Losing weight is impossible!!

[Lowwintersun13]

Hi everyone, I’m 2 years post menopause and have piled on 6 stone 🥲 no change in lifestyle or diet, just menopause the only change. The 6 stone went on very very fast (around 6-9 months)
I’ve gone from a size 8 to an 18 and look and feel disgusting. I’m a tiny 5 feet 1 so you can imagine how I must look. I have had a recent illness where I did not eat for around 3 months, just an odd piece of toast here and there but still lost nothing! How is that even scientifically possible??!!! But one thing I have and do consume a lot of is milky coffees made with oat milk. Is it the oat milk that has made me so fat? All the usual diet rules just don’t apply after menopause; I avoid carbs like the plague but still nothing. I’ve had every test at doctors, desperately wanting there to be a reason why but all tests came back normal. I don’t even leave the house anymore except for work because of how awful I feel and look. I wear the same top and trousers as anything I buy always looks awful. I have a half hour walk every lunchtime but I am starting to feel this is just how it is. I’m now in the obese range which is an awful thing to hear. My knees and joints hurt all the time. Please someone tell me there is hope and how you managed to lose the weight. I’m not on any HRT, I had to remove my patch after my marker for breast/ovarian cancer spiked 🥲

Have you tried intermittent fasting? It's working for me. I'm 55, same height as you and a size 16 (having been an 8/10 in my youth). I eat dinner at 630pm and then I don't have ANYTHING else apart from water, until 1130am the next day. Then I stick to 1200 cals. Lost 13lb so far, albeit quite slowly. Also, I'm trying not to consume anything that you could not have eaten 200 years ago. In other words, real food. There is so much absolute shite in the supermarkets. Follow Eddie Abbew, he's really great.

I feel so much sympathy for you! I've been inclined to put on weight after menopause and keep it off with healthy snacks and no sugary treats in the house. My meals are plant based. I also walk my dog for for 30 mins twice a day. In your situation, I would increase the exercise- swimming pool, cycle, and walk if possible. Dance, if that's enjoyable for you. Perhaps a nutritionist would help find the right foods for you? Try strength exercise to build more muscle. I'd ditch the scales and just think about how I feel. Love yourself at every size. A healthy body is something to be grateful for. I don't know what would work best for you to shed some kilos, but exercise is truly the best medicine, so I'd start there. Good luck!

You must be eating more?

I do pretty much this but without any change. I’m 62, 163cm and 61kg. I’ve gained nearly 7kg in no time flat and all that I’ve managed to do with this regime is slow the rate of gain. It’s horrific.

Have you tracked your calories for a week, weighing and measuring everything that you consume? And then compared that to your TDEE?

I’d be really concerned about putting on 6 stone in such a short space of time in the absence of any lifestyle changes.

Have you tried keeping a food diary - work out how many calories you are consuming? You’d need to weigh everything out, but it might prove to be an eye opener.

Nutracheck is quite good for keeping a log and it will tell you how much fibre and protein you are getting too.

I'm in a similar situation but I put weight on before the menopause. I have tried everything, I walked 7-10000 steps every day for a year, intermittent fasting, low carb, portion control. I lost half a stone but then got stuck. I am prediabetic and I really don't want to resort to weight loss medication because of the side effects and the health risk. I was a size 12 until I was in my forties and the weight just started creeping on.

If you’re drinking lots of oat milk lattes you aren’t avoiding carbs like the plague unfortunately. A medium oat milk latte has around 22g of carbs. If you have 2-3 of those a day, plus whatever food you’re eating, that’s not a particularly low carb diet.
Do you track the macros in what you’re eating?

Try one meal a day for a week. No milky beverages, just water.

It's awful isn't it? I managed to lose 4 stone after menopause and keep it off but only by doing ridiculous amounts of exercise and eating almost nothing. So I run four miles five days a week, do a spin class 5 times a week for 45 mins a time, do 30 mins of Pilates three times a week, walk the dog in between and work (on my feet and walking around) three times a week. I can only eat one meal a day or weight goes back on anyway!

I so want to do less exercise - it takes up so much time! But I daren't, because I can't eat any less.

Six stone in less than 9 months is an unusually large weight gain, even post-meno. I don't say this to have a dig, more to suggest that I would be considering an underlying issue. Have you had a full health MOT recently? What was your recent 3-month illness?

Edited to change peri to post

My recommendations:

Nutra Check app. It's brilliant. Weigh everything you eat and log everything - you might be in for some surprises (I certainly was). It also reports what proportion of your diet is carbs, what's fats and so on. I'm trying to stick to high protein so as not to lose muscle mass and it's proving really hard to balance that as it's still showing too high in saturated fats - and I have high cholesterol. So after 4 weeks' going I need to make some changes to that, and tweak as I go along.

A clean diet is great - ditch sugar and UPFs. I find eggs are my saviour food for this. But if you're not in calorie deficit you still won't lose

Batch-cook good quality meals (I like a currry and a chilli) at weekends and store in portion-sized containers.

