Why am I not losing weight? Please help

[Coconut80]

Hi wise mumsnetters I am seeking your advice and wisdom.

I am a 51year old peri menopausal woman. I am 5 ft 8 and weigh 12 st 13. I am overweight and ideally would like to be 11 - 11 to 7lbs.

I have suffered five years of I'll health resulting in medical retirement from my NHS job. Due to medication,lack of movement and eating shite I have gained weight.

I am feeling a bit better so I am trying to improve my health and lose weight. I am on regular morphine as required but no other regular medication

I walk 8-10000 steps every day, I do yoga 20mins four times a week, Zumba twice a week and two dance classes a week. I sleep well.

I am vegetarian and loosely trying to be vegan.I have been on a concerted effort to diet for 18 days and have lost one measly pound. Can you please look at my intake and suggest where I am going wrong.

Breakfast 30g overnight oats with chia seeds and oatmilk topped with banana or frozen mango. I drink mint tea,stopped sugary milky coffee.
Lunch is homemade soup like tomato and lentil,sweetcorn chowder or sweet potato, I've stopped toast.

Afternoon I snack on one apple or grapes.

Dinner is often the same soup with a wholemeal pitta or veg sausages with potato and veg or Quorn fajitas or three bean chilli.

I close the kitchen at six and in the evening will have options with fruit. I've been strict as hell no slip ups. I've cut out all previous crap chocolate,cake,diet coke and my cravings have gone and blood sugar stabilised.

I would have expected to have lost two or three pounds by now. I've cut my daily calories by five to seven hundred a day. Please help I am so close to pressing the fuck it button and going back to eating crap. I feel my body is broken and I just can't lose the weight. I can't afford a diet coach and in desperation am looking at ozempic, also can't afford and dodgy side effects.

thankyou in advance for your help x

Your exercise is mainly cardio and I think you’d benefit from some weights/strength training. Just cardio doesn’t cut it for me any more and I’ve noticed a huge difference since I started doing circuits/kettlebells. Strength training over 40

Relax it is 18 days! an 18 days full of eating healthy food and moving more.
Relax some more.
Your body will like this new life style and you will lose weight, become healthier and move forward.
This isn't a fad diet, this is a way of eating for life.

Give it three months and then reassess.

I would also do measurements as well as weight, sometimes you can lose inches but not actually lose pounds.

1lb is fine, I agree, give it more time. Definitely don’t give up, despite the number on the scales, it sounds like a very healthy diet, and exercise will always be good for you. Think of how healthy your insides will be, and well done on cutting out all the other crap.

Have you actually calculated the calories or are you guessing? It would be interesting to know how many calories you’re eating.

I would put everything in my fitness pal or a similar app and look at calories, you might be eating too few or missing calories.

But also, 1lb in 18 days is great. It might not be what you were hoping for but it is a loss. In another 18 days you could be down another pound, then another, it'll get there eventually. If you give up now there won't be any pounds lost. Your food sounds lovely by the way and I'm going to make some nice soup off the back of it.

Are you drinking plenty of water ? I can put on 2 pounds in a day when I don't drink enough water then it will go again by the next day if I'm properly hydrated.

I agree add in resistance/weight training and up your protein intake if you can, it’s made all the difference to me.

I agree, doesn't look like a lot of protein to me.

Opiates do seem to much up your system a bit. Nurture yourself with good fuel for three months and then worry about weight loss. There is gut biome science involved here.

If you want to go from vegetarian to vegan, you need to make sure you are getting enough complete proteins. Some nuts and seeds in your diet are good, Aldi do some ground mixed seeds, they could be a variation to your overnight oats.

Soy products are great: milk, tofu tempeh...
Quinoa and buckwheat (Polish shop) also contain complete proteins.

Recipe to try, makes loads.
Big pan of boiling water, add half a cup of quinoa and half a cup of roasted buckwheat, after 3mins and a cup of frozen broad beans, after another 3 mins add a cup of frozen peas, after another 2 mins tip in a tin of beans (I often use cannelloni) cook for another min and drain through a sieve.
Meanwhile, fry an onion in a little olive oil, add a chopped pepper ad fry a bit more.
Mix it all together with some seasoning (salt, pepper, herbs, chilli, garlic, whatever) and two handfuls of chopped spinach.

Swap around the veg, add some nuts - not many people feel confident cooking buckwheat or quinoa.

