Menopausal, massive, rapid weight gain and completely demotivated. What do I do?

[milliefiori]

Hi,
I'm fifty five, just recently menopausal after long perimenopause during which I gained weight. I hoped it would level out but I seem to be gaining even faster now.

My problems are that I have a sedentary job and I am an emotional eater. I never diet. I know I over eat and I drink alcohol most nights, though that's habit more than necessity. I give up in October and January.

Biggest problem is I have zero drive to diet. the idea depresses me. Not sure why. The thought of policing what I eat and being constantly hungry and grumpy just puts me off before I start. But if I carry on gaining like this, I'll become obese. I'm already very overweight. (5'3" and 11st 9lbs this morning!) I feel so down about it but don't know where to start. The house is full of ice cream, cakes and biscuits, chips and crisps all of which DH buys for himself and DC. He always stocks up on loads of alcohol too. I know I don't have to eat it but I am pretty weak willed and when it's there and I have a difficult day I just snack before I've even realised I've done it.

Open to any advice of any kind. I was shocked when I got on the scale this morning.

I do some exercise each week - a body combat class, flow yoga (the most challenging of all) hillwalking and kayaking, but work from home so the steps from bed to desk are almost non existent.

The other suggestion I have is to try to see this as a happy thing. Not oh my God I have to diet and it will be horrible and miserable.

Spot on! A change in mindset can have such a profound effect. Don’t view it as depriving yourself, restricting yourself, limiting your enjoyment. It’s the opposite!! You are enhancing your life, promoting own well-being, looking after yourself, healing yourself, loving yourself. Then it’s a different game altogether, and you don’t fall off any wagon, you don’t just stop taking care of yourself because of some blip. Never punish yourself, love yourself 🌹

Low carb is not 'just no junk'! It's massively restrictive. Sure it works, but so do most diets if you stick to them long term. I found low carb amazingly effective in the short term (mostly because it reduces appetite and stops sugar cravings). But it's no good unless you are genuinely willing to give up bread, pasta, potatoes, rice etc for good. Which I'm not. I expect low carb has just as many failed, fallen-off-the-wagon dieters as any other diet. If it works for you, great, but it doesn't work long term for lots of people.

I hate low carb. Did it once and lost 11lbs but spent my whole time thinking about what i could and couldn't eat.

You will not convince me that lovely rough homemade wholemeal bread is not good for you! Also pasta. Just not huge plates of it. And all the huge amoubt of fat you had to eat! My cholesterol went up! Yes, a bit of olive oil and butter, no low fat anything and awful diet stuff, but the mayo with everything, butter etc. Bleaugh

No junk is not low carb.

No junk is no junk.

Calories in, calories out. Its hard, thats why all these insane diets exist as people think they are a magic wand!

willing to give up bread, pasta, potatoes, rice etc for good.

How can we cope without the highly nutritious foods listed above, I don’t know. There is little or next to no nutritional value in bread, pasta or white rice. They are refined, over processed products with any goodness they had, removed though the processing 😐. Whole grains are fine for low carb as they don’t spike sugar. And who would want to live on a roller coaster of highs and lows anyway?

It is exactly the same line of reasoning as people claiming the best course of action to have a ‘little’ piece of cake every day. Well, I have never known myself (or that many people really) being able to stop at a few bites, or have one square of chocolate. You take one bite and you are gone. Not because you have deficient willpower, but because of the biochemical processes simple carbs set off. Which you have no control over, they will happen if you eat cake. Documented by science. And it is such a vicious circle..

There is now science backing up sugar addiction, for example. Or the breakthroughs in the study of hormonal interactions in the human body, including the discovery of new hormones governing appetite. It is nothing to do with ‘willpower’. When you are experiencing grizzly hunger, it is impossible to stand up to it. Why would you eat foods that make you hungry, nutrient deficient and tired?

There is no biological necessity to eat refined flour mixed with sugar. That will make you feel like c* into the bargain.

Whole grains are fine for low carb as they don’t spike sugar

Not on the low carb diets recommended on here.

