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

Why does someone always have to come in with something crazy like an apple or banana is as bad as a mars bar. It's clearly not. 🙃

It's the fucking peri-menopause. I have am the same age and have less weight to lose than you- maybe half a stone-but finding it impossible to shift. I am also veggie but I probably eat more lentils than you.

Out of a purely calorie perspective, I just checked the calories for bananas and apples in myfitness pal.

1 medium banana 105 cals
1 medium apple 104cals

Dark mint Kitkats are my treat while calorie counting at they are 103 calories.

Obviously different nutrients but from a calorie perspective the kitkat is less. I wasnt expecting that.

Something that can make a considerable difference is to make sure you move for at least 5-10 minutes within 20 minutes of finishing eating. It really controls your blood sugar levels which might otherwise be contributing to slow weight loss or even weight gain. No need to go mad - walking will suffice!

But she said mars bar not kitkat and a mars bar is probably at least 150 (unless they're talking about a fun sized)

So not just as bad even if you're just looking at calories, which you shouldn't anyway.

Maybe ditch the banana or mango at breakfast and have some fish or chicken and steamed green vegetables or salad for lunch or dinner. I’m almost a decade older than you and have lost 3kg in past 3 weeks and I’m not as active as you.

I'm trying to lose at the moment and despite a decent calories deficit I didn't lose for the first couple of weeks....I think my body was in shock

@Coconut80 … some great advice here, but the best is to not press the “fuck it button”. At the moment, you are seeing slow results… press TFIB and your good results will all go backwards. I’ve been through similar lately and was getting fucked off that is lost little on the scales… however, I put on a sports bra which usually chafes, and it didn’t.. my skinny jeans feel less like spandex.. yet still the scales have moved very little. You are doing great!

… and like other have said, it’s about life! You can eat slim fast bars, and be skinny then large and have problems from processed food, or you can eat real food, like you are, and live long and prosper!

Am v close to fuck it myself with the stubborn menopausal belly which refuses to budge. I think I have to get down to a BMI of 21 which I find unrealistic at this age.

The answer to why am I not losing weight is very simple. You are eating too many calories. many people make the mistake to use the current weight to calculate maintenance calories and then detract the calories from that number.
When someone is overweight , they must use the adjusted weight and detract the calories from those. Your adjusted weight is 11.4 which has a TDDE of 1560-1690. To lose weight you must detract at least 300 calories from that number.
You are probably eating above that calorie deficit. You lost a pound, so you are in a calorie deficit, but just not big enough to see big numbers on the scale.
How many calories are you eating per day based on your app?

@Cormoran the 1970's called and said 50 years has passed.
www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-reveals-why-calorie-counts-are-all-wrong

100 cals of whole almonds
100 cals of ground almonds
100 cals of marzipan
will all interact with your gut differently
Which one do you think will make you fatter?

Loads and loads of research out there. Proper food, with slight regard to calories, is the way to go for optimal weight and health.

The OP didn't list processed foods @AdventFridgeOfShame

How many cals are you consuming per day?

If it's more than your TDEE, then you will not lose weight

I was thinking about you this morning OP, while listening to something about cognitive ageing. You could go and pound a treadmill instead of doing Zumba, and maybe burn a few extra calories… but think about everything else Zumba gives you… social interaction, coordination. You have to think of your whole life, not just the scales.

The bit from 43mins is about calories

The only thing that worked for me is not giving up :) I have done thst a lot of times. But when you see a slow loss, tell yourself it's working and you are healthier. You might start to lose more as it kicks in. I track calories and keep an accurate deficit using fit bit. About 1200 is best although I do exercise a fair bit as I find 1400 calories more doable.

I wanted to make a similar point to @CottonSock 's; if you haven't lost keep in mind you probably would have gained if you hadn't have been taking the steps you had been taking so not giving up is critical.

This is helpful for me! I am at the top of my healthy BMI and if I wasn't doing everything I could, I would be over it, given my slowing metabolism.

I am a similar height/weight and down 2kg this month following a few basic rules for myself (nabbed from the 5 pillar plan by Dr Rangan Chatterjee). I've been doing this for about 5 weeks now - the first 2 weeks I didn't lose anything.

