I can NOT get below 11 stone

[PigOnStiIts]

My happy weight is 10 stone. At 11 I start to look porky (see username).

I exercise 12 times a week.
I stay under 1300 every day.
I am 50
Eat Keto

wtf am I doing wrong? Since I turned 50, like the very month I turned 50 I stuck on a stone and it’s not shifting. Also my periods stopped, so that’s been six months now.

I can’t exercise more or eat less so is this me? Is this the menopause setting me a new set weight? So pissed off right now! I just want to get into the 10s’

size 12, 5’4 and big bones.

I put your details in a TDEE calculator and it says you should be having 2000 calories. When you over restrict your body will adapt and your metabolism would slow. Dr Jason Fung discusses this in detail in the obesity code. Also think about how often you are stimulating an insulin response i.e taking in calories. Eating at regular intervals and that includes milk in coffee as it spokes blood sugar will keep your insulin high. Its very hard to access your fat stores when your insulin is high and constantly high insulin will lesd to insjlin resistance. Clean fasting with a smaller eating window and focusing on lots of protein 1-1.2 grams per kilogram of weight. For me that's looks like a big bowl of full fat greek yoghurt, nuts berries and seeds at 11.00 and then evening meal with my kids by 5pm and I drink water or black coffee outside of that window. But you can move an eating window to wherever suits your schedule. The idea is that when you are clean fasting you use your glycogen stores in your liver and then your body flicks a metabolic switch to fat burning. I would do this approach with an increase in calories personally. Fast feast repeat by gin stephens is a great book that explains the science and research well.

I also just read your last post and if your clothes all fit the same and youre muscly then it could just be body recomposition and your muscle mass has increased.

You cannot accidentally gain a stone of muscle from doing Pilates.

And the strength training would have to be really heavy , to failure, and consistent and accompanied by a calorie SURPLUS to bulk to that extent.

She absolutely could gain a significant amount of muscle doing pilates. Im a pilates instructor and am 11 stone and very muscly. If her clothes arent tighter but she's gained weight then why worry what the scale says. Its only one measure of health.

I dont know of you've ever done reformer or intermediate matbased pilates but you can absolutely work to fatigue and if she's doing that several times a week thats going to result in muscle

Stop focusing so much on the scales for a start, and people absolutely can be 'big boned. Having a large skeletal frame and broader shoulders and hips can add to your weight.

It sounds like you have plateaued on your current exercise regime , could you try adding some different workouts? If you working out 12 times a week on a 1300 cal diet, then it's not working (unless there is an undiagnosed medical condition)

Maybe try and incorporate some cardio? It sounds excessive what you are doing, could you try 3- 5 per week more intense workouts , than lots of light/moderate workouts?

A stone of muscle though? In a short timeframe? Hmmm.

Is there really variation in density of bone, enough to account for noticeable weight differences, between different people?
Definitely agree re width of bone structure. I have massive shoulders so for tops and dresses with shoulders I am never less than a size 14 even when my waist is much less. I am not sure how much impact it has on my weight though.

Are you retaining water? If I have too much salt (in fact very little is too much for me) my fingers swell up like sausages

Sticking to a low calorie diet long term will reduce your basal metabolic rate (see the Minnesota starvation experiment).

A couple of 36 hour fasts per week (not actually hard because it's only one day and the two nights you sleep through) and eating a bit more (healthy food not junk) on the day after the fast, and doing timed eating (so eating within a window of time - say from midday until 6pm) the other three days works efficiently for me post menopause.

Since peri and now menopause I definitely have to mix it up - doing the same thing all the time doesn't work.

I exercise every day but only walking (average 6km) four days and strength training three days - when I first started strength training with weights my weight went up slightly and then plateaued but only for the first month (water retention or appetite increase probably, although also when you've done conscious quite tiring exercise I think you unconsciously also compensate by moving less than usual the rest of the day!).

