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50: Frustrated and tired

pirateslady819
pirateslady819 Posts: 2 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I have been an MFP user for years. I've never gotten on discussions, but I need some advice/support. Some background: I'm 50 and have never been overweight. I've always tried to take care of myself - I started working out consistently nearly 27 years ago, after my first was born (and when I realized I was a big girl and could go to the gym by myself). I always eaten well without depriving myself of some of my favorite foods. I generally try to stay between 1200 and 1600 calories per day and drink plenty of water.

Over the past several years I've dealt with what I call "pop up pounds" - I maintain a steady weight for a year or two and then, seemingly overnight, 3 additional pounds pop up and don't go away. Initially, I had to admit that some of it was muscle as I had recently gotten back into lifting. However, not so much anymore - I turned 50 last year and BAM! - another 3 pounds (and having to buy new pants).

Initially I thought something was wrong and visited my doctor - who literally said "well, you are getting older"! (I'm changing my doctor BTW). While to an extent I have to admit that may have some influence - I have always believed that I have the most influence over my physical well being. I am very fortunate to have a very nice gym in my office - and my workouts are my lunch hour every day. I do 20-30 minutes of moderate intensity cardio (elliptical/inclined walking, etc.) followed by a weight routine that rotates focus areas at least 4 days a week. If I work from home - I get on the treadmill for 30-40 minutes. During nice weather, I am very active outside. Nothing I eat or do has changed significantly in many years - seriously.

I am ready to give up, I work very hard and I'm getting NO result (the opposite in fact). I'm frustrated and tired of trying - but the kicker is that I won't quit - it's just not in my nature. So now I simply don't know what to do - I find myself thinking about trying certain "fads" that I never would have considered in the past. I've always believed that my overall lifestyle was the best approach rather than a fad diet. I just want to feel that what I'm doing is working and get back to the weight I was happy at maintaining.

Replies

  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,458 Member
    I generally try to stay between 1200 and 1600 calories per day and drink plenty of water.

    Are you sure about those numbers? If so, then you just need to alter that amount. Menopause is a time in life when weight does weird things for some women. I'd say do some serious accurate logging for three months (including accounting for your exercise.)
  • dcresider
    dcresider Posts: 1,272 Member
    I'm going through perimenopause right now and my weight has been steadily been going up that past 2 years, even with exercise. The key is to track everything you eat, or make sure you are getting enough calories with all the working out you do.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 35,342 Member
    I get that you're seeing periodic sudden jumps in weight, not perceiving a steady, gradual gain. In that context, how often do you weigh in?

    My reason for asking (not in any way meant as accusatory) is that my bodyweight will vary from one day to the next by 2-3 pounds, for no clear reason (it's just the normal water weight/digestive contents shifts a healthy body goes through), and sometimes it can be 5-6 pounds. That's on 5'5" body maintaining around mid-120s pounds, post menopausal (age 66). I do weigh daily (consistent conditions, first thing in the AM, put the weights into a weight trending app).

    Reason for asking is that if I did weigh less frequently, in periods of time when I actually am slowly gaining weight, I might think a scale jump was sudden, when it was really sneaking in slowly behind the scenes, playing peek-a-boo on the scale with those daily ups and downs. (Slowly gaining fat weight has happened for me, as well as slow loss, with ups and downs within the healthy weight range, over 6+ years of maintaining a healthy weight so far.)

    No weighing frequency is magically correct, and I'm not suggesting otherwise. But it can color our perception of what's going on.

    I'm also wondering if you're very petite: Maintenance calories of 1200-1600 would be quite low, even for an average height woman, with your exercise routine. Statistically, one would expect a 5' tall woman at 120 pounds at age 50 to burn something in the middle of that calorie range daily if actually sedentary, normal life, desk job, no exercise. So, it would help us evaluate the situation if you could give us a little more personal info about you, like height and current weight, for example. Without knowing more, it's hard to suggest anything.

    If that's an unusually low maintenance calorie level for your size, and you're confident in your logging accuracy, then I wonder if keeping calories low but sustainable has caused some subtle adaptive thermogenesis for you, i.e., whether you might be the type of person who could benefit from a so-called "reverse diet". Hard to know, since we know little about you.

    When your soon-to-be-former doctor dismissed your concerns, did s/he base that evaluation on blood tests, such as nutritional deficiency tests, thyroid function tests, etc.? Hypothyroidism does tend to be more common for women as we age (I'm severely hypothyroid myself, but medicated properly). It's not a massive calorie hit (most of it comes via subtle fatigue), but untreated hypothyroidism could account for the magnitude of change you're seeing, and that's just one possibility.

    There's some decent evidence that metabolic rate doesn't change that much from 20s until about age 60, statistically speaking, so I'm wondering how tuned in that doctor was. See, for example:

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34385400/

    With the resumption of strength training, when you saw a sudden multi-pound scale jump, I'd attribute that mostly to water retention: Muscles need to hold onto extra water weight to repair themselves, perfectly normal, and not either fat or muscle. (I usually see about a 2-pound jump if I resume strength training after a hiatus, but the amount varies individually for folks.) Muscle mass is a slow add, going to be less than a pound a month for older women, probably, even under good conditions. (Still worth pursuing, though, and both strength gains and appearance improvements can be quicker than actually adding new muscle fibers.)

    The other subtle thing that can happen very slowly as we age, though, is a slight but steady decrease in daily life calorie expenditures - not so much exercise, as all the other stuff. I don't know anything about you, but it's a common set of life transitions to start out in our 20s with jobs that have more physical movement, and gradually get into more sedentary occupations. When young, many women are chasing toddlers, doing various home projects to make a nice