Weight gain

[AlertCat]

In the past say three years or so, I have put on 2 dress sizes (I don’t own scales so tend to go by my jeans, but when I was a member of the gym last summer their scales had me between 78 and 82kg (you could get a different result by moving the scale around a bit). At 20 I was a size 10-12; at 42, 43 I was a size 12-14 (always been busty). Now at 47 I’m nudging a size 16. It’s all on my belly, really.

(Also I know I am heavy but always have been, even as a teen when I was very slim I was heavier than other people. I’m pretty strong. That’s another reason I don’t go on weight but on size.)

I am annoyed because I’m pretty active and do cardio and walk a lot (7000+ steps most days) plus yoga etc. I don’t diet because I had disordered eating as a teen/young adult and I hated my body for years, only happy when I got rid of the full length mirrors and the scales!

If I’m honest I have been on the chocolate and I eat big portions, BUT I eat similarly to how I have always eaten and have never been this big.

Am I right to blame menopause? And is there something I can do about it? My jeans are uncomfortably tight at the waist (fine still at the thigh and the bum) and I can’t afford new ones!

Unless you have a health condition that means it's more difficult to lose weight/easier to put on weight you must be eating more calories than you are expending. It's that simple. Menopause doesn't change how your body works in that respect, but it does affect appetite, sleep, mood, etc and all those can have an effect on how much you eat and drink.

I don’t think it makes any difference what time you eat. You need 1000 calories just for basic metabolic function.

I’m wondering if this is genuine. You drink 14 units a week. Most meals are pasta, risotto, pizza and fries (but they are oven fries). It doesn’t matter that they are oven fries. Your food mainly consist of simple carbs. Everything above is why you are gaining weight.

who cares what some skinny Spanish woman is doing. YOU are gaining weight and you don’t like it. Then forget what someone with a completely different body to yours and lifestyle to yours is or isn’t doing.
and for what it’s worth, post menopausal Spanish women do pile on body fat if they eat pizza, pasta, rice and potatoes and drink 14 units of alcohol. The ones that don’t are the ones willing to modify their diet as they age. They also tend to walk miles a day. They walk everywhere. I know French and Italian women who eat tiny morsels post menopause. And again they walk the whole time.
do what you want but it’s not about convincing anyone of the rights and wrongs of things. You have one body and one life. You either choose to make changes or you don’t. But coming up with hundreds of reasons why you can’t and then looking for justifications for why isn’t going to change your body fat. You can’t convince some fat panel of judges somewhere to award you slimness because it’s not your fault

Ok so yes sugars are nit great when you are trying to lose weight but maybe you don’t realise that carbs ARE sugars. All the pasta and rice and potato and bread are converted straight away in your body into glucose aka sugar. You have a very high sugar diet. Your alcohol too is adding to your sugar.
I think a good place to start is by understanding what carbs proteins and fats are. Basically if it’s not protein or fat it’s sugar. Your body doesn’t distinguish between pasta and a potato or a banana or chocolate in terms of the sugar effect. Some carbs have nutrients like fruit. Others have very little goodness like milk chocolate. But in terms of their sugars, they are all going to spike your blood sugar

if your dp won’t eat the salad then fine. Do the chicken. Give him the rice/pasta etc and a little salad and you eat the chicken with only the salad. it’s not a huge juggle at all.
give your dp and dc the pizza. You eat one slice. ONE slice with salad. Bingo. Done. Add broccoli or cauliflower to the salad to beef it up. Don’t cover it in seeet fatty dressing. They eat risotto. You eat a TINY bit of it with masses of vege and some fish. Takes literally 5 -10 more minutes

And ultimately if you won’t change your ‘I want’ ‘but I like’ then you won’t lose weight.

you have to change your current thinking. It’s changes when you put effort in.

I used to love massive meals and going to bed full. Now I can’t bear it. I like going to bed with a feeling of lightness. I sleep better. If I suddenly crave something I remind myself I will sleep better ultimately if I don’t.
You may love a drink. Cool. You do you. But what are you hoping to gain from this post. You either change or you stay the same.
big pub meal? No. Pick something delightful and light. Chocolate? Very occasionally. Like Easter maybe. But tbh I try not to because it throws me into a horribly crazy sugar craving cycle. Makes me dopey and sluggish. Enjoy the freedom from tight ill fitting clothes that never look right and dressing to cover up rather than picking things I love and want to wear. It’s SO Aesdy dressing when you are slim as anything looks good. It takes a massive weight (excuse the pun) off my mental load. And this is worth the effort to me of re-educating my palette and forgoing the massive pub lunch and carb filled meals that only serve to make me tired anyway.

