I'm fat, and look as though I should be, but I'm not.

[CettePersonne]

I am definitely being unreasonable.

I was always naturally slim. Around 8st at 5'2ish. Not skinny, I always had a pretty generous arse but on a small frame. I've always loved food - not lots of junk, pretty healthy really but just "normally" not obsessively so - just whatever I fancied without thinking.

Two dcs, multiple mcs, and a lockdown discovery of wine and pringles down and I'm very definitely not slim now. I lost the weight slowly after dc1, but after the mcs and then dc2 (now 5) it was a different story...

I've been exercising properly 3-4 times a week this year and have long since knocked the evening junk snacking on the head and reduced the wine. But the weight is stuck hard now. I'm 40. My belly is outrageous and the arms and arse are following suit. I don't often weigh myself because I never got in the habit because I didn't care, but I'm now 10.5ish st. I think that makes me overweight, but more to the point it looks and feels like it does.

I don't care about the numbers on the scales or on my labels, bigger is fine I see lots of lovely toned looking size 14+ women, I really just want to not wibble and to be able to wear jeans without looking like Humpty Dumpty trying on a wig 😩 My jeans are uncomfortable, nothing fits properly.

So, I've decided to deal with this by throwing a massive strop..! <STOMPS foot and Fucking Swears!!> I am not calorie counting but I have consciously stopped snacking and kept an eye on portions and tried to make healthy choices, and I've really upped my activity. Yet I think I'm still getting bigger... It's really not fair 😩 I already ignore the hunger pangs after the gym, do I really have to cut down to restrictive portions just to stop gaining more weight? I see fit looking women older than me, surely it's not just my age? Has my natural advantage just fucking turned itself off now!? Does everyone over 35 and under 10st actually feel starving all the time!? (N.B. I know I'm being ridiculous.)

Feel free to tell me how unreasonable I'm being I obvs I need to hear it..! But solidarity is welcome too! What is this actually gonna take...?

@soupfiend and anyone else interested from this thread - come join us in 'the weights room' subforum!
It's focused on strength training, though not necessarily for fat loss (there's people on there with different goals, but I'd say it's mainly about getting stronger/fitter)

Since a lot of people mentioned having troubles loosing weight after hitting 40s, consider listening to this in which she talks about different approach to training, diet and weight loss for different stages of menopause (peri to post).

28 weeks to lose a stone sounds pretty amazing tbh. The health benefits (assuming you are overweight in the first place, and you are losing weight by eating well and moving more) will be brilliant.

Couple of things.

I’d change up your choice in breakfast because a couple of slices of toast isn’t enough for an adult really and also isn’t the healthiest option. I have Greek yogurt and muesli with berries most days, it staves off the hunger pangs until lunchtime which toast definitely does not.

Second thing is what you mean by exercise because it means something different to everyone. My Mum has struggled with her weight her whole adult life, she yo-yos constantly. One main constituent of this imo is the fact she thinks walking is adequate exercise. I don’t think it is personally, it’s just something we all should do more of to get around in general. It needs to be more intense than walking 10k steps a day so running, weight lifting, HIIT (combo of all is ideal). Also would recommend upping the 3 days of exercise to 5 or 6. I have one rest day a week and I haven’t gained weight for years now despite definitely eating my fair share of crap.

i Would have written your post until recently. I had a very healthy diet - natural, good food, low UPF etc. Yet I was getting bigger and couldn’t lose weight.

I finally bored of myself and joined one of those brain programmes focused on the reasons behind eating. We had to calorie count strictly including weighing everything.

It was a total eye opener. When I stuck to 1200 calories every day I lost weight most weeks. When I tried taking shortcuts (drinking, not weighing everything), I didn’t..

I am not on the programme now and maintaining through exercise and so far it’s working because I’ve reset my normal.

All things being equal, and bar any food challenges like binge eating or over consumption of UPF or beige food, the calories in/calories out is not a bad place to start.

I'm 59 and have lost 12lbs since mid Jan by doing low carb. You never feel hungry on it, and as long as you stick to it, it works really well. It's especially good if you put weight on around your middle.

Well, you sound pretty slim given the "numbers".
😁
I'm 44, (child free) and never been overweight, despite having an underactive thyroid, the most excusable condition.
In my opinion, it's all about discipline.
(No alcohol, no sweets).
Full stop.

Thank.you.
Exercise, I'm swimming 3-4 times a week. I'm not a gentle head bobber 😆 I go for it and get properly out of breath, my last session was 1.8km in 45mins for example. I am trying to walk more too because I realise I had become a bit too sedentary in general. I can't really run, I need to be really careful about anything high impact because it has often led to injury due to a minor skeletal defect and associated lack of strength in that area which is majorly annoying!

I've taken on board what many posters have said about weight training. I feel like I'd be very pathetic, but I realise that is all the more reason to try..!!

I have been looking up calories of various things today and the amount in my daily tea/milk consumption is an absolute bloody outrage for a start!

You have my sympathies as I am going through the exact same thing. 42, gone up 2 dress sizes in under a year. Feel awful in everything. Not fat, but bigger than I am happy with and worried it isn't going to stop.

