to think it’s a bit depressing how little you can eat when you’re short?

[stressy1]

I’m quite small, 5'1, and it’s honestly a bit of a shock when you realise how little your body actually needs. When you look into it, your “normal” is already quite limited compared to someone taller and then menopause comes along and seems to shrink it even further.

I am surrounded by people eating what looks like totally reasonable amounts. I join in and think I am eating normally, but over time the weight creeps up.
It doesn’t feel like overeating at all, that’s the frustrating part but it is for my height.

There is so little margin for error. A couple of small extras, a snack, a drink and I have tipped over. Meanwhile taller people seem to have so much more flexibility without even thinking about it.

Anyone else found this?

Let's take an extreme example so you can see how it works for small women. Baklava. I imagine baklava is very calorific - it's sugary, fatty, full of nuts. You can eat a small piece of baklava and you definitely won't feel full. (You might not want any more baklava, as it's so sweet, but you're stomach will not be full. I however love baklava. I could eat my daily requirements in baklava if left unattended.) If you are a small, older woman, the small piece of baklava you've just eaten is probably, in calories, nearly half of what you should eat for lunch if you don't want to put on weight. But you are not nearly half full.

So you either have to eat constantly healthy but filling food - which of course is what we should be eating most of the time anyway - or tiny, tiny morsels of anything fatty, creamy, sweet, delicious. And although I have a broadly healthy diet, if someone offers me a piece of cake, I quite often would like to eat it.

I do exercise, a mixture of weights, cardio, yoga and swimming, five days out of seven. Sometimes though I find high calories burning cardio exercise is actually counterproductive. It can raise cortisol levels and prevent sleep/stress out the body, and also mean that I consume more calories than I've burned off as I get super hungry.

It used to work until I was about 35 then it stopped working. It's a thing, look it up.

Being offered a biscuit by someone. "It's only a few calories". Hmm it's at least 100 calories. That's nearly a tenth of my total for the day. Actually that is a lot.

I don't think it's designed for most women of any height over about 35, particularly if you've had kids. The calories recommendations are laughable.

I feel the same now I'm in my 50s! 😂

Good God I could eat when i was younger and stay at a steady 8.5 stone!

Preparing as much of your own food as possible - no work lunches, eating out, buying food on the road

Well, that's already me out as my life involves eating out regularly.

I had a personal assessment at a gym when I was 23 (and 9 stone, at 5'7") and it said I could eat 2,500 calories a day and not put weight on.

Trouble is FitBit is still telling me I'm burning 2,500 calories a day which is patently untrue.

If it is any consolation as a tall person who is slim I can't get any nice shoes or trainers to fit me. I have to wear mens!

Agree with what pp said about gym. My friend does a 1-1 Pilates session at home once a week then at least for an hour every day. She has a knee injury too. Reducing carbs helped her. Cooking from
scratch .

Definitely go to the gym and build some muscle. I'm only 5ft3 but regularly burn well over 2000 calories, more if I do a couple of classes. Muscle is your answer!
It was the exact opposite for me. I put on 10% of body fat whilst I reduced cardio and increased muscle building!

Main reason was that I wasn't burning the calories anywhere as much yet my appetite increased twofold. I went back to running and the weight and fat percentage went down again.

The reason many women with a smaller frame struggle to maintain a healthy weight is because for a lot of us, even when you keep to the calories needed to maintain, you still feel hungry/unsatisfied and you have to actively ignore those cues or gain weight forever. A small amount of weight gain is far more noticeable on shorter people. Sounds mad but I’m sure I can tell when I’ve put on just a couple of pounds without going near a set of scales.

I mentioned I'm into strength training, I have been going for a long time and I can deadlift nearly double my own bodyweight, so I've not been mucking around. My maintenance is still 1700, and for weight loss 1400. I dread to think what it would be without the gym, but its far from being able to eat what I want.
I also see loads online about reverse dieting to get to the point that you can have much higher maintenance, and I'd love it to be true for me but it just isn't. I've been doing this long enough that if I eat more, my strength and muscle gains are very gradual, I just get fatter!
I do sometimes go running - for fitness, and just to get outdoors - though it leaves me so hungry the next day that I definitely eat back any deficit I would have created.