It sounds like you have some similar eating instincts to me. I absolutely couldn't go to bed hungry of an evening, or just eat protein and salad at 7pm. I'd be miserable. Yet I still manage to maintain a healthy weight in the following way:

• No breakfast (zero calories). I find this easy as I'm never hungry first thing.

• Low-calorie/high protein/high veg healthy lunch - e.g salmon and salad, chicken and salad, omelette and salad, hearty veg soup of some sort - usually contains lots of pulses. (not more than 450 calories)

• Mid afternoon - fruit or a few nuts or a babybel as a snack (60-80 calories)

• Normal big evening meal, often including seconds. (If you eat as above for the rest of the day, even slightly over 1000 calories at dinner should mean you're not consuming too much.) Like you, I need to be full in the evening. This is almost always homemade and balanced and reasonably healthy but it often contains pasta, rice or potatoes. I don't deprive myself of carbs at dinner.

• (Here's the kicker!) Virtually no alcohol, cakes, sweets, biscuits at all. The alcohol I find easy as I'm not a big fan but I love sugar and would eat tons if I could. So I just avoid.

• Lots of walking (7-12k steps a day) plus gym (mix of weights/cardio) or running for 45 mins 4 times a week. I strongly disagree with the PP who said cardio does nothing for weight loss. If you do some kind of exercise that burns 400-ish calories, 4 times a week, that is 1200 calories - i.e. very much not nothing. The only way I can exercise is by doing it first thing. Is this an option for you if you get up a bit earlier?

So to the people who say 'you have to just get used to being hungry in the evening' - no you absolutely don't. If you're willing to eat less for the rest of the day, eat healthy food and do enough exercise, you can still lose weight. I have never gone to bed hungry, lost a significant amount of weight some years ago and have pretty much kept it off since. If I ever I go over my healthy BMI, I get quickly back on the regime above and the weight goes again.

And I am 47 so very much in the 'tricky' zone for weight loss!

And sorry, correcting my post above 400 calories, 4 times a week, is obvs 1600 calories burned not 1200. 😂

A Spanish person would never, ever eat that diet.
Always a salad and fruit for pudding at main meal.

Main meal at 2pm. Never carb heavy.

Light snack in the evenings (in summer) usually fish,salad or gazpacho.

Absolutely no ready meals whatsoever.

That's such a massive, incorrect generalisation! Who is buying the ready meals and pre-prepared dishes the supermarkets and specialist food prep shops sell them? Plus pizzas, etc. An entire nation does not eat salad and gazpacho. Gazpacho would be a starter whatever time it was eaten. Don't tell me you've never seen an overweight Spaniard.

I think you have got the right approach to healthy eating as sugar is worse than fat. BUT you do come over as if nothing can change. Something has to change or you'll carry on getting bigger. In a nutshell I think your diet shows a lot of carbs when you could do without some but your family could still tuck in.

There was some research years ago which showed that if someone ate 2 choc digestives every day for a year and didn't expend more calories, they'd put on a stone in a year.

So it doesn't take much to gain weight if you're eating/drinking a bit too much every day, month after month.

When we had salad and salmon yesterday, DH had home made oven chips(he chopped the spuds, coated them in olive oil and baked them on a tray.)
If we have fish fingers, I'll have carrots peas and broccoli- he'll add chips to his. These are simple easy changes.

Likewise if we have a curry mine will be 80% curry and 20% rice. Stir fry for me is mainly protein and veg.

I don't do without treats but I've learned to manage them- a square of 80% dark choc a day.

I'm much older than you, weigh a lot less and and am tiny framed. I can no longer put away the food I used to in my 20s or 30s as I'm not so active, even though I too walk around 7k steps a day. As a young teen I was fat and hated it.

Your drinking- well, it's not about what other people like or do. It's the stats and guidance of Drink Aware.

The fact is you're up to and maybe over the advised limit for women which can have far-reaching health impacts. So it's at odds with your healthy exercise regime if you're drinking that much. It's literally hundreds of extra empty calories a week. https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/tools/unit-and-calorie-calculator/#/unit-and-calorie-calculator

You are coming over as if you're not willing to make changes, as everything suggested is a 'problem' but could be worked around by making changes to what you eat, even if your family eat something else.

You could probably lose weight by just halving the amount you eat in the evening, cutting back on wine and being very disciplined with the 'treats'.

No it is not.
Not where I live or have lived, anyway.

School lunches are amazing in the all the schools. Nobody eats a big meal at night.

Ready meals? Prepared food? Hardly any. Yes you can buy a pizza. Nothing equivalent to the enormous amount of UPF in the UK.