That's the GI diet you are thinking of, been around for years.

And actually carbohydrate does have a nutritional value. Sugar doesn't.

I became overweight over time.Hit menopause and thought I'd put weight.
But sleeping better,concentration and mood up.I dieted.Im 2 stone down so far and a good 1.5 stone to go.
It's less about food and deprivation and more about frame of mind for me.Im eating similar food to before but tweaked.Luckily I don't have a sweet tooth but it is very easy to munch a large pack of kettle crisps instead of a little bag.
But yes watching the whippet thin teen tucking into the garlic bread is hard.

Calories in, calories out. Its hard, thats why all these insane diets exist as people think they are a magic wand!

What people seem to miss is it doesn’t have to be hard. If it is hard, you are doing it wrong. Your body is trying to tell you something, listen to it.

Past the initial withdrawal, low-carb, even lower carb feels fantastic. Freeing. You are not a slave to your appetite anymore. I used to say I couldn’t function if I was hungry. Of course I couldn’t, with such blood sugar lows. You feel drowsy, tired, can’t concentrate, no motivation... until you get your fix in the form and tea and biscuits. To last you two hours if you are lucky. Then rinse and repeat.

Who would want that?

Proper wholemeal bread is fine on low carb. But it means no refined wheat flour. Not many people will get excited by that...

And actually carbohydrate does have a nutritional value. Sugar doesn't.

Yes, unrefined. Danish pastries it ain’t.

It’s LOW carb, not NO carb.

And of course you can eat more carbs when you are maintaining and fewer when you are trying lose weight.

It’s nonsense to imply that you will never be able to eat bread, pasta, potatoes or rice again. What you probably WONT do is eat an entire meal solely based on these things with a small dressing of something else. Eg pasta and chips, lasagne and bread.

Although now I’ve discovered cauliflower rice, courgetti and Keto bread ( with texture and taste ), the ones I used to eat don’t appeal anymore.

I haven’t eaten now for 25 hours. I’ll eat again in the morning. It will work out to be something like a 42 hour fast by then. I’m not hungry at all. My stomach isn’t rumbling. I have perfect energy. Eating all the time is really crap for our bodies. I used to graze constantly and be hungry constantly. I was also always knackered. Fasting has been miraculous for me. I thought I was one of those people who couldn’t not eat as my blood sugar would crash. Turns out that’s not true.

Besides, most veggies are carbohydrate. So is fruit, some higher carb, some lower (colour and sweet taste is a bit of a giveaway). Low carb means unlimited unprocessed veg, unlimited fat and protein, unlimited nuts and seeds. As much as you want. Just no sugar and refined flour, easy on tropical fruit (which is alien to GB anyway). Why would you be hungry on this?

Also, you would probably find it is much more difficult to demolish a whole block of hard cheese (inbuilt biochemical control mechanisms in the body).... compared to a whole loaf of white bread (absence of those controls). So your intake, and respectively calorie count, will go down on its own. No deprivation involved. Happy, satiated, upbeat individual resulted.

No one has yet died from a biscuit deficiency.

P.S. Manontry, if you mean low-carb bootcamp ‘on here’, the clue is in the name. A sharp powerful reset. Not a long-term sustainable way of eating. Common sense.

This is all so helpful. Truly. Thank you @KingMidasAteMidges and everyone else, for all your detailed responses.
I'm going to start with the positives:
I LOVE vegetables. Really love them. Favourite food ever.
I like plain grilled, baked, roast or fried meat and fish.
I like fruit.
I like whole grains - love brown rice, like quinoa etc.
I don't much like refined flour products e.g. bread and croissants.
I don't find it hard to give up alcohol for a month at a time.

But I can't tolerate high fat food. It makes me feel really ill if it's not cut with carbs (history of stomach ulcers and gall stones) And I do get bored so easily.

I'm wondering about mixing it up. Two days keto, 2 days 16:8, 1 day raw veg only, then at weekends - sensible eating of anything at all, but in moderation.