Also - you need to know your basal metabolic rate (BMR) - which is the number of calories you need at complete rest - and your TDEE (total daily energy expender), and from this calculate the calories you need. If you're as crap at maths as I am, ChatGPT will do that for you. It asks you to enter your height, weight, age and approximate activity levels: Here's what it calculated for me:

Step 1. BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate)
Formula (Mifflin–St Jeor, women):

BMR = 10 × weight(kg) + 6.25 × height(cm) − 5 × age − 161
= 10 × 92.1 + 6.25 × 175 − 5 × 53 − 161
= 921 + 1,094 − 265 − 161
= 1,589 kcal/day (energy needed at complete rest)

Step 2. TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure)
Lightly active factor = ×1.375
TDEE = 1,589 × 1.375 ≈ 2,184 kcal/day
Step 3. Weight-loss calorie target

• Moderate deficit (−500/day): ~1,680 kcal/day → ~1 lb/week loss
• Larger deficit (−750/day): ~1,430 kcal/day → ~1.5 lb/week loss

⚠️ Safe lower limit for women is about 1,200 kcal/day.

✅ Practical takeaway for you:
To lose weight steadily, aim for ~1,400–1,700 kcal/day, depending on how aggressive you want your deficit.

• If you prefer slow, steady, sustainable loss → ~1,600–1,700 kcal.
• If you want faster loss and can manage hunger well → ~1,400–1,500 kcal.

I'm eating on average 13-1400 cals a day. And I know exercise doesn't really count for weight loss, it's all about what you eat, but the difference I've seen from regular exercise (including some light resistance training/dumbbell weights) is huge. If you're menopausal you need to use your mobility or lose it, and the goal is to lose fat, not muscle mass.

I've only lost 1lb in the past two weeks, and sometimes you'll plateau and stall. It's horrible getting off that starting block and you don't see a change for weeks and weeks, but persevere. Once you start seeing losses these should continue, albeit slow (and with plateaus running into several weeks sometimes)!

Hope all this is in some way helpful!

I've ditched the lattes too. Milky coffees are stacked with calories.

Apologies, I've just seen you said recent tests came back normal.

Several oat milk lattes per day will be pretty calorific but even so...

Are you actually tracking calories?

I have had a recent illness where I did not eat for around 3 months, just an odd piece of toast here and there but still lost nothing! How is that even scientifically possible??!!!

It's not.

Double posted.

In the absence of any medical reasons, you must have eaten more to put on that amount of weight. Menopause or not. It's a huge weight gain, and menopause itself is unlikely to cause that.

It's not impossible to lose weight during/after menopause, it's just harder.

Look at everything you are eating and drinking, honestly. Work out your TDEE. As a shortarse, mid 40s woman mine is only around 1350, which means I need to eat around 850 calories a day to LOSE weight.

An oat milk latte is almost twice the calories of one with skimmed milk. You're looking at somewhere between 200-250 calories per drink, maybe more if you're having a large. That's quite a lot if you're drinking lots of them as you say.

I have to agree with this. Six stone gain without any changes to diet at all? If there is no medical reason for this, thyroid etc. then I think you have to be really truthful about what you’re eating… have you tracked your calories to see roughly what you’re consuming a day? because even giving menopause that weight gain is excessive.

Also to add, I'm not saying consuming 850 calories a day is healthy before anyone jumps on me - just making the example from my TDEE that's what I'd have to hit to be losing a good amount of weight....

I was going to say, oat milk is just carb water.

I know how you feel. I'm 65 was a size 12 now I'm an 18. Recently I was told I was heading towards the pre diabetic stage. Started slowly now I have lost 10lb in 6 weeks. Every thing that goes in my mouth is recorded.
Only tips I can give. Stop the milky coffee. Drink more water. Keep a food diary.
Good luck.

This may already have been mentioned - oat milk often contains emulsifiers and rapeseed oil. You'll be killing your gut microbiome with it.

Check out The Human Being Diet - Petronella Ravenshear. This diet was developed in a response to one of her clients being unable to die lose weight at a certain point. A couple of friends have done it and have lost tonnes of weight

I'm not sure whether MN permits posting links, so apologies in advance if this doesn't work. But this is from one of the emails regularly sent to me by Nutra Check, explaining why weight loss becomes more difficult as we get older and what to do about it.

Why does weight loss get harder with age? | Nutracheck

I thought I was eating well and my weight was slowly creeping up. I’m 5ft 1 also and was 12 stone 9lbs and couldn’t work out why I kept putting on weight. I’d had enough so started Mounjaro and it was like a switch flipped. It helped me recognise my portion size was huge and I was a real nibbler. I’m now 9st 4 and feel amazing. I’m 54 btw.

How many oat milk coffees are you having a day? Are they coffee shop / machine lattes or cappuccino style that are absolutely full of milk?

100ml of oat milk is 45-60 calories. A medium Costa latte is 225 ml milk -> 4 coffees a day = 900 ml so that could be ~ 500 calories “spent” on milk alone. More if you have larger or more coffees than that then it will be even more.

A slice of bread can be 140 calories … 2 slices of toast with butter and 4 coffees and you’ll be on 800 calories for the day already easily.

Personally I don’t drink milky coffees, it’s a waste of calories! Espressos only. I met a friend for coffee the other day and the store said it was 250 cals a coffee, that was my entire breakfast.