I exercise 4-5 days a week (swimming, gym class, PT) eat healthy, cook from scratch most nights. I am a snacker but trying hard not to be. I tried intermittent fasting on advice from the GP and ended up in hospital with gallstones so had to stop. No medical reason for it.

I'm fed up.

No alcohol
No sweets
Count every single calorie that goes past your lips and don't go past 1200
No carbs
Fast for half the day every day
The list goes on

I mean, this is misery. Absolute misery. I really cannot believe everyone (many people) live like this, seriously. It takes all the joy in life away!

Maybe I'll just have to get properly fat and then get wegovy.

Of course its amazing, I was just answering another post who cited it as 'quick' weight loss. Quick weight loss is when you get a stone in a month or 6 weeks or something. I was just correcting that

Dependent on that posters weight, it could easily be about 10% of her bodyweight, that is amazing with excellent benefits as you say.

A friend of mine really aggravated her gall stones/bladder by fasting, set off an incredible attack

Look for Jessica Smith exercise videos. Especially standing abs/bum ones. Lots of free ones on YouTube. Made a lot of difference to how I look, not necessarily to my weight.

@CettePersonne I was very weak at strength training when I started - I don't have a natural frame for it, and I was very skinny. I started off with the lightest weights and had to work up to using a barbell (a standard barbell is 20kg) Incremental progress over time, and eating enough that I could build some muscle, and I'm stronger than I ever was in my twenties. I can do things like push ups and pull ups which feel cool, but what I notice more is being able to carry heavy shopping or move furniture or do heavy gardening. And hopefully I'll have reduced my risk of falls and osteoporosis as I get older - something that I've seen a lot of in my family, which I think is mainly due to people being skinny but frail (eg due to smoking)

I'd recommend anyone to give it a try. In my experience a lot of women find they prefer it because unless you're doing something like circuits (which is more for cardio/endurance benefits) strength training tends to be at a slower pace so you're not getting out of breath and sweaty. It's not that you aren't working hard, it's just a different type of work. I also found my progress in cardio based exercise very slow whereas with weights I saw the numbers go up relatively quickly initially and there's something very concrete about being able to lift something above your head that you couldn't lift the week before.

Are there any recommendations for any youtube programmes, Im getting a bit overwhelemd looking through it.

Basically I would want no more than 20 mins of standing exercises (no floor stuff) that I can do in the front room (not that big) before work. A series of 5 that I can do each week for example

Lots of them are too long, too much yapping before getting started, or they're on the floor or they involve having a chair in the room (no room for this)

I do, for some reason, have some dumbells, I think they are 1kg and 2kg

Depends how high intensity you want. I’m lazy and this is really gentle:

Much harder work - followers of Chloe Ting have great results:

"One of the big difficulties with being say, 1200 or even 1400 is that it just isn't how most people eat - so the barriers to sustaining it increase. Eg portion sizes for eating on the go/eating out don't really work,"

Diet or not, if you're 5'2" you're going to have this problem with portions, particularly since portions are too big even for the average person these days.

Yes thyroid levels can be checked

Just a simple blood test
I'm on levothyroxine for under active thyroid function and weight wise I'm doing well

Very helpful yes, not high intestity is what Im looking for!

I dont think that just applies to someone 5'2, my OH cant manage pub portions these days, thats why he's happy for us to share a tapas or two and have nibbles.

@Gwenhwyfar I'm 5'2" and these days eat bigger portions than my boyfriend.

Years ago i would be the kind of person who cut a pastry in half, or ordered a starter for a main or off the children's menu, or portioned my evening meal into a cereal bowl. That to me was the difference between eating 1450 and 1800-2200 a day.
The former was technically sustainable but it was bloody depressing!

Foot stamping and refusing to count calories is daft. You need a calorie deficit to lose weight. It is that simple. Treat exercise as something you do for health.

I use someone on Youtube called Pahla B - 20 minutes, sometimes she does weights, sometimes cardio, never gets on the floor, talks all the time, but very cheerily positive and American.

The messages here are confusing..

Yes, exercise is vitally important for general health and ensuring bone density as we age, as well as contributing towards weight loss/maintenance for many reasons including endorphins highs.

Yes there is a small proportion of people whose weight gain can be attributed to thyroid and other medical issues. There’s no harm ruling those out.

But ultimately to lose significant weight over a sustainable amount of time, it involves calories deficit. You can take several approaches to that: low carb, fish/lean meat only, intermittent fasting.. But the bottom line is that you will lose weight only when you are consuming less than you need. I personally counted every gram of food for a certain period and entered it into MyFitnessPal. I couldn’t believe how small the portions needed to be.

The final myth is about your body’s needs. If you’re tall and well built - male or female - you need more calories than your 5’0” friend. Eating the same portions as your six foot boyfriend isn’t going to work if you’re a foot shorter so his mother’s annoying habit of giving him more potatoes is based in some fact.

Lastly it takes months to lose weight. If you’re sticking to calorie counting and some light exercise, a stone in two months is doable. So expect it to take time!! After all it took years to go on.