Sheshoots, yes, I have also noticed that. If you go low carb and break the high-low blood sugar vicious cycle, fasting is really easy. It is not torturous at all. You might feel a bit peckish at the usual meal times, but a hot drink or two staves it off, and then hunger disappears after about an hour. It was measured and confirmed in the laboratory setting. Normal hunger is cyclical, not constant pressure that builds up and up. But with the Western diet, people have lost sight of normal. They think they need to snack every 2h or terrible things will happen. It is unnatural and can even be harmful for individuals with raised blood sugar levels.

Millefiori, fasting might be the easiest solution then. It is the fat in the LC that gives satiety. In the absence of fat, you may still feel as if there is something missing. When I say fat, I mean nuts, avocados, olive oil, cheese, full fat milk, animal fat such as bacon, eggs. I am not sure how successful excluding all of that is going to be. Easiest is probably fasting and not eating sugar/flour on other days. Grilled veg is absolutely fine.

Fasting is an easy way of eating less calories. Which is why you lose weight doing it.

I love healthy food. I don't eat pastries and cakes and sweets. But i absolutely don't agree thst if you find eating less calories hard you are "doing it wrong".

It's not rocket science. People eat cake because it tastes nice!

Another thing, alcohol seriously messes with sleep which is vital for hormonal regulation, particularly blood sugar regulation. Have you noticed improved well-being when you gave up alcohol for a month?

I notice it the next day if I had a glass of wine the night before. So, it’s something to weigh (up, is the enjoyment now worth the negative effects to be experienced tomorrow? I am coming to think it probably not worth it in my case.

Fasting works for other reasons too - it’s not just about eating fewer calories.

Fasting works for other reasons too - it’s not just about eating fewer calories

I don't believe this. Sorry.

@milliefiori

Cant you eat cheese , yogurt, butter, olive oil or avocado unless it’s with high carb food? How does that work? I’m imagining you eating rice or quinoa with your cheese.

So you can’t eat cauliflower cheese or butter / dressing / mayo on a salad or vegetables ?

Try intermittent fasting. You might be surprised at how easy it is, and psychologically I find it easier to cope with, because you do 1 day at a time. I find it much easier if I really have absolutely nothing apart from water or black coffee. No milky drinks. On fast days I just eat an evening meal.

You have to eat sensibly on non-fast days as well though, otherwise you can undo all the good work. I aim for low-ish carb as I find it more sustaining. Have recently discovered Liv Life low carb bread which isn’t too bad (you can get it in some supermarkets). Also keep an eye on portion size.

Sympathies, OP. I’m a bit younger than you but definitely peri- or possibly menopausal (I am on HRT) and it’s getting increasingly hard to keep my weight down. I’m short so don’t need many calories 🙁 I usually only have 2 meals a day on non-fast days (no breakfast, although I do have a milky coffee first thing) which is enough for me.

Olga - if I have cheese I'd have it with dark ryvita or on a baked potato or grated onto pasta. I don't find cheese on its own very palatable. Same with veg in butter, I'd far rather have it plain steamed. I love butter on bread but not on veg.

Here is our blood sugar diet thread. We're not a 'bootcamp' diet, we are a radical lifestyle change plan that gets great results. You can calorie count, but you don't have to. Please come by and see what we're all about and ask any questions!

Blood sugar diet and fast800 thread 16 www.mumsnet.com/Talk/fasting_diet/3671814-blood-sugar-diet-and-fast800-thread-16

Fasting works in so many ways. The most significant being that your cells become increasingly sensitive to insulin (the fat storage hormone) so you release less, so you store less fat, crave less sugar, and don't get crashes of blood sugar. In short, less insulin means less hunger. Less fat storage.

I cannot count the times I have heard the Mediterranean diet recommended as the healthiest, most sustainable way of eating for metabolic health, by countless medical professionals in articles, podcasts, tv programmes etc. It has been widely researched and documented. I've lost 3 stone and kept it off for over a year; there are people on our thread who have lost substantially more.

Have you noticed improved well-being when you gave up alcohol for a month?
I think so. I think I have more energy. Never lose any weight though.