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?

could be lots of things - hormones, set point theory, more muscle mass than average ? Although I doubt it going by your exercise. 20 minutes walking a day really isn’t going to make a dent.
I’m also naturally very hefty, I look more ‘toned’ (build muscle) and lose body fat by doing exercise classes five days/ week as well as av. 9-10k steps a day (that’s over an hour brisk walking) but to see a real difference I have to really watch my calorie intake.

No she’s not. Says she eats fish and meat 3-4 times a week.

I think it’s the ultra processed food and sugar. Portion size can also has a huge affect.

The only way I can lose weight now am 50 is strict eating - the fast 800 is the only thing that works and then working out 3 times a week - getting the heart going and then some weights. I walk lots but that makes very little difference. I also do a very minimum 12 hour fast every day - longer where I can.

It is surprising how quick the carb and sugar cravings go and you dont need all that food - definitely cut out all those carbs. I do get a lot of food noise, but a picture on the fridge helps me not to open the door!

You said, in your original post I first responded to:

You’re overweight but currently healthy. You appreciate the stress release of food and wine.

There is nothing wrong with that if that’s what you need right now.

That's what I was originally questioning - we don't know if we are healthy. You then said you do know if you're healthy, because you have an annual check. I'm sure you know that most people don't have that.
You then went on to say you'd had a health incident which could have been avoided with better diet.

So, your thinking seems very muddled to me I'm afraid.

But either way, it's not a great idea to tell overweight people that you have never met that they are "healthy".

You're absolutely right we're not the same (as I said earlier).

I'm not even disagreeing with what you're saying, just the silly childish way you said it.

Like we're all going to be shocked to discover that meat is a dead animal 🙄

It does help with weight .Of course it does.
My walk uses 250 calories.
So if I want a 500 a day deficit I need to walk and reduce food by 250 cals.

I can lose weight by cutting out sugar, crisps, cake, biscuits, chocolate any other snacks. Change to skimmed milk.

Why am I so overweight? Help me to understand

You eat more calories than you burn.

Eat less or do more.

This
And I’ll lay any money on the tinned soup being packed with sugar…….why not make your own soups? The cereal bars will also be loaded with sugar and other nasty stuff.
Plus, stop the sugar in tea and coffee.

Have you used any calorie counting apps just to get a true, and you have to be truthful, to look into what you are actually eating in a day?

Fibre is a good one to start looking at, there's a lot of information to make us think that our over indulging on fats/sugars is the only thing that needs looking at but eating more fibre is also as important, also proteins.

Walking is a good exercise as it's weight bearing, plus good for the mind being out in the open. Having said that you don't really need to exercise at all, you'll never out run poor eating habits.
Exercise makes us feel good.

If you haven't already have a look at the Nutracheck app, it's free for the first 7 days and gives a good insight into what your actual intake of fats/sugars/protein are for your own stats.

I remember reading it takes roughly overeating by 3500 calories to put on 1lb that wine and crisps can do that on their own...times by however many weeks... overload.

Same in losing a pound you need to look at cutting 3500 calories just to lose 1lb, which is easy to say but by lordy it never seems easy to do.

You are simply eating more calories than you are using.
Put it this way: if I dropped you in the middle of a forest and came back a month later, will you have lost weight? Yes. Why? Because you are eating less.
You cannot compare yourself to other people.
Work out your TDEE (and put sedentary as your lifestyle) and then subtract 500 to get in a deficit that should lead to 1lb weight loss per week on average. Then you need to weigh and measure EVERYTHING you put in your mouth. For example, those six sugars (assuming one tsp) you are having in your daily tea and coffee adds up to about 100 cals/day. Wine is 600-750/bottle. One share size crisp bag can be as much as 720 calories. Butter? How much? A scrapping or a slather? Weigh it. Then log your calories in an app like My Fitness Pal. This will show how many calories you are eating.
Exercise is great but you’d have to walk over two miles to burn off two biscuits (on average as I don’t know how much you weigh). So while good for your health, unless you are doing athlete levels of exercise it really is what you do (or rather don’t) put in your mouth that counts.
And the carb amount or whatever is irrelevant unless you have an intolerance - you could eat three chocolate bars or a loaf of bread a day and lose weight if it was in a deficit. You wouldn’t be healthy but you’d still be slimmer.

You're eating sugar constantly all day in pretty large amounts. Count up the amount you're having & look up the guidelines in my fitness pal. Your diet is low in protein as you're not eating enough at meals so your snacking on sugary carbs accompanied by sugary tea/coffee. You're also drinking sweetners which have a terrible effect to on your Gut health & wipe out the commensal healthy bacteria that have a huge effect on your metabolism. You don't need to increase your animal protein but try switching to beans/lentils/chick peas & tofu as protein sources. Make a bean or lentil rich homemade soup or dahl. Cut right down on bread/pasta/rice. Use healthy fats in cooking like Evoo & stop eating sugar. Replace with fruit/yogurt etc. Stop drinking wine a it's very high in sugar. You're currently on an ideal diet for causing diabetes.

