little dumb-bells in each hand you will be getting some weight bearing, then you don't have to add anything extra to your routine.

I'm very active but only because it's part of my commute. I cycle to work and walk everywhere as much as possible. Whenever I try to take up an exercise routine that is purely about exercise it quickly falls by the wayside, but then it's something I need to do in order to get where I need to go then I keep it going.

@Yorkiemum2025 , your diet sounds pretty good if I’m honest, you have to live!
It looks good superficially.

I cook from scratch using fresh ingredients everyday,...and only eat meat, chicken or fish around 3-4 times per week. sounds great.

Where it's not good:
6 cups of tea/coffee with 1 sugar
sugar free squash
sugar free fizzy drink.
wine
share size crisps packet
a few biscuits.
Nature Valley snack bar (it's a 'healthy' biscuit)
tinned soup
A couple of biscuits
No fruit and 'lots of veg' is probably not many

I am in similar position to you and had enough when I got to my heaviest last year.
I won’t repeat what others said as you seem to have taken it on board. The only thing I would say is if you’re buying sourdough from a supermarket it isn’t actually much different from any other bread. If you buy a proper sourdough from a baker then less additives and stodge.

I was so annoyed as I eat healthily on the whole, but was definitely the snacks and wine that let me down!
I recommend couch to 5k and joining a gym that isn’t intimidating (I describe mine as like a soft play for adults 😅). Find a thing you can do for 30 mins a couple of times a week that gets your heart rate up a bit more, apps really help with commitment and motivation I find.
Small things matter like changing the type of snack - you can still enjoy the things you like but less frequently and smaller portions. Ultimately, nothing changed for me until at least 5 days a week I was more strict with myself. I’m annoyed that I have friends with healthy weights who eat whatever they want but that’s just the way it is.
Life is too short not to have the occasional thing you love - pasta, wine, cream, crisps. But when I made it more occasional I did notice weight start to drop off, more energy, and feeling healthier

Wine
Biscuits
Big bag of crisps
Cereal bars (may as well be a Mars Bar)
6 cups of tea/coffee with milk and sugar

All of the above is excess and empty calories.

You don't say anything about what is in your healthy home cooked food - any ultra-processed condiments/ingredients?
What about portion sizes?

The reality is you are eating too much every day and the result is cumulative.

I think the solution is quite clear - cut out all of the above, cut out snacks
reduce portion sizes of meals. Perhaps reduce carbs.

Exercise isn't the answer! It sounds like you are reasonably/lightly active and it is the diet that is the problem.

I speak as someone who has gained a stone in weight since menopause so I sympathise.

It’s probable that you don’t eat like you say all the time….Christmas, birthdays, meals out, holidays, weekends away, having cake with a coffee when meeting a friend.

On those occasions over time you probably put on weight and unless you make an effort to lose it, it will stay and each time you will add a bit more to it.

Your day to day diet has plenty of things which will stop you losing any occasional weight and will probably also contribute to an additional slow creep up.

Exercise alone isn’t that great for weight loss. Walking alone won’t do much unless you’re burning up the pavement daily.

To keep my weight constant I need 1400 calories now I have hit 40. That actually isn’t v many of you want two decent meals!!! I tend to do soup for lunch minus bread and put more calories into dinner as I get hungriest then and it means I can have a decent meal with the kids. It doesn’t give me room for snacking anymore sadly. Tend to just have coffee or coffee and a boiled egg/plain greek yogurt with berries in the morning .

Things I now need to be mindful of which I think might be catching you out is that’s 6 cups with milk in cumulatively that’s quite a few calories (I got pulled up on this when I was trying to loose the baby weight)

biscuits And the oat bar have quite a lot of calories and are carb heavy.

i I have 1 glass of wine 1 a week but often just a g&t on a Friday . I need to cut completely if I want to drop anything and avoid drinking around dmh period as makes me bloat horribly.

are those Japanese dinners noodle heavy? I need to be careful with carbs. I tend to take veg out for me before adding noodles when cooking for family meals then just add a couple vs the kids more noodle/rice heavy plates

I found the Micheal Moseley books helpful as pretty sure I was slightly insulin resistant after my babies.

walking is great for wellbeing but actually horns hardly any calories. An hours dog walk only tends to burn about 200 on my calories tracker and I walk fast across rugged countryside.

