to be fed up with how little I can eat now I’m menopausal?

[menno]

Since hitting menopause my metabolism seems to have just given up. I have to live on salads and protein twice a day to keep my weight stable.

I do weight training 3–4 times a week and exercise regularly. I guess that helps otherwise I would gain weight.

Last week I went out for a birthday dinner and also had afternoon tea and cake and I’ve put on 2kg. Now I have to go straight back to being super strict, like fish/meat and vegetables every night just to shift it again.

Pre-menopause I could eat more without watching everything. If I did gain, it would drop easily. Now it is hard work.

DH and teen DC put away huge amounts of food and I have to watch everything I am eating.

AIBU to find this really depressing and restrictive?

I get it. I’ve hit a new phase where I’m just piling on the weight now and I really dislike how I look and feel.

But I like treats and just can’t live a life where I don’t get to eat anything nice 😢 Life is already so stressful and difficult

Not healthy to recommend eating less than a toddler. We need more calories than that to survive let alone fuel exercise or any movement. You have probably been under eating for so long you have messed up your metabolism.

A bit of fruit for your lunch is not healthy or recommended neither is1 slice of toast for breakfast.

I am on HRT and I’ve had all sorts of blood tests for thyroid, liver, kidney etc, everything shows up fine.
I don’t know how to manage it, if I stick to my calories and lose weight, I am so hungry all the time. That’s following a high protein, low UPF diet. It is so depressing. I hate feeling hungry all the time. But it a choice I have to make - be permanently hungry or be permanently unhappy with my weight and how I look.

The only thing I would add to this is that we do get more insulin resistant post menopause and so you’ll do better if a lower proportion of the diet comes from carbs esp faster acting ones like grains / sugar etc

I feel your pain, my weight just creeps up and up unless I monitor every mouthful of food. I eventually got fed up of feeling like a complete fatso and started WLI last summer. Have lost 40lbs and feel so much better. Am on my last pen and terrified it will start to go back on but am planning to up my exercise considerably and stick to 2 meals a day - brunch and dinner. Wish me luck…..

I'm on medication for both having no ovaries any more, and underactive thyroid. All at the correct levels, apparently.

Still only able to maintain a healthy weight and not end up writhing in gut agony on a ridiculously low calorie intake. DP is constantly amazed how little it actually is. My adult DS once deadpanned: 'Mum can't eat that; it's got food in it'.

I think it's a woefully underinvestigated area of women's health.

Like many on here, I've had every scan under the sun, and been shunted between GP, Gastroenterology, Gynaeocology, Gastro, GP, Gynae, Gastro, GP, Hepatology, GP, and now I'm stuck on about 800-900 calories a day feeling shite.

Think I’ll try this. Thanks!

I never had to worry about my weight ever, just wasn’t one of my problems. But now post menopause I’m like you, to maintain my weight it’s protein and salads twice a day. I don’t even bother with snacks as that’s trouble.. so miserable. I keep asking myself if anyone’s ever said on their deathbed “I wish I’d been thinner?” I don’t think so!

Same here. My weight is steady and my BMI is 21, but to keep it there I can only eat one dull, low carb meal a day. I run five miles five times a week, do a 45 minute spin class six days a week and three x 30 minute Pilates a week. I cannot do any more exercise! And I can't eat any less food! I'm nearly always hungry and every few months I fold completely and just fall face down in cake.

I'm in the middle of a lot of family weddings at which I have to appear slim, fit and smart. Once the last one is over I can foresee the discipline flying out of the window as a load of Bounty bars fly in the other way.

I can't afford to eat between meals. DH will come home with a sweet treat and I can only have a tiny amount. He doesn't understand. He eats the way he always has and not gained any weight as he has got older.

For me, I don't want heart disease or diabetes, or a heart attack, or achy joints because I'm two stone overweight, or higher risk of cancer or fatty liver disease. It's not about just being a bit plump or vanity, it was harder just to live every day when I was heavier. I'm not trying to be skinny, I'm trying to be fit and strong and just about normal BMI, right at the top end!

