Looking for other 50 plus menopausal women for support

celticcapergirl1

Hi my name is Karen. I'm 56 , a mom of 6 and going through menopause. I'm finding it very hard to stick with a plan past 2 or 3 weeks and the weight is coming off so slowly , that I get discouraged and go back to my old u healthy ways .
I want to lose this excess weight , I really do, but I'm getting so frustrated and can't seem to stay on the right path.
Thought if I can team up with other women around my age and stage of life we could support and encourage each other and be accountable.

AnnPT77

Hi, Karen!

I wonder what you mean by "weight coming off so slowly" and what the plan you usually follow is? (Rhetorical questions, you don't need to answer.)

A thing that seems to occur frequently around here is that expectations are unrealistically high (from reality TV, magazines, whatever, with the "lose 20 pounds in a month" kind of stuff), as compared with what many people here have done to lose weight in real life, and keep it off longer term. It's not unusual to see people thinking 2 pounds a week is really slow, when that's actually quite aggressive for most people IMO.

On the flip side of those questions above, it's also common to see people feel they need to give up many foods they enjoy in order to lose weight, eat only so-called healthy foods, do some kind of intense exercise, do some named diet that's way different from how they usually eat, in order to lose weight . . . also not universally true, and in fact those thing can make weight loss harder for some.

Now, maybe that's not where you are, and the problems with sticking with it are something different. I don't know.

I started on MFP back in 2015, at age 59, just over the line into class 1 obese. I'd been overweight/obese for around 30 years, at that point. I was in menopause, had been for years (since cancer treatment), and was severely hypothyroid besides (but properly medicated).

I can't recreate how I arrived at this, but I decided I wasn't going to do anything to lose weight that I wasn't willing to do long term to stay at a healthy weight, except for a sensibly moderate calorie deficit.

I didn't dramatically change what foods I was eating, mostly changed portion sizes, proportions, frequencies by noticing which foods didn't feel worth their calorie "cost" to me, in the amounts I'd been eating them. In that sense, I did change my routine eating habits.

I didn't dramatically change my exercise routine (but I admit I was already quite active while obese, so in my case it wasn't zero exercise - though I've seen others here go the zero exercise route, and succeed . . . though I'd always recommend finding some fun exercise, for people who aren't very active, because that's been a big life & health enhancement for me, even before weight loss).

It surprised me that going that route, while calorie counting consistently (even if over goal on the occasional day), made losing weight much simpler than I had expected it to be. It wasn't easy every minute, psychologically speaking, but it was quite doable. I could kick myself for not doing it years earlier, honestly. The results - how much better I feel, how much better my health markers are - have been extremely worthwhile.

Different things work for different people, so I'm not saying you should do what I did. I'm just sharing what worked for me, as one set of options to consider. If you read around the Community a bit, you'll find people taking lots of different routes. I do think finding methods that are personalized, relatively easy/straightforward for the person doing it, is a really helpful thing.

I do accept friend requests, but I'm kind of a sub-par performer on the MFP friend side of things, and we're at different stages of the process at this point. (I'm in year 6+ of maintaining a healthy weight, a few ups and downs over that time, but all in the healthy BMI range and the same size jeans 😉.)

I just wanted to stop by your post, say hello and welcome (back?), and wish you much success! (Success is achievable.)

Cyeargan

Hey Karen!! Nice to meet you. I am 60. Whoo hoo! Im a fairly active person who's world turned upside down last August when I fractured my leg and tore my MCL. The four months prior to that I was working out 5 days a week and feeling proud that I got into a regular routine. I would be happy to be an accountability partner if you want? I am also currently studying to become a Functional Nutritionist.