to find menopausal weight management mentally exhausting and restrictive?

[caretoshare]

I genuinely did not understand before how much mental energy it can take. You spend years being told to “eat healthy”, “move more”, “it’s just calories in versus calories out”, and then suddenly your body seems to change the rules without informing you. You can eat what feels like practically nothing and still gain weight from one takeaway, one dessert, one slightly normal weekend. Meanwhile people around you are saying “just be in a calorie deficit” as if you have not already reduced everything enjoyable.

It is not even vanity for many women. It is the exhausting feeling that maintaining your weight now requires permanent restriction and hypervigilance. You start mentally calculating every handful of nuts, every spoon of oil, every piece of bread, because the margin for error feels tiny.

What makes it worse is how invisible it is. Menopause is discussed in terms of hot flushes and periods stopping, but less about the sheer frustration of feeling your metabolism and body composition shift while being expected to behave as though nothing has changed.

Yes I exercise and I do weight training as well.

I know weight gain is not the worst thing in the world, but the constant mental negotiation around food can become draining. Sometimes it feels like menopause means your body now demands lifelong restraint just to stay the same size.

I know it is not like this for ALL women.

I hear you. Hunger has always undone my attempts to lose weght and maintain that loss. I have done Slimming World twice (or Children of the Quorn as I used to call it), very precise calorie counting, which meant weighing everything and keeping a record of it/, 80/20 fasting, and finally the My Fitness Pal app. The latter was the most successful and I lost 24 pounds. It was always punishingly painful levels of hunger that did for me, challenged my willpower and made me feel faint and ill. I have been dizzy with hunger and no, a glass of water made no difference, it made it hard to think straight at work and hard to do stuff round the house as I felt so limp and weak. These days I just do my best to eat heathily, no processed foods, everything homecooked, lots of veg, sadly I don't like fruit so tend not to eat it. I have a take away about 3 times a year and hardly ever eat out as it is so expensive. Fortunately I am not a snacker but that is just luck, not some superior character trait. I'm not even a drinker the way I used to be, a glass of wine about twice a week and maybe some cake at the weekend. I look at people like Victoria Beckham and wonder how they stop themselves passing out !

Yep. At 40 I went from size 10/12 to a large 14. I've always worked out loads and only had takeaways x1 a week. I've never been one for chocolate or high fat foods. Suddenly, whatever I was doing stopped working and I just got really fat.

I didn't weigh myself at the time out of sheer fear, but I know now that I was around 12 stone, at 5'2". That is with healthy eating and exercise.

Now, so around ten years later, the only thing which has worked for me is Orlistat. It is certainly not a lazy option as you have to eat extremely well, and I still work out loads. But NOTHING was shifting the weight, and I was just getting heavier and heavier. I tried it in 2024, and lost 3 stone over the next 1.5 years.

It's absolutely terrifying seeing that happen to your body, and all while you are looking after it! It's like aliens have arrived to take it over.

According to my Garmin, I average 22,000 steps per day. I’m aware some of those steps will be general movement, but a good chunk are from actual walking. I also lift dumbbells at home 5 days per week, weigh and track every mouthful I eat on Nutracheck, don’t drink alcohol. Yet I’ve still gone from spending my whole adult life between 8st and 8st7, to now being 8st13 (gained over half a stone in 6 months, age 43).

my weight crept up and up and three years ago I did slimming world and lost two stone. I’ve stayed at goal weight for two years now. It’s become a way of life for me to prioritise protein veg and fruit, but still eat carbs, just in moderation. I can’t tolerate alcohol, so don’t get any calories that way. I imagine I average about 1600 calories a day give or take.

The few smug posts on this thread remind me so much of people I knew who had easy babies.

In the same way they used to say to me, when my child didn’t sleep until he was three, that it was all my fault and I should have just “got him into a better routine/let him self soothe”, etc., because that had worked for them, these posters suggest we simply hadn’t thought of “restricting our intake and moving more”, etc.

They just can’t accept that it’s very little to do with anything they have done, they are not morally superior, they are simply BLOODY LUCKY.

And for the rest of us, menopausal weight gain DESPITE our ongoing efforts is A REAL THING.

I totally agree! When I was in my 20s I used to eat what I wanted and still stay size 10 at the most. I didn't properly understand how others struggled but I accepted people are different! Now I look back and think I was just lucky to have that metabolism, I certainly don't now. I just accept I'm overweight to be honest, not sure I have the energy to change it.

Correct, this is absolute BS. I was among the very lucky people who could eat and drink whatever I wanted when I was young. This person has no clue what we are talking about x

Just checked my BMI which is 24.3 which is at the top range of healthy according to the NHS app. Seems much higher than a lot of other posters on here though.

If you can just get yourself on mounjaro. It’ll take the stress off it

Mine is 26.2, did manage to hit 24.9 for about 5 minutes last year by basically not eating anything but salad for a month.