This is it, a PP said that nobody ever died wishing they were thinner - well if they were dying several years earlier than would otherwise have been the case because they became so overweight, I think they might.

I hear you, I worked out I gain weight on just 1400 calories, I basically have given up, life is too short to eat like a rabbit, too many super healthy people I know are seriously ill /already died in their 50’s so my attitude is I’m enjoying life, one beer and delicious meal at a time

I hear you. I'm mid-late 40s and eating like I usually do my weight is gradually creeping up... It's also all going around my middle. It's depressing.

This is it, and it's living every day just being less healthy as well that I don't want, if it can be avoided. Seeing my mum take metformin and having to worry about whether she was going to have diarrhoea whenever she went out, not doing things because her stomach was off, always monitoring blood sugar and jabbing herself, I really don't want that, and she wasn't huge at all, just in the overweight category as I was previously. She was slimmer than me at 50 as well, at BMI 28/29 before I lost weight I could have had type two diabetes in my 50s or had a heart attack.

That’s far too much cardio. You’d be better off switching most of that for strength/weight training.

Muscle helps us burn more energy and be able to eat more calories without gaining weight.

I’ve had to switch my exercise from running and some weights. To mainly heavy weights and lots of walking.

We are losing muscle mass at this age and need to work hard to replace it. But this in turn will increase our metabolism.

Running 5 times a week and a Spin class 6 times a week will be putting you body under a lot of stress at a time when our stress and cortisol levels are higher anyway. And this also leads to weight gain.

I’ve no idea if this is scientifically correct or not but I’m beginning to think - speaking very generally - that once we have put weight on once, we have basically had it, and we are thereafter destined to eat virtually nothing or put on weight, because your set point has then been changed forever more, or whatever it is called, and the body always tries to return to it.

Added to that is the female body’s natural inclination to add a bit of padding post menopause and we are doomed!

We have to be realistic though. Very few women remain the same shape they were in in their twenties, in to their late fifties and sixties. However, the few women I know who have stayed virtually the same shape have remained that way since their teens and have never put weight on ever throughout their entire lives.

My problem is time and availability. I run because I can run with the dog and I have no gyms near me and no time to get to them. So I am just doing the exercise that is easy for me to fit in. I do know that I ought to be doing more weights, but I would have to do them at home.

Set point theory is interesting, but pretty new and not fully understood yet, from what I've read. The current research seems to suggest that your set point does change, but it takes time. So, if you lose a stone, your body goes into panic mode and starts upping the hunger cues and lowering energy release however if you stick at it, eat enough protien and healthy fats (and in general - calorie wise) your body will, after X number of weeks think oh, actually, we're not starving to death, this is fine, and will step back on the grehlin production.

Please could you give me your recipe for overnight oats?! Sounds brilliant

I gained 2 1/2 stone (an extra 25% bodyweight). No thyroid issues, bloods fine.

TDEE to lose weight was 1200 calories or less per day.

Ive been on a GLP-1 for 2 years, max strength for most of that. Work out or walk every day. Trained for Hyrox, went from 0 to 5km runs.

I’ve still not lost it all. It’s bloody horrific.

The only thing I have learned is to be kind to myself and accept it

Oh this with bells on. In my family either cancer gets you or a heart attack.

One person in the past 3 generations has made it to government pension age. She’s recovering from breast cancer.

Being overweight is one of the main causes. It’s brutal.

This is me. Give or take a bit I’ve been the same weight all my adult life.
I am the same now (55, 3 years post menopause) as I was a university.
I am a keen and competitive runner and most of my peers (there are age categories in races so you know who your peers are) seem to be similar.
Whether this is why we are decent runners or our steady weight is because we are runners is the burning question. It’s both I imagine.

What hope is there if even on GLP-1 the weight loss is still super slow?