Why oh why am I gaining not losing?!

[Bluesheep8]

Average day looks like this:

Either a couple of bananas OR a smoothie made with frozen fruit, fat free yoghurt, banana and skimmed milk.

Lunch is turkey or tuna salad OR weightwatchers soup or homemade soup with 4 ryvitas and laughing cow light.

Dinner is something like homemade chilli made with lean mince and lentils with cauli rice or homemade spag bol made the same way with spiralised bns. A weighed portion (40g) of reduced fat cheese.
At least 3l of water, a 20 min fast walk at lunchtime and 20 mins at least on the treadmill most nights. Yet I'm GAINING weight! How? Why? Help!!!

I know in Slimming World you have to syn fruits once blended so that might be it?

I would guess the sugary breakfasts are spiking your insulin (based on my own experience) and possibly that your dinner portions are larger than they should be. Try an omelette for breakfast instead? And you talk about an "average day", but really you need to look closely at a week or more to see trends imo.

Thyroid? Oil/ butter/ dressing you haven’t counted? Menopause?! How long have you been doing it?

How much do you weigh now? How tall are you?

You need to work out your calorie needs, then create a deficit. Your calories sound like about 2,000...but is that really all you are consuming?

Do you track on My Fitness Pal?

If your general lifestyle is quite sedentary that'll be why you're not losing. Walking for 20 mins burns about 100 calories and running for 20 mins burns about 150-200 spending on your weight and speed. You'd be better off lifting some weights and doing millions of squats!

Have you used MFP? Be totally honest.

How much do you weigh at the moment and how much are you trying to lose?

How long have you been trying for?

My weight swings wildly - can be up by 4 or 5 lbs overnight! Just keep going - you’re doing the right stuff and it will come good.

Thanks for the replies. I'm 45 and weigh 10 stone 2. I've been eating like this for over a year and added the walking around 3 months ago. Thyroid is normal, apparently.

Forgot to add, I've gained over half a stone in about 4 months....

And I can't lift weights as I have a frozen shoulder

Do you weigh yourself daily?
I use happy scale and log everything on mfp. Like a Pp I can vary up to 4lbs a day. Logging my weight daily on happy scale works better for me, even if you have a gain it shows your tracked loss on a graph.

Also, a couple of bananas / smoothie is a really sugary breakfast. You might be taking in more calories than you realise.

I'm 5 ft 5 and want to be about 9 and a half stone, which I managed to maintain for 5 years before now. Sorry to drip feed but am reading back over the questions asked by pps.

Hmmm, might be all the fruit then. Must admit, I've only just bought the smoothie maker so only been having them for a couple of weeks. Pity, as I like them! Might have to try veg ones.

What sort of frozen fruit? That can be quite high in calories. How many cals in your yogurt & how much milk? It all adds up., especially with a banana in. Could be over 300 cals in your smoothie.
37 cals in one Ryvita so 4 is 148 cals. 25 cals in one triangle of laughing cow -how much are you having? 50 ish cals for a homemade veg soup.
Homemade chilli might be low fat but how big a portion? Do you weigh that? The cheese-look up the nutritional info- pilgrims choice lighter for example would be over 100 cals for 40g

I second my fitness pal, It’s actually shocking when you weigh and input everything how many cals you are (accidentally) consuming when you think you are being healthy. Keep at it, you will get there.

Thank you for your thought provoking post. I have just downloaded my fitness pal

How long have you been exercising for? You need to gradually increase your duration and then the intensity. You'll quite quickly get used to training so you'll need to change your workout approx every 2 weeks. Try to also incorporate some strength training that doesn't cause any further shoulder problems. Squats etc. How do your clothes fit now? Don't just look at the scales.... as already mentioned, reduce the sugary breakfasts abs replace with some protein, it eggs.

It might be your age- I’m 48 and just went from 9.7 to 10.1... sympathy! Also it is hard to lose when it is only a small amount- personally I need to drop to about 1200 a day and right now I can’t quite face that.

Two bananas is 250 calories. You could vary it with boiled eggs?

I think you would benefit from MFP.

Try some intermittent fasting and turn the 20 min walk into a 20 run.
It’s not entirely accurate but running 1k burns 100 calories so building up to 5k will be a great fat burner

Thanks for the suggestions. Yes it could well be my age! Also, I have a WW mentality as I lost 6 stone with that and kept it off for over 15 yrs, so because fruit is free on WW, it's kind of stuck in my head. Plus I've been able to maintain my weight for so long that way. Have tried logging onto MFP but it seems like a real faff to log everything, plus it won't let me set up my stats as DP has dabbled with it and it brings up his from the e mail address

bringbackthestripes The frozen fruit is raspberry or mango, milk is skimmed or almond unsweetened. Yoghurt is 0% fat, don't know the cals off the top of my head.

bubba1234 could you tell me about the fasting please?

Stick with MyFitnessPal. It was the game changer for me. Yes, it is a faff at the beginning but you can scan in barcodes from packaging. Then once a food is in, it's there for good.
The 'faff' is part of the discipline! You really do need to know calorie content of your food and you really do need to watch portion size and record every ml of milk in your tea or tsp of oil in cooking etc. If you're trying to lose weight these fine margins really make all the difference.
I find MFP motivating, it helps me be disciplined and it makes me accountable ( to myself!)
And use an online calculator to work out your approximate weight-maintenance calories, then work out your calorie allowance for weight loss.
Stick with MFP, you will probably find your answer there, barring medical issues.

MFP is a faff initially, but once you've entered foods once they're much easier to select again, and you can also add common meals/recipes which speeds things up. It really is useful to track everything, it's often the little things that get you. I set my mum up on it years ago because she couldn't understand why she wasn't losing weight, so I made her go through a typical day for me while I logged everything, turned out she was eating several hundred calories of biscuits with her morning cups of tea 😬 also, she runs weight clinics and had a patient once who seemed to be doing all the right things but was still putting on weight, it then transpired that he had 4 sugars in his tea and 10 cups of tea a day - that's about 600 calories just in sugar.

All makes sense, thank you. I will persevere

Ok,, MFP is not happening. Because I share an e mail address with DP, it won't allow me to set it up for myself. I've also managed to totally mess up all the detail he's already put in.