After I got used to it my weight loss restarted. I don't think exercise helps much with weight loss but is obviously important for muscle retention post menopause, and being more toned is motivating, and muscle burns more energy than fat tissue...

Too much exercise (particularly in people your age) raises cortisol which in turn could cause weight gain amongst other things.

Phew! That's the best thing I've read for ages! No more 🏋️‍♀️🏃‍♀️🧗‍♀️

My GP once said that women either lose weight and become thin or gain weight they can't seem to lose after the menopause.

Personally, I wouldn't diet everyday. I don't know whether there's any science behind it, but I think that your body just gets used to the lower calorie intake (plus I don't know how you can stand the utter boredom and drudgery of it!). I find that dieting 2 or 3 days a week is most effective for me (something like the 5:2, but I make up the rules as I go along). However I would drop the calories lower on fast days and not exercise.

Yeah… I’m bothered because I can’t see a reason. There isn’t enough muscle to justify it.

Yeah sadly I love salt. Gonna try and limit it.

Do you think ten Pilates sessions would do this? I am definitely more toned, there is no doubt I’m in great shape at the moment, so you think it cohos be a stones worth?

Like, I don’t care about the number just about the spiralling weight when I’m clearly menopausal now. Trying to look after myself

Isn’t weight loss 80% diet and 20% exercise?

If you’re 27 inch waist sounds like you’re fine as you’re way below the maximum healthy waist size for your height.

BMI is not fit for purpose in terms of being taken as be all and end all, and you’re right it can skew things if your bones are more dense.

Me and a friend were both super slim in our 20s, same height. I was 9 stone while she was 7.5 stone. You wouldn’t have thought there was such a difference looking at us. It’s because her bones are less dense.

The only thing I’d say though is do you have time to walk an hour a day? I think that could make a big difference, and you can scale back on the other exercise instead if you’re finding it hard to fit it all in.

What did you eat yesterday? This sounds baffling if you are exercising as much and eating as little as you say. I can only assume Pilates isn’t actually very good for fat-burning exercise (even if it is good for strength and conditioning). How many steps do you take a day?

@lechatnoir My favourites are; Pahla B (as previously mentioned upthread) I love her workouts although she stopped doing them a couple of years ago but they are still available on youtube.

Next favourite would be Kaleigh Cohen Strength - great variety, love these.

Others are; Bodyfit by Amy, Madfit, Eleni Fit, Oliver Sjostrom (for good cardio), Fitbymik.

For some lower impact cardio I like Lucy Wydhamk Reid and for Pilates I like The Girl with the Pilates Mat and also Amanda Tennant.

Youtube if fab, great variety of workouts!

If you are exercising so many times a week is it not muscle gain that is why you are weighing more than you think you should be?

No, not in the timeframe you give. It takes women much longer than men to put on muscle. Even women lifters and bodybuilders have to work hard for every single pound of muscle they gain.

No of course you haven’t gained a stone of muscle and no you don’t have big bones either.

you may have gained some muscle and you may have wider bones but the magnitude of effect of both of those is small. If your skeleton was weighed it wouldn’t weigh significantly more than someone else of the same height.

Theres big difference between having strong muscles, muscles that are visible and muscles that have been worked so hard to have gone through muscle protein synthesis to be physically larger.

Interesting article about how waist size is a better indicator of health:

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265215#Waist-size-linked-to-diabetes-risk,-regardless-of-BMI

Also adding to the chorus that diet is most important and I think 12 times Pilates/strength training might be too much and put you at risk of injury.

I WFH so I went through a short period earlier this year of trying to exercise for half an hour 3 times a day to keep active .

Big mistake, ended up injuring myself now I can barely exercise at all 😌 But I’m the slimmest I’ve been all year due to focusing on diet over the past few months. When I’m recovered i’m going to stick to walking one hour a day and swimming once a week.
I’m over a decade younger than you but still daily exercise (other than walking) is just to much for me apparently.

Hypothyroidism? Common for women that age