OP is eating alot of food.

You have to learn to tell the difference between hunger and appetite. Enjoying the feeling of being full is something one can train out of. The feeling of being full usually means you’ve eaten too much.

I agree with this.

@AlertCat I've not read this myself but Paul McKenna has a book on weight loss and I think one of the things he writes is that feeling full and wanting to feel full is a kind of 'addiction' and pretty much the same as 'comfort eating'. It's satisfying some need, but it's not simply 'hunger'. Genuine 'hunger' and just 'fancying something' are different. It also takes 20 minutes to feel sated after you've finished eating, so you could wait and then judge if you're actually hungry or just 'fancying' more food.

As PP says ^^

@springbringshope I do know the difference between hunger and appetite but I have a big appetite so I choose to eat as above so I can have at least one satisfying meal a day. I’m slim and healthy and this is a choice just as some people who are otherwise healthy choose to have a few drinks or whatever. Nobody’s perfect!

Post 50 the rules change for women. You have to up your exercise (including strength training), eat really bloody clean, reduce sugars (including carbs and alcohol) and basically live joylessly about 80% of the time.

And/or take weight loss injections.

Menopause is a bitch.

@Hertsmum78 I already do a fair amount of walking (over 7000 steps a day on average) and other forms of exercise. Thank you for your tips, they sound achievable for me.

@BlackStrayCat i have lived in Spain, I know how (some) people there eat. I don’t have much UPF- I cook from scratch 6 nights a week. I do eat big portions at most dinner times, but I don’t have huge amounts of food- as I’ve said, two meals most days and sometimes a snack, which sometimes is healthier than other times.

@springbringshope big pub meals are so rare for us. Less than once a year! I used them as an illustration of not needing to eat dinner and the problems I have had trying that, not as a ‘I do this every Sunday’ thing.

You’re right to say I’m making excuses and that I need to make changes if I want to see change. I know that. But the post was partly a grumble about how I used to be able to eat what I liked and stay the same size and now I can’t. And partly a wonder if I can make changes and if so, which ones to make. I do know something of the psychology of changes, etc, and they’ve got to be achievable. This is why people keep smoking, keep eating crap etc even though they know it’s bad for them. Achievable and sustainable changes are different from ‘just accept being hungry’ or ‘just stop drinking wine’. It isn’t that simple, for me or for most people. I’ve outlined some of the barriers for me, which others can accept or not, but for me they’re real.

There's loads of prepared food and ready meals now in city centre supermarkets and food prep shops - we commented and noticed this last time we were in Valencia city centre. There was a shop under our apartment which sold prepared meals to reheat at home where customers were queuing down the street at weekends. They weren't tourists, most of the dishes were very traditional. People have busy lives.

I really disagree. If you eat fewer calories than you expend you will lose weight. It's other stuff that makes it more difficult to do/stick to.

If you are slim and healthy then you aren’t over eating so there isn’t an issue

some people don’t understand that here are two sides to an equation. Energy in and energy out.

during perimenopause and post menopause women expend less Energy out. It’s partly due to reduced muscle mass but it’s also to do with a slowing down of all the autonomous functions. Hair growth, skin regeneration, nails, tear production, digestion. Everything changes.

TDEE and BMR type calculators are wildly out as they can’t accurately measure what each body is actually doing. That’s why two people same age and height and activity levels aren’t the same. one person might not be able to put on weight whilst another can’t seem to lose it.

so yes. Ultimately if you eat less than you use you will lose weight. But what that amount is can be very very little for some people. Added to this if you drastically reduce your intake you can effectively screw up your autonomous functions so they work even less well. Like a car idling too low.

during perimenopause and post menopause women expend less Energy out. It’s partly due to reduced muscle mass but it’s also to do with a slowing down of all the autonomous functions. Hair growth, skin regeneration, nails, tear production, digestion. Everything changes.

This is interesting. Does something similar happen to men? If you compensate by lifting weights do you overcome this? And is this a reason why the only part of me getting bigger is my belly? (I can see a time when I’m a 18 in tops but still a 12 in trousers.)

@springbringshope - hard no in disagreement. I try to go for a walk every day, go to the gym two or threw times a week, but the bulk of losing weight is about what you consume. A lot of the other things which people say impact the ability to lose weight are essentially excuses. I am menopausal and finding things tough, but far from impossible.

Disagreement to what?

Your assertion that for some people wanting to lose weight in menopause they will only be able to eat very, very little.

Anyway I don't know why I'm bothering to post on this thread as the OP doesn't seem to want to hear she can lose weight if she changes things.