Should look a bit like this

It's great your exercising but yoga and Zumba aren't the most calorie burning exercises out there. Weights would drop the pounds 😁

Awww thankyou everyone I am so touched by your lovely replies. I will definitely try weights I had been reading in over 50s it is needed. I am good at water as I use the cold fruit tea bag things. Thankyou for the lovely recipe will definitely try. I did wonder about the opiates slowing my metabolism but I think I am looking for excuses.
I am weighing and using nutracheck and previously I did mainline caramel wafers and chocolate. Every coffee out would have cake and I also ate alot of homemade cake and flapjacks.
Thankyou so much for your encouragement yes I may need to up my protein.
I am just losing faith as the loss is slower than I've had in previous attempts. I am interested in the gut biome and am reading tim Spector's book.
You're right I need to focus on the positive changes and how they will do me good. I need to think lifestyle rather than eight weeks to lose eight pounds which was my target.
Thankyou all for your lovely replies x

The secret is to not press the fuck it button.

Seriously.

Sometimes it takes a long time, longer than we'd like. But you know you're making positive changes. You need to keep going. Adding some weights is a great idea, but don't overdo it.

You can do it.

I just wanted to say that you are doing really well, keep going! Yoy've made some great changes to your diet/lifestyle.

The weight will come off, it just takes time. My body took a whole MONTH to realise that it could afford to shed the weight - I lost nothing for a whole 4 weeks, which was quite dispiriting! But then the magic began and I started losing 1 to 2lbs per week.

Stick it out, you can do it!

You need to eat more actual vegetables and leafy green salads, cabbage, cauliflower, peas etc.

Stop eating flour products and a banana or an apple is as bad as a mars bar. Grapes and berries are all you need for fruit (Vitamin C).

Eating eggs would help a lot, they contain everything a human body needs except VitaminC).

I think you are not eating enough protein - make yourself have a pea-protein shake if necessary.

The only thing that's working for me is Omad and calorie deficit

Keep going!

Can I suggest 16/8? It worked for me. Eat during an 8hour period but not for 16. I've never been a breakfast fan so it was easy for me, but understand it might not be for you.

I lost 3 stone in a year and reached my target weight last summer. Unfortunately I had a long holiday-of-a-lifetime last autumn and put back on a stone but am working on it again and it is very slow, but I am putting it down to the time of year, and needing warm comfort food in this cold weather.

When you say you do 10,000 steps a day, is that just walking around the house and shops etc, or do you go for a walk? What works for me is walking 3-5 miles a day (more often 3 in the cold weather, 5 once a week) and that worked for my weight loss. I just think walking uphill if possible, and keeping at it every day does more than just 'steps'. I can't do gym, I'm much older than you.

Good luck!

Maybe try to add running into the mix? It's far more intense. Plus intermittent fasting.

Overnight oats, soup, more soup and an apple? Is that all you eat all day? You must be starving and miserable, surely you can't keep that up?

I have similar stats and have tried all sorts of diets, including very low calorie Fast Diet, low carb and tried to stick to most plans which put you on 1200-1400 calories. I have lost weight on those but put it back on quickly.

I have found recently I actually need to eat around 1800 calories a day to lose 1-2lbs a week, and definitely not avoid carbs or cut out any food groups and just eat a good balance of everything. The Nutracheck app is cheap and excellent for tracking what you eat and exercise. Anything else is just buggering up my metabolism, unrealistic (especially when cooking for others) and not giving me enough fuel or nutrients to keep going, and certainly not enough on days when I burn a lot of calories through exercise.

Yoga is very good for strength (and keeps me sane) but I'd also include weights -if you enjoy them. Whatever you do, exercise should be enjoyable or you will definitely not stick to it. Same with diet, it doesn't have to be ascetic or like a punishment. Adopt an abundance mindset regarding food and go for permanent lifestyle change. Eat the foods you enjoy.

chopra.com/articles/how-to-implement-an-abundance-mindset-in-nutrition

I worked out my calories on here:

www.jamessmithacademy.com/macro-calculator/

I figured with me it's a bit like turning a supertanker round,it doesn't immediately slam into reverse - it's also a perimenopausal supertanker.

I'm 3 stone overweight - due to dumb habits over the last couple of years. Since Christmas when I got a kick up the arse - I've stopped any midweek drinking, stopped snacks, upped the exercise (more walking but that's more for my mh than fitness), thought about what I'm eating. More veg and protein.

And I've lost about 2kg up to now....but I feel better...and this morning I finally saw that I had lost more and could feel it too. I'm trying not to weigh too often either.

Hope you are still at it OP and weren't too put off with your slower than expected loss.

I usually burn between 350 and 450 calories in a Zumba class. Shown by 3 different fitness trackers over the 6 years I have been doing it.

Zumba is a cardio exercise class, just because it's dance based to music doesn't make it burn fewer calories. It's also good fun.

The simplest motive for why you might not achieve your weight loss target is when your calorie intake is greater than or equal to your calorie expenditure. Consider using techniques like mindful eating, food diaries, consuming extra protein, and strength training.