Totally fed up. 57 and can't lose weight on 1000 cals a day! Is there any point dieting if you don't want injections!

[Suenami]

I am feeling totally miserable about my weight and wondering what the point of trying to diet is when everyone seems to be on the injections and losing tons of weight.

At Christmas I was about 2 stone overweight. I'm 57 and menopausal. Since then I've lost 10lbs through calorie counting and upping my exercise - I broke my shoulder last year and then cracked a bone in my foot, so I've been limited in what I can do.

For the last 2 months I have - as evidenced by MFP - eaten between 800 and 1200 calories a day and I've started walking briskly for 30 mins a day. I've lost 1lb.

I keep gaining and losing the same pound, I'm eating very little and not eating until 12.30pm. I don't drink during the week and often not at the weekend.

And I've just seen photos of myself and I look huge.

My friend is on Wegovy and has lost nearly 3 stone in the last few months. I dont want and can't afford injections but feel totally miserable.

Why is my body doing this??? I've kept a log of MFP and about 8 years ago I did a few months at 1400 cals a day and lost a stone! If I ate 1400 calories a day now I would put on weight. I'm on HRT.

I eat healthily, loads of green veg, protein etc. Ironically I am happier and more energetic than I've been for ages, until I think about my weight!

The injections only work by reducing calorie intake.

if you are truly eating that number of calories I would go to your GP.

weight loss is hard but it’s just maths.

you need to make sure your weekends where you do drink aren’t bringing up your average calories too much. I think that’s what I would check first.

well done on your loss so far 🙌🏼

This sounds really frustrating.
Different diets do suit different people though as we are not all made the same in terms of our genetics etc

Have you tried low carb/keto/paleo

Can you reduce your UPF intake any further?

Are you actively working to improve your micro biome?

Also do you have any symptoms of Hashimotos thyroiditis? It's very underdiagnosed by GPs.

Try taking measurements of your waist, thighs, hips and breast and monitor this instead of your weight.

I am not menopausal but had the same feelings about how little I seemed to be loosing in comparison to the effort I was putting in.

the exercises that I am doing is converting fat into muscle . I am overall healthier and my body fat percentage is reducing nicely it is just not reflected on the scales.

I make and drink my own kefir, I eat at least 6 portions of veg a day. I eat very little sugar.

Keto might help but I'm also cooking for 3 kids (all back from uni) at the moment so it's very hard to make two lots of food, however I never eat the potatoes/garlic bread/bread with soup etc. I eat tiny amounts of pasta. If I eat carbs it would be a small amount of lentils or brown rice. Once in a blue moon I'll have a piece of sourdough brown bread sliced and kept in the freezer.

Are you weighing the food?

I think I had this tested when I had a bone scan last year and it was normal.

Yes!

I feel great. Really healthy and plenty of energy. I'm just fat!!

You've lost 10 pounds since Xmas so you know that you can lose weight - how much more do you want to lose?

And are you sure you're really eating so few calories and not losing weight - I've been doing MFP and low-carbing for 10 years and I must admit do kid myself from time to time and not log things! Exercise makes very little difference to weight I'm afraid, as I know, especially just 30 minutes.

I've been losing/gaining the same 7 pounds for the past few years - that's just how it goes for those of us who have to watch our weight!

I am experiencing this and the only thing that has helped is started weight training at home. My husband helps me do it.

I am converting fat to muscle and also losing pounds. It obviously isn’t a quick solution.

The other thing that has made a huge difference to me is to stop Tea and Coffee mid morning and swap to water or green tea. I hate the taste of green tea but I have found it helps quite a lot

A typical day is

Nothing until 12.30, sometimes 1, except black coffee and herb tea.

Then yesterday I had a 2 egg omelette with 25g of cheddar, some mushrooms on a bed of green veg, kale, spinach, peas.

Some Greek yogurt and a few berries. An apple.

Then it was the football and everyone had pizza. I had the M and S spicy prawn ultra thin pizza which has less than 400 cals. A no alcohol beer.

Today I've put that pound back on!

read "why we eat too much" by andrew jenkinson

Are you really overweight though? What's do you weigh, how tall are you and what should you way, not what do you want to weigh. It is really hard to lose weight in our 50s. A menopausal nutritionist might help. As for the kids, they've been feeding themselves at Uni, let the sort themselves out.

How much do you weigh and how tall are you, how much exercise do you do in a day?

I need to lose another stone and a bit. I'm 5.7 and weigh 13.1 stone. I was 13.12 in Jan.

I keep flitting from 12.13 to 13.1!

I make a family dinner in the evening which we all really enjoy. They do all the rest themselves. They are all working during the day as is dh (I am retraining and at college but it's finished for the summer). We all love our family meals and I don't mind doing them. They are girls and in the past I've worried about obviously dieting in front of them but now I frame it as eating healthily.

Half hour isn't much. I need to walk over an hour to do 8000 steps let alone 10,000.

I'm shorter than you and around the same size but a few years back was heavier and did 1200 cals and what I wanted at weekends but was doing C25K, HIT class, pirates and then the gym for a while and did lose a stone in about a month.

I'm recovering from a few broken bones and pretty unfit. Walking up a steep hill every day for 30 mins is helping me to get back into exercise. I am considering a personal trainer for a few sessions though, so hopefully that will help.

Have you considered weight based exercise instead? Or just bodyweight exercises without weights? You may not lose much weight but you can drop size instead.

I do 10000 steps a day but mostly it's wandering about - I do walk the dog as well but she's very old and pottery so our walls are very slow!

Your TDEE at 5'7" and 13 stone is around 1700 calories a day at a sedentary level which sounds like you are - half an hour walking is only going to burn about 100 calories so not really worth factoring in.

I am 54, on HRT and have no underlying health issues and have lost nearly 4 stone in various chunks over the last 3 years or so.

The last bit of weight I lost I averaged eating 1500 calories a day (I ate anything and everything and have never cut out a food group other than alcohol) and added about 700-800 calories of active calories. My TDEE is around 1500-1600 calories a day but with the active calories I got up to about 2300-2400 and eating only 1500 gave me the deficit to lose an average of 1.7lbs a week for 10 weeks.

I did stall for about 4 weeks in the middle of the 10 weeks - that's frustrating but it happens, weight loss isn't linear.

You MUST be under calculating your intake of food across the week, which is very easy to do and I see it all the time on threads like these. People often give an example of a day when they have eaten practically nothing but they miscalculate something when going out for dinner, miss a snack here and there, don't weigh things (a slice of bread can easily be 20% more than the packet says it is) etc and all of these little things can easily mean across the week your average is higher than you think and you are just maintaining your TDEE weight.

You might be eating too little actually. When we do our bodies metabolism slows down. You shouldn't gain weight whilst undereating but it can definitely hinder weightloss. I would eat a little more, but keep it healthy like you are doing, and move a little more. Maybe cycle or swim?

The only thing that worked for me (pre -mounjaro) was keto. Have you tried reducing carbs?

Yes presumably this is what's happening, although I'm really strict about MFP.

When I was 54 I found it loads easier to lose weight!

Yes. In fact weirdly I went back on the mumsnet boot camp last year and didn't lose any weight at all. It's like my body is literally stuck at this weight!!

Maybe I need to check my scales...however the photographic evidence is that I'm fat.