Please only reply if you're female and closer to 50 than 40

[IWillSurviveHeyHey]

Because how in the name of the holy cheeses does one loose weight at the age of 48, when nothing that used to work in the past, works anymore?

I am reasonably active and don't overeat although admittedly I do drink alcohol and have a weakness for sweets. This was never an issue before but clearly it is now. Simple I hear you say, stop drinking alcohol and eating sweets. But I have. And whist in the past I would have started noticing some change after a couple of weeks, nothing moves at the moment. In fact, I am just getting bigger and bigger.

I have extremely large thighs and I am only short so I feel really uncomfortable within myself. My only saving grace is that I don't have a fat belly.

I am a bit sick of being hungry pretty much all the time and still, it seems I need to accept that I've gone from a size 10 to a size 12 in the space of a year and I've been hungry for the most part. Well I don't want to accept that. I need to go back to a size 10 or by the end of 2018 I'll be a size 14.

Please help me.

@pontiouspilates

You can look on dietdoctor.com for some free ideas as well.

Thank you both - willl have a look now!

I lost nearly 2 stone at 53 but cutting calories and upping excercise to swim 4 hours a week.
Last year maintained weight loss without worrying about what i eat by swimming and going to gym. Had a blip over christmas and need to get back to gym and another swim session a week. I am very muscular so although l wasnt losing more weight i was losing inches.
There are at least 2 posters with eating disprders on this thread so be wary about some of the advice

A few typical meals Chez Biwi:

Roasted sausages with roast veg
Low carb sausages (The Black Farmer are the ones I prefer - widely available). Fry briefly to brown them, then put into a deep oven tray with your choice of peppers, shallots, garlic cloves, chillies (optional!), courgettes, cauliflower, leeks, broccoli, aubergine

Give the whole lot a good drenching in olive oil, and season with sea salt and black pepper. Roast for 20 minutes in a hot oven, take it out and stir it all around, then roast for another 20 minutes.

I sometimes add a block of Halloumi, sliced up

Roast chicken

Rub the skin with olive oil, and season with sea salt and black pepper. In a roasting tin, pour some water (a sloosh of white wine is also nice!), and then roast for around 1.5 hours - depending on the size of the chicken.

To go with this, I either do a whole load of roasted veg, as per sausages, or something more 'traditional', like cauliflower cheese, (cheese sauce made with double cream and mature cheddar, rather than a flour-based sauce) mashed swede, pan-fried leeks or courgettes, roasted tenderstem broccoli.

Meatballs with a tomato sauce

Whizz up a couple of shallots, a chilli (again, optional!), and a green pepper in the food processor; when it's finely chopped, add a 500g pack of mince (not lean mince, but mince that's 10-15% fat) and whizz to amalgamate. Season well with salt and black pepper.

Form into balls about the size of a large walnut, then you can either fry them or put them into an oven tray and bake them.

Tomato sauce: In a saucepan, add a tin of chopped tomatoes to a generous glug of extra virgin olive oil. Add whatever herbs you like/have to hand - I use dried oregano or fresh basil - and then add a couple of finely chopped cloves of garlic. Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer until it's thickened. Season.

I serve this with lots of grated Parmesan and a green salad with an oil-based vinaigrette.

Salmon with stir-fried vegetables

Marinate salmon fillets in lemon juice, soy sauce, olive oil and finely chopped garlic, salt and pepper, for 20-30 minutes. Wrap them in foil, with the marinade, and bake in the oven for 20 minutes.

Stir-fried veg - any combination of mange tout, broccoli, baby sweetcorn, shallots, pak choi, finely sliced leeks. Fry in sesame oil, and season with some 5 spice powder as well as soy sauce and pepper

I serve just like this - or sometimes add shirataki noodles to the stir fry (branded as Bare Naked Noodles from the supermarket). They are a noodle made from the Japanese yam/konjac flour, and are very low carb.

I would recommend the Hairy Bikers bo9ks, really tasty recipes, concentrating on portion size rather than faddy diets like low carb.

BIWI - those dinners sound delicious and low fad - I'll definitely be trying some of those! I know the calories in/ out thing but I run 4 times
Per week and achieve my
10k steps per day. I'm
In Peri-menopause and to be frank, the exercise is just
not cutting it for me in terms
Of weight loss (although it has
many other benefits)

@pontiouspilates - they're definitely not low fat! And nor should they be - a low carb diet is a high fat one.

• roast sausages/veg/chicken is roasted with lots of olive oil
• the meat balls are made with high fat mince, and the tomato sauce has a lot of olive oil in it
• the salmon is marinated in olive oil, and the veg is fried in sesame oil

Re exercise - whilst this is really good for you, it accounts for only 20% (absolute max) of weight loss. Diet is the most important.

Re exercise - whilst this is really good for you, it accounts for only 20% (absolute max) of weight loss. Diet is the most important.

This is very true.

