Why am I not losing weight? I feel like I'm doing everything right (for once!)

[feetarekillingme]

My weight has crept up over the years but I've stuck my head in the sand until a month ago when I went to the doctors and was put on meds for high blood pressure. It was the wake up call I needed so I (literally the same day) embarked on a healthy eating plan.

I'm 15 stone, 48 (possibly peri but no real symptoms) and I've been doing Weight Watchers plus have been walking 20-30 mins every day.

I've been 'religious' about logging my food and drinking between 2-3 litres of water a day. I've lost 6lbs in the first month but the last 2 weeks have been barely noticeable losses like 0.2lbs one week and 0.3lbs the following week.

Typical food diary which on WW works out at about 1200-1300 cals daily

Breakfast
3 x scrambled eggs, no butter, but small slice of low fat cheese

Snack
2 x snack a jacks (as a snack)

Lunch
Large spinach salad with either tuna or chicken and with a vinagerete dressing or extra light Mayo. Fat free Greek yoghurt and grapes or strawberries

Dinner
Medium baked potato
Chicken breast or fish (baked with seasoning)
Garden peas
Salad or a can of chopped tomatoes (love my chopped tomatoes!)

If I'm hungry later in the evening, I'll have some fruit or a fruit tea. In Weight Watcher terms this is about 20-21 points a day.

I don't feel hungry probably because I think I'm filling up on protein.

Obviously it's a shock to my system as I've previously been a couch potato who ate crap and maybe I'm just being unrealistic but as I'm really working hard Im hoping for better than teeny losses like that. It seems too soon for a plateau as well.

I even started to worry thinking there's something wrong with me but I feel generally ok. I just want to reduce my weight and the pressure on my body. Im not giving up but I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong here?

Thanks for all your responses! I realise in the OP I said I was 15stone...I meant that I started at 16! Anyway, this is my WW tracker of weight loss so far. This week it was looking like it'd be a 0.4lb loss but it was slightly more when I weighed this morning.

Last time I did a proper eating plan, about 3 years ago, the weight just melted off me. But I guess this time I need to do it the hard, slow way. 😬

Well done in such a brilliant overhaul! Try to see this as a permanent change to your lifestyle, not a diet to loose weight. If possible even ignore your weight completely for three months and just stick to the healthy eating.

I love this, graphs give me joy. I don’t have scales so can’t weigh myself but I want to just for a spreadsheet.

@orangegato here you go, this is my weight loss spreadsheet, honed after years of being crap at maintaining the weightloss but loving a good spreadsheet 😂

@FatAgainItsLettuceTime Wooow, that is a bit of me right there. I don’t have a personal laptop so wouldn’t get away with this on my work one but I do this stuff for a job (with much more boring data), think forecasting, planning, trends. I need to invest so I can nerd out. Do you track calories and input that? The formulas behind it, the formatting, yes.

@orangegato I use MyFitnessPal pal for calorie tracking because it knows how many calories each food has and that seemed like a step too far to create my own database.....maybe when I finish my CISSP course and have some spare evening time..

I put in the date and weight in lbs, the formulas then calculate: BMI, where that BMI falls in the different categories, convert the lbs to stones and kilos , adjusts the targets and plots the graph.

I do Cyber Security for work so have been having fun recently playing with combining PowerAutomate, Sharepoint lists, PowerApps and PowerBI to create team workforce management tools to handle requests for support from the business.

Proper nerdy stuff 😀

I'm under the hospital for my weight . I'm two years older than you and now the same weight as I've lost some.
The hospital specialists said that because I've yo-yo dieted for years, I've ruined my metabolism.
Like you, I dont lose weight on weight watchers as it's simply too many calories.
They even advised against slimming world as it encourages you to eat as much free healthy food as you like, which is still not ideal for people like me.
They put me on a very low calorie deficit diet and I have 800 calories or less per day. This is my 'sweet spot' for losing weight. Any more and I stay the same weight, or gain.
It's pretty depressing as 800 calories really feels like hardly anything , but I have adapted and eat 3-4 pieces of fruit per day and one home cooked healthy meal. That's it.
Maybe worth trying to see if you also have a problematic basal metabolic rate .
Good luck with dieting, it can be so disheartening when you are working so hard and don't see a difference on the scales

They even advised against slimming world as it encourages you to eat as much free healthy food as you like, which is still not ideal for people like me. Just wanted to say they really don't encourage you to eat as much free food as you like and if a SW Consultant does then they don't know what they're on about! Free means not synned not eat as much as you want. I see this mentioned at a lot on MN and think SW needs to make it clearer.

Really hope the low cal diet works for you , sounds pretty hard core.

Check if your WW membership includes the online menopause workshops. They're for peri too and very helpful on mindset, plateaus, measurements, etc.

I have tried the 800 cals diet before and was just totally miserable. It worked but I also really struggled after I'd lost 2 stone and ended up regaining it.

I think that as I'm losing albeit very small amounts, I will continue longer with WW. I'm rarely hungry but I also like the fact it's encouraging me to move more and drink more water etc. As others have said, I'm trying to reframe it in my head as not being just about the scales but about my overall health too.

I'll see how I go over the next few weeks!

Wow @orangegato and @FatAgainItsLettuceTime You guys are hard core! I love looking at a beautiful spreadsheet though I'd hate to have to try and make one!

@Lastnamedidntstick Which meal plan did you use? It's the only thing I haven't tried!

OP there's a book called the Hormone Repair Manual which as great advice for managing weight in perimenopause. I'd recommend it to pretty much every woman from 40th onwards.

Are you on any hormonal contraception?
Do you drink alcohol?

I did diet chef as it had an offer on for 3 months and didn’t work out that much more than my normal grocery bills.

I’m veggie so I found the choices quite limited. Some things were lovely, others not so much.

got me into some better habits though.

This spreadsheet brings me so much joy.