Ridiculous impossibility to lose weight in perimenopause!

[BlogOnTheTyne]

No matter what I do or don't eat, no matter how much I eat or don't eat, no matter whether I give up on any treats or live on boiled vegetables...the body just balloons...and goes on expanding!

I'm fed up! I'm in the midst of perimenopause and having had about 8 to 12 months of shortening periods - around 21 to 24 days - interspersed with the occasional normal 28 day one - I'm currently 4 days over the 28 day mark - and feel heavily pregnant....

Absolutely impossible, however - so this must be the start of the lengthening gaps between periods...which also seems to mean that I have to put up with all those horrible premenstrual symptoms, especially bloating - with no bloody respite!

I could just about manage the weird and wonderful world of perimenopause when my periods were happening more frequently because then I'd know that - no matter what I was eating - the day before my period began, I'd lose 2 to 3lbs.

Having packed in healthy eating late summer, as it didn't have any effect whatsoever on my weight (I'm mostly vegetarian anyway and my normal eating was pretty healthy), I let myself go and ate crisps/chocolate etc....but all that happened was that I put on the one pound I'd lost (that precious pound that took about 6 months to lose) and would lose it again at the start of each period.

Now, however, I'm back into healthy eating again - and oh yeah, so no period looks like happening anytime soon and having bloated up as if my period was almost starting....felt on the very verge of it...passed it by with nothing happening....I'm now bloating up again even more and thinking - why the heck should I bother to eat healthily?

My legs feel as if they're balloons with water poured into them - my tummy - which I never used to have - is now prominent (my waist was my best feature) - and don't even get me started on my already size 34E breasts! Massive is an understatement!

I'm not prepared to eat nothing and have never wanted to follow faddy diets but I really believe that if i stopped eating altogether for a whole week - I'd either maintain exactly the same weight ot actually put on weight!

What was Mother nature thinking of when she decided that this was fair play on middle-aged women!

Can't offer any advice but you have my sympathy as you could have been describing me. No matter what I eat or how much exercise I do my stomach looks like I am about 10 months pregnant with twins!
GP said it was because of my age and basically said that I had to live with it. Does HRT help I wonder?

Good God! After 2 days only eating boiled vegetables - and even then, in moderation, I've now put on another pound in weight! Twenty years ago, I'd probably have lost half a stone on this kind of food intake!

Period is now still not started after 32 days - the longest time ever, except when I was PG with twins.

Not keen on the idea of HRT because of potential health risks. If I had more time, I'd take up long distance running - but am too busy.

How to you eat healthily at this time of life, if eating anything at all just piles on the pounds?

I think maybe you could try keeping a food diary. It's sometimes possible that we all eat far more than we think, by nibbling and eating some things that have much higher calories than we imagine.
Are you really just eating boiled veg? For breakfast lunch and dinner?
I find it harder to lose weight compared to in my 20s but I know it's a combination of being less active- not walking the kids to school now, not being on my feet with work, having a desk job, and also your metabolism changes and you really do need fewer calories.
I've been on HRT for 5 years now and weigh the same as I did in my 20s- under 8 stones- but it's a constant effort!

Blog- no one should go by how much they way after 2 days eating anything! Everyone's weight goes up and down by 1-2lb normally over the course of a day or two, due to how hydrated you are - or dehydrated. If you really want to lose weight you need to eat healthily and exercise more for at least 1-2 weeks to see any weight loss, and accept that most of us put on 1-3 lbs in the PMT week which is mainly water and it goes when your period starts.

Varigated, I was of course exaggerating a little but I really have tried to lose weight and over the summer to autumn, spent about 3 months eating sensibly and much much much less than I'd been eating so far and would lose about one pound - but only straight after a period - and then put it back on and somemore, in the build up to the next period.

Across the last 3 days, I've eaten a softboiled egg with 2 rice cakes for bkfast, an orange and banana for lunch and boiled vegetables for supper - plus 3 cups of tea - and nothing else. I've PUT ON a pound in weight.

Having tried this for a longer time in the summer, with no results, I gave up and began to eat treats and a more ordinary variety of foods (mostly vegetarian). I remained around the same weight, despite there being a vast vast difference in the amount of food I ate and eating 'treats' again.

I seem to have 'proved' to myself, that when perimenopausal, I simply don't lose weight if I eat less and my body feels exactly like it does 3 days before a period - eg rock hard breasts, swollen tummy and legs - but with no respite, no rlease of water retention, which used to occur and at present, no sign of a period now for 33 days. I seem to have got stuck - like Groundhog Day - in that '3 days before a period feeling' and am not getting out of it.

Trying to keep a sense of humour, hence my above posts - but it's very annoying! So yes I have tried for much much longer to eat less and more healthily - for around 3 to 4 months earlier this year - and it just didn't work. It's not just the last few days, where I've been having yet another attempt at getting on top of things.