As I posted earlier in the thread, a 10st person needs to walk roughly 50 miles to burn 1lb of body fat off.

Yep. When I first started running, with C25K, I also used Map My Run - and was horrified to realise that half an hour's running would only burn around 300-320 calories! You can easily eat that amount of calories without even thinking about it.

Avoid sugary food and starch carbohydrates, even brown versions, but have lots of non starch vegetables and some protein and oils and nuts.

Eat meals. If you have a snack include protein, With this sort of food fewer calories are far more filling. Probably no need to even count calories this way.

Even over 48 that should do the trick unless there is something wrong underlying your weight gain (Sudden massive tummy should be checked for cancer of the ovaries for example; and as another poster mentioned, thyroid problems might be a reason and no doubt there are other conditions a GP could rule out).

Don't have artificial sweeteners or be lulled by natural ones like grape juice concentrate, agave nectar, honey; or apparently healthy things like fruit juice (as opposed to a little, less sweet whole fruit); or lots of brown rice or brown bread.

Vit D is important.

BIWI sorry that was a typo - I
Meant low faff not low fat!!

I did wonder!

I weighed myself today. So after a whole month of absolutely no alcohol whatsoever, no sweets, biscuits or cakes, no starchy carbs (inc potatoes, rice, pasta and high sugar veg) and no fruit, I have lost 2 Kg.

It's a bit demoralising but of course it's still a loss and I will keep going. Dry February here we come.

To be fair, IWillSurvive, you don't have a huge amount to lose, so you've lost more than a pound a week - that's really not bad going!

I'm doing Dry February (along with a fair few others on the current Bootcamp thread) so will be here to provide solidarity

Thanks BIWI. I guess you're right.

@IWillSurviveHeyHey

1 lb a week is sustainable weight loss. It's what I shoot for. 1 kg a week is doable but very hard to sustain unless you have a lot of body fat.

So 2 kg a month is a good solid rate.

Be patient.

I bought some Stevia yesterday to go in tea - my biggest sugar intake (half a teas per cup) but I cant stand it. For some reason this has made me really annoyed as I will have to go cold turkey.

Couldn't get my normal work trews on today. Ridiculous.

Go cold turkey your palate will soon adjust and your Desire for sweet things will drop

Well done Iwillsurvive! I agree with the others, 1lb a week is where I aim for though if my hormones go weird as they are doing at the moment I eat at maintenance, ride it out and lower my weight loss goal to a couple of pounds a month. It’s the keeping on plodding away at it that makes a difference over time.

I’ve found putting too much pressure on yourself makes it much harder to keep going and I think is part of the reason why so,e people have given up by about mid February. Small changes that you can gradually build on to form long term habits has definitely helped me a lot .

Definitely agree with the going cold turkey on sugar. I did it last year and it worked (2.5 stone weight loss in 6 months). Over Christmas I've slacked and although I haven't put the weight back on (yet) I haven't managed to ditch the sugar addiction again - I am on the case as from today

I disagree about exercise. For me it's been key to the weight loss. Apart from burning calories when you do it, it also increases your resting metabolic rate, it suppresses appetite and it keeps you busy.

I have the same problem. 45 and I am not happy with my size. Pre-children a size 10; now a size 14. I simply can’t get bigger, for my self-esteem, health, and also I just want to be able to fit in my clothes!!!
For me it’s about long-term health and setting a good example for my children. As with lots of other posters here, I am finding that things that worked in the past just aren’t making any difference.

I don’t want to do crash diets and I know I need to make permanent changes, but the changes I have made just aren’t enough. It’s so depressing! I know I put weight on over Christmas as so now I have that to shift as well.
Changes so far:
I got a Fitbit and easily do 10k a day, often 15k
Got myself a bike and only use the car when absolutely necessary - I try to walk, cycle or use public transport as much as possible
Do Pilates
Cut down on alcohol - couldn’t manage dry January but cut down a lot, probably have about 6 glasses a week. And only drink water or tea apart from that.
Cut down on carbs especially white carbs, eating more protein and veg.
Cut down on sugary snacks.
However I haven’t been able to cut out snacks altogether as I do get hungry in between meals, and if I don’t eat anything will get a headache, so try and have fruit/nuts/oatcake (not toast or biscuit)

In the past this would have been enough but I feel heavier than ever. It’s been a month and I am no smaller so need to make more changes.

PS I haven’t managed to RTWT - went back a few pages and couldn’t make head nor tail of some of it .....

Apologies if anyone has already posted this - I can't remember - but this is interesting:

from the diet doctor.

That is interesting.

Michael Mosleys blood sugar diet is worth reading, because it already suggests the right amounts of proteins and oils so as to avoid gaining weight from these - given that the article BIWI just posted suggests too much of these may be one reason for the plateau. The book also has some menus, and also a plan for intermittent fasting for those who want to do that. Another thing it mentions to beware of is stress and caffeine.

(Also lack of Vit D)