Also - daily 6 sugars (that’s if they’re not heaped) bottles of wine…. You cook from scratch 3 days a week, what do you eat the other days?

Something else I found helped @PomegranateVase- I swapped my post lunch coffee with a peppermint tea. Peppermint tea apparently helps with digestion- but also was a hot drink that felt fine without sugar or milk.

increase your water consumption- it’ll be easier to have less tea (with milk and sugar!) if you aren’t thirsty.

And the big one - try to think of some treats for the end of a shit hard week that aren’t food or drink. Buying some nice nail varnish? Buy some lovely bubble bath and have a long soak instead of eating crisps on the sofa. Removing one thing that creates joy needs to be replaced with something else or you’ll be miserable and crack.

One that really worked for me to avoid the evening snacks, cleaning my teeth after dinner. It started as when the kids wanted to brush their own teeth, I did mine at the same time to show them what we were doing and for how long. But going back downstairs with clean teeth meant I didn’t want a glass of wine or snacks with minty teeth. It didn’t feel like I was having show self control.

You need to get into a calorie deficit and start counting calories. Stick to 1500 calories a day, you'd be suprised how calories add up, I be you're doing near on 2000 a day, that's why you can't lose weight.
I did 1200 a day ( iam lighter than you less to lose) I managed to lose a stone.
Plenty of apps that will work out you TDEE

@PomegranateVase are you coming back to chat about our suggestions?

Interestingly, the thing you say you’re restricting during the week is the very thing that will keep you fuller for longer and help to build muscle not fat - PROTEIN.

This

You are eating too many calories. Portion size may also be an issue. Recommended portion sizes are tiny compared to what most people think.

Also exercise is only 20% compared to 80% for food intake in relation to your weight.

Wine/alcohol is a bugger for weight I have dieted for years and no matter how well I did, how much I restricted my food intake and ate only the right things if I had a few glasses of wine at the weekend it was all for nothing. I could lose weight in the week and put it all back on at the weekend and end up the same weight at the end of it all. If I want to lose weight I can't drink at all.

You could try Mounjaro. It will remove the temptation for wine, and biscuits, teach your stomach to e happy with much smaller portion sizes and help you get the weight off.

Walking is better than no exercise at all but for most people it's nowhere near intense enough to make much of a difference.

-I don’t know if Op is healthy (obviously) but she has not mentioned health concerns

-some people have a good idea whether they healthy or not through testing and monitoring designed for early intervention

-overweight people can be, and frequently are, perfectly healthy at any point in time.

-none of us can see into the future

-some illnesses or poor health are not identifiable in advance and ANYONE can fall foul of these sudden conditions.

-They are not weight related, therefore there is little relevance to whether the OPs weight might make her healthy or unhealthy.

-some health advice to protect against some health conditions and illnesses is inconvenient to those who promote orthorexia (or are otherwise obsessed with weight), in this specific example those who advocate high animal protein diets for weight loss.

Honestly, it's important to reduce our consumption of everything, including out of season veg, foods grown or raised overseas, and ultra processed foods of all types. But meat is part of that too, having such a high carbon footprint, and for the average person, swapping out meat for more veges a few times a week is ideal.

I think your perspective is important to have on threads like this, and even using the term 'dead animals' has value, because it reminds us what we're eating, and to value it - an animal lived a hopefully decent life and then died for it.

I defend keto though (when done responsibly) because I've seen it work for people who genuinely tried everything else except weight loss drugs or surgery (financially out of reach), with rapid 3 to 7 stone weight losses that they managed to mostly keep off for years.

Totally understand your want for a bit of wine, crisps and biscuits (jeez life would be dull without imho!). I would advise ACCURATELY counting your calories for a week and I think all will become clear, in that you'll probably see your calories are too high in general. 'Too high' in that you're taking in more than you're burning up, so weight gain, or your calories in = calories burned so weight maintenance, when you sound like you want to lose weight.

Remember the burning up bit includes what you would burn if you lay down all day doing nothing, ie what it takes to run your body. The heavier you are, the higher this is, then you add what you burn from activity (even a bit of standing/moving around in a day-to-day sense, not in an exercise sense) on top of that.

Then if you want to lose weight, you can decide what you want to change from your diet, plus exercise more if that's your thing.
Ignore people saying walking is no good for weight loss/weight control, that is nonsense. I would also say those saying "too many carbs" are possibly impacted by the narrative around low carb/carb free diets.

Good luck!

1650 is 200 calories over my maintenance so that would be me putting on half a lb a week pretty much. TDEE is very individual.