As a short person in my mid-60's I am very aware of how careful I need to be. I eat off a smaller plate, and really minimise carbs from wheat and sugar. Doing this for years and my appetite (or stomach size) has reduced and I feel full much quicker than I used to.

I find it hardest when we go out. I was choosing a place for me and my pal to have lunch and one lovely place, the starters were pretty much 450 calories (except the beetroot and apple salad which was less - but who want to go out for lunch and eat that?), and most of the mains were 900 - 1200 calories. Add a single glass of wine... No sides, no pudding. That's more than my TDEE without anything else to eat or drink all day except water.

And in general portion size is far too big for my current appetite. I often have 2 starters. My favourite local does a kids size portion of Sunday lunch and I persuade them to serve me that. I wouldn't even mind paying the full price (although they usually just charge me the kids version) but I hate food waste and I'm put off by the sheer amount on the plate.

I’m the same height as you and I’m a bottomless pit for food. I think this is just your body rather than a height thing.

100% agree, it is depressing.

Perimeno has completely fucked up my body, all its moving parts and my mind.

600-800 calories a day keeps me stable, in no way does it contribute to any weight loss. Weight of which I have 4 stone extra of.

Perimeno, Insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome thrown in for good fun and I am stuck in a completely impossible situation.

Mounjaro has literally been life changing for my little 5ft 1 rotund body!

Slowly but surely the weight is coming off, I feel fantastic! Not just physically but mentally, in my head, it’s quiet, it’s calm, it’s controlled and that nasty fucking “guilt” voice is silent!!

When absolutely NOTHING I do works, nothing, not a single, solitary, sustained, uncomfortable, torturous thing works or makes even an ounce of difference, finding the one thing that works with my colossal efforts, is transformational.

It IS unfair, but that's life. Just be glad you're not Diabetic and over 70! I am permanently hungry, tired and eat very little. And I go to the gym 3 times a week.

This cannot possibly be right. Unless you expend NOTHING on moving around.

I’m 5ft 4 and in my sixties. I gain weight if I exceed 1300 calories a day…

Yes I feel this, I’m 5ft tall, don’t eat badly, no UPF and yet I struggle to lose weight, it is coming off so slowly, even with exercise and strength training.

I feel like all my life I have been either fat (eating reasonably normally) or slightly less fat (eating way less). I have never been thin in my life and I’m 42! The weight loss calorie limit is miserable at my height!

Yeah you have to readjust what you eat in Today’s world. Everything is built to be calorific!

My maintenance calories are about 1700. When I ate out a lot or ate lots of shop baked goods I found it really hard. But now I’ve managed to get a good amount in for that.

Breakfast is homemade Bircher muesli or a boiled egg and one slice of toast. <10g butter.

I generally snack on fruit, rice cakes or babybels. At weekends I have a homemade pudding where I can monitor the calories like carrot cake, rhubarb crumble or oat bars.

Lunches are soups, sandwiches or salads.

Dinners are a small plate of whatever I want with half the plate salad or other vegetables.

Dessert is Greek yoghurt and fruit with seeds.

The only horrible part is that I have to weigh it all out and only allow myself outside food (like coffee shops etc) once a month.

Agree. I found out by accident last weekend that I weigh only 1.5kg more than my 21 year old daughter. However, she is size 10-12 wearing belly tops and bikinis and I’m a perimenopausal 49 year old with a fat belly. She’s 3 inches taller than me.

I hear you!

I'm short, put on weight easily since about 35, and anything below a maintenance diet makes me feel ravenous so I'm quite good at maintaining, but losing weight would require very few calories and significant hunger, so I end up not being able to do it.

I've been on weight loss injections once, have put on about half what I lost, other half still off two years later.

It's hard work all the time though, and portion sizes are the same for all people when you are eating out, even though some of us are basically 2/3rds of a person.

I hear you op. I’m same age and size as you and it’s got much harder to stay at my bmi in recent years, even though I eat small portions, dog walk daily and go to the gym. Age is a huge factor here. There’s nothing to be done but eat small portions of good food with the occasional small treat.

First post nailed it. Muscle burns calories even at rest so your basic requirement increases for a start and then the calories used to actually build the muscles are extra. Get bulking!

Im 4'10 and I seem to eat a lot more than the average MN. Im always hungry, but I eat lots.

ive been a similar weight for 20+ years excluding pregnancy, and bmi 21....but i always look really chunky and stocky in photos