Is there a reason you're not on HRT, as it protects against both heart disease and diabetes - as well as osteoporosis and dementia etc etc.

In fact, the evidence now shows that HRT is more effective than stains or blood pressure drugs at preventing heart disease and cardiac events.

Please start reading about HRT. Start with the Balance Menopause website & podcasts. In fact, just listen to the very first one from about 7-8 years ago.

Everything starts to go wrong once we lose Oestrogen. It's protective & anti inflammatory. We have receptors all over the body, in our muscles (particularly heart), joints, brain etc etc.

There is no risk being on transdermal, body-identical HRT. The risk is NOT being on it.

Does it stop menopausal weight gain?

HRT made me hungry. First I bloated, then I developed a sweet tooth after a lifetime of being a person who liked wine and cheese. I had to stop taking it, even if it did help with sleep and brain fog. I am starting to lose some weight now, slowly. I did a brief course of WLI which seemed to switch of the “eat eat eat” signal.

I agree with the posters about where fat goes changing. Suddenly I had this swimming ring developing around my hips and stomach. I’ve been lean most of my adult life and suddenly I’m pudgy

I was on HRT and managed to lose weight on it. I gained some back when I stopped it (breast scan scare, horrible, put me off). And the regain was quite rapid. So I think there is something in the theory that the body is reluctant to give up fat, and lays down more as oestrogen is present in fat. If you are supplementing with HRT your body has a ready supply of oestrogen. It also improves sleep - insomnia, fatigue and stress are often culprits when it comes to weight gain and insulin resistance. Midriff fat is terribly hard to budge whatever though.

I am just about managing to maintain my weight but only by being very restrictive. I’ve cut out sugar and refined carbs, I fast 20/4 and eat one meal a day and then once a week I do a 48 hour fast so only eat for six days a week. When I was younger my weight would have dropped rapidly doing this but now it’s static.

For some people, it does seem to.

After menopause, fat cells are the body's primary source of oestrogen, which is one of the reasons your body wants so badly to hold onto some fat to replace the diminished supply. For some people, I suspect myself included, replacing the oestrogen by other methods, reduces the body's need to create that source of oestrogen. But as a lot of us are saying, everyone's different.

You do seem very determinedly one note on this, though, OP. I feel like there's a degree of possibly unhealthy obsession on your part, so I'll leave you to it.

I can't believe how many women on here are just not believing the many, many other women who are all saying that during menopause their body changed and they could no longer maintain their weight. It's wound me up and I'm not even one of the posters not being believed. "Simply eat less/move more"! Very condescending and complete lack of listening and consideration that perhaps things are different for people other than you.

This thread has really scare me. I have lost 2st aged 46-47 and really hope I cam keep it off and stay this weight as I get older.

Speaking only for myself, although my experience has been different, of course I believe the people who are talking about their own experience. My only point was that there's a lot of accepted doctrine these days about insulin resistance, not snacking between meals, fasting, one meal a day, etc. And that if you're following those rules very strictly - to the point where some posters sound like its taking over their lives - and it's still not giving you your desired result, it might not be a bad idea to try another method and see what happens.

Adding, that my other point, just in case anyone hasn't done this, was that it's not a bad idea to make sure your thyroid function is optimal, since periods of hormonal flux are a very common time for thyroid issues to crop up.

I was told I needed restraint, eat healthy fresh prepared food and move more 🙄

Determinedly one note about it? It is something many women are experiencing. 90% of the poll says I am not being unreasonable so this is pretty common. Talking about it does not mean a possibly unhealthy obsession.

A lot of people here are saying “get bloods done” and “get your thyroid tested”. How do you do that?

My GP surgery don’t just do blood tests because you ask for it, and even if they do them for some other reason they don’t treat or advise unless things are seriously abnormal. The last time I had blood tests done was nearly 10 years ago and it was when I was severely anaemic. I was given an iron supplement and the tests were never repeated. I have no idea if the iron worked to this day.

Are you all suggesting that we can afford private blood tests? Because I definitely can’t afford that.

I hear you OP. I put on quite a bit of weight in my late 40s, even though my diet and exercise was the same as it'd been for years. I made the adjustment to smaller portions, no snacks etc, which worked OK. But now, every indulgence has a price tag, it's depressing. If I have a few slightly indulgent days, eg on holiday, I have to work for a month to get the belly fat off again.

Well op Was at a party last night about 15 women all peak meno age 49-58. Two were visibly slim I know they work bloody hard at it everyone else myself included larger then we were 3 years ago all around the middle.

Reprogram I also lost 2 stone at 45 I kept it off until 49 whren put one back on. Working hard to lose it again but the method I used at 45 isn’t working anymore. Need to go really hard core but sadly I love wine and cake.