-12 hour eating window. I normally do about 11 hours from 7:30 - 18:30. After dinner no food and only water or herbal tea. Your gut needs a break from eating to recover.
-5 different vegetables a day. I now have veg for my morning snack instead of fruit (which is good for fibre and vitamins but too much sugar to have more than 2 pieces a day).
-10,000 steps per day.
-minimum 1.2l water per day.
-cut out ultra-processed foods for meals and snacks (wherever possible).
-no caffeine after 12:00.
-no alcohol.

I don't calorie count and I absolutely cannot be hungry so fill up on vegetables. It took a few weeks for my body to adjust to not being stuffed at the end of everyday and break off the cravings for salt and sugar in the evenings and mid-afternoon.

A typical day for me is
-slice of rye toast with butter and 1 hard-boiled egg
-morning snack of 2 types of vegetables (raw courgette and pepper, carrot and cucumber, celery) or 1 fruit/1 veg.
-lunch is something warm - leftovers from night before or home made soup or jacket with spinach/mushrooms or coleslaw/cheese. Always try to get 1 or 2 portions of veg in.
-if I need an afternoon snack, piece of fruit.
-On my cooking nights I cook from scratch/batch-cooked from freezer, though DH tends to do at least 1 UPF meal like crispy chicken on his cooking nights. reasonable portions of pasta/rice/potatoes/noodles. I eat meat probably 5 days out of 7 and vegetarian or fish the other 2 days.

I'm following other bits of the 5 pillar plan for movement, sleep and relaxation (like 20 minutes of morning light, no tech after 20:30). Small habits which I've built up slowly. The relaxation stuff is really important for me to stop me thinking about food all the time and help deal with my emotional eating.

What's helping me is focusing on the fact I want to feel better, healthier, fitter rather than focusing on the weight. I'm definitely sleeping better, feeling more relaxed, and feeling my fitness improving.

@Catspyjamas17 makes a really good point about change being sustainable and not just a short term diet.

Good luck@Coconut80

Why would cutting out caffeine accelerate OP's weight loss?

Agree, unless it's in the form of lattes full of syrup etc.

There is some absolute mumbo jumbo pseudo science being thrown around here.

Eat less. Focus on protein and veg. Other less nutrient dense foods in moderation. Repeat.

.

I'm in the same boat @Coconut80 it is demoralising isn't it? I'm keeping on keeping going for health reasons and fear of getting even bigger............... I'm close to your age, 52 so gonna hazard a guess it's a hormonal issue. Not that I feel ''hormonal''. I feel fine. In fact, my only symptom is a new but total inability to lose weight!

I've always known how to lose weight so my weight oscillated between 9 and 10 but every time I decided to get back down to 9 I achieved it fairly quickly. This time, after Christmas I realised that not only had I gone over 10 (i knew that) but I was edging towards 11!

So I did what I always did and took myself in hand. I'm only small so I do look big atm. For the first two weeks, the diet of all healthy foods but under 1200 cals per day worked and the weight came off, but then, nothing, it stopped really quickly. After just two weeks, a plateau that has lasted 6 weeks ? Wow.

I know I'm reading labels, measuring, weighing and logging correctly, as well as making all the right food choices, I've cut out ''bad carbs'' but allow some logged carbs and root veg. I'm thinking about gut health, water, fibre, eating windows...... I naturally fall in to the 18:6 without that being an effort. I don't snack in the evening. I don't drink much so cutting out alcohol wasn't hard. I put almond milk in my coffee instead of normal milk as it stops your insulin spiking.

God help me is there anything I haven't thought of!!!!
Or is the sad truth that I need to eat less than 1200 per day to lose weight. According to those calculators that's not even enough to lie in bed all day.

Trust my body to adapt to 1200.

This is the mindset I've HAD to adopt. If I keep going all year then surely I will lose weight. Some is better than none. And if I don't, I guess I know for sure that I need to eat less than 1200 cals to lose weight. I'm not a veg like op but I also find it hard to get enough protein. Well, if I'm 68 kilos as I am, it seems quite hard to get 68 grams of protein. Recently discovered tesco fat free 'quark' and I tip in a big dolop and some frozen raspberries and bring that to work for my breakfast. It's really high in protein.

For motivation I watched michael mosley 21 day turnaround on All4 @Coconut80 and there was a young woman, 30 I think, but she was a vegan and Michael Mosley told her to eat Tempeh. I have had that before and liked it. It's also fermented so good for an ''anti-inflammatory'' diet which is good for everybody as they get older.

On that show, they all get tested for everything so I think it just helps a bit to know that although I'm not losing weight (yet? at the moment?) I am not putting crap in my body.