I winced at the amount of sugar you have (and I have a sweet tooth!). You have 6 teaspoons of sugar in your daily teas and coffee alone!

Then add in wine and crisps, a share bag lasts me a week and even then I end up throwing about half the bag out as I'm bored.

Sugar free drinks are the spawn of the devil. They taste vile too. I partly blame all the sugar free drinks for the obesity epidemic we have.

Cereal bars (may as well be a Mars Bar) Not true but if you look at the reviews for the cereal bar, nearly all of them use the words healthy and nutritious.

It's a biscuit and not that different from a Hob Nob.

@xSideshowAuntSallyXx , you eat all that. OMG! If I ate all that I'd be full until Christmas.

You are consuming too much sugar and starch. I recommend that you remove the following items from your diet (or cut them back to the barest minimum).

Sourdough toast, bread
Nature Valley snack bars (and all other such bars, sweets etc)
Baxter’s carrot and butter bean soup (and any other ready-made soups)
All types of biscuits
Noodles, rice and couscous
Sugar-free squash drinks
Fizzy drinks

Your typical day's diet that you posted is lacking in fibre, protein and variety.

I recommend you get a copy of Tim Spector's book, The Food For Life cookbook, and try some of the recipes.
Also try The Doctor's Kitchen 321 cookbook.

OP theres no kind way to say this but with that diet it's very obvious why you're overweight, can you genuinly not see it?

Lots of sugar, snacking and wine. The fact you eat vegetables is irrelevant they dont actually burn calories.

That's not my diet. It's what the OP has.

@xSideshowAuntSallyXx , the a share bag lasts me a week and even then I end up throwing about half the bag out as I'm bored. wasn't.

I think it’s your sugar intake that’s worth looking at. 2 cups of coffee with one sugar each plus 4 cups of tea with one sugar each is 6 teaspoons a day which is probably already too much, but throw in a nature valley bar (27 ish grams of sugar per 100g, 42g per pack of two bars) puts you at almost triple the daily sugar intake recommendation (which is arguably too high anyway). Sugar has an enormous impact on raising your ‘bad’ cholesterol (LDL) while also lowering your good cholesterol (HDL). High LDL can cause excess visceral fat. The good news is visceral fat is actually considered easier to lose once you lower LDL! There will also be sugar from carbohydrates in the bread and biscuits, as well as from the wine. ‘Only’ having protein 3-5 times per week is not necessarily a good thing, as protein is crucial for retaining muscle. I’d recommend reducing your sugar and carbohydrate intake, and increasing your protein intake (which can include full fat Greek yoghurt and nuts etc, it doesn’t have to just be meat). I would also recommend spending a little money and getting some full blood work done including a hormone panel; if you’re struggling with insulin resistance then any sugar at all will be problematic as your body won’t handle it well.

I don't know why people are still piling on here.
The OP came back ages ago and said she was taking on board the comments.

Do you count calories in? Try it for a week and see how much you’re actually consuming. Weigh portions (my generous handful is often double a ‘portion’!) then you can get your TDEE from an online calculator and see where you’re off
as others say, it’s probably portion size plus the wine, crisps & biscuits

Sugar! I’ve just joined a weight-loss group this month and learning about sugar. I hadn’t realised just how much sugar is in foods and thats before the odd sweet treat is added in.

If you drink 2 cups of coffee and 3-4 cups of tea per day and all have sugar added, then nature valley bars are full of sugar, in addition to biscuits and wine, not to mention added sugar already in foods, I’d suggest calculating your daily sugar consumption each day and then try cutting that down to see if that has an impact?

since starting my weight-loss group, I’ve been tracking my daily calories, protein and sugar (with the help of ChatGPT) and it’s really helping me grasp a more objective picture of my diet. I can eat under my daily calorie allowance but over my sugar allowance and I put weight on - so it’s not just about calories in - its what those calories comprise of and if there’s too much sugar (or carbs) some of us just can’t loose weight.

Alcohol

You eat too much and don't exercise enough.

Making an assumption of income based on your description of your job, apologies if incorrect, but could you invest in a pelaton to facilitate a good home workout?