Now that it seems as if my period isn't going to start anyway, do I just expect the bloatedness to be unremitting and whether I eat much or barely anything - for my weight to creep ever higher? I can literally 'feel' my body filling more and more with water retention tonight - well that's how it seems, yet I've not had a period. I've had lots of 'false' starts - where I've had every single physical feeling sna signal that my period will start - and then...it hasn't and then the premenstrual symptoms increase yet again.

I am trying to think of how to fit in exercise - but as my days are absolutely crammed with work and DCs from 4.45am until 9.30pm with no breaks, I can't begin to imagine when you do a 20 min run or a mile walk, let alone go to a gym or for a swim!

I do sympathise- if I put on a few pounds it takes me MUCH longer to lose it. having said that your 'food diary' as here is not healthy and may even make you gain weight long term because it's deficient in protein- all you had was 1 egg all day that contained protein.This means your body goes into starvation mode and stores fat and burns muscle to keep it going. Longer term you'd not lose weight but lose muscle- and muscle burns more calories than fat even if you are sitting down all day.

My advice would be to eat 3 meals a day with protein in all of them and very few carbs.

Why do you need get up at 4.45am?
Can you fit in a brisk walk at lunchtime?

Even without being menopausal we all should be doing 30 mins 5 times a week of exercise to prevent heart disease and diabetes.

Thanks, Varigated. It's tricky to eat more protein as I'm a vegetarian - well, was one for 18 yrs before having DCs and since then, have only occasionally eaten bits of chicken or salmon, to 'model' omnivorous eating for them.

The main protein sources I eat are eggs and cheese and as cheese is packed with calories, I've tried not to overdo that. Long long gone are the days when I used to have time to make myself nutritious vegetarian meals with lentils and beans.

I get up at 6am but at 4.45am every morning one of my DTs wakes - noisily - in his room and I'm always woken then. (He has Asperger's and has never slept much anyway). So I use that time to do work emails and admin.

I never get a lunch break as I cram into the school day the part of my job that earns the money, so that I can do the school runs (single mum, self-employed), make supper for DCs, then return to work in the early evenings, once DCs settled down to homework.

The last time I had time for formal exercise, was pre-children, when it now seems I had all the time in the world for running, country walks, dancing and making healthy foods from scratch. It's frustrating to know that I need to exercise more and would love to have that luxury - but don't know how to find the time - short of going for a run at 5am - but then I don't really want to leave the DCs alone and one of them still asleep - and it would also prevent me having that precious hour early on to catch up on work admin.

I do have some relief this morning, however, as my darned period has just started after 33 days and so maybe I'll lose that pound again for a bit!

Maybe it isn't how much you're eating but what you are eating. I'm perimenopausal as well which sucks as I'm only 37 and I have had great success with the Mumsnet low carb diet, latest thread here. I can honestly say it had changed my life, not only have I lost enough weight to be back to a normal BMI, but I'm not running from meal to snack to meal starving hungry as my blood sugar drops through the floor. Before I was eating breakfast then an hour later I was hungry again, now I have yoghurt and berries for breakfast and it keeps me going until lunch.

Blog- I do feel for you- life sounds hectic.

But- big BUT- exercise is not a luxury. It's a necessity. Being really blunt- you need to take a big step back and re-evaluate your diet and work-life balance. Being so busy that you can't prioritise your own health to fit in 30 mins walking or something is not doing yourself any favours. Sure, money is important- I'm s/e too so know how that feels. But you are stacking up health problems in the medium-long term unless you really make some changes. No one- and I really mean this to try to help you- should be unable to find half an hour for themselves in a day, when kids are at school. And if you want to stay a veggie then you're going to have to start making those bean casseroles in bulk at weekends, or re-think if being a veggie is healthy and practical with the demands on your time.

Sorry if this sounds like a lecture. Tough love :)

If you read the judgmentwww.bailii.org/ew/cases/Misc/2013/20.html it really skips over the father issue. I still believe the removal of the child was wrong and that the senior judge is right to intervene and am grateful that we have people like Booker and Hemming bringing these cases to light. The father wrote to the court for the original hearing and wants the child. Why should that not always prevail? The fact he may not have the skills of money to appoint a lawyer to attend should be neither here nor there. The mother wanted to get on that plane to Italy to be back where her other children and parents are and the baby's father is. Instead she was sectioned and her child ripped from her womb and given to strangers. That baby need to be got back to Italy ASAP in a few days. Adoption is totally wrong here. There is a father who wants the child and a mother who has family support.

wrong forum maybe? :)

I agree with Variegated, for most people in the absence of regular exercise body composition will shift as you become increasingly insulin resistant.

Careful eating can slow this down but it can't correct the loss of muscle tissue and increase in fat tissue that accumulates over time if you don't exercise.

Same thing happens to men as they get older, without exercise most of us will go soft and squidgy :(

I feel for you. I am now coming out the other side, and suddenly some weight is coming off if I eat less or better.
There may be light, but it may be a long way off.

Doesnt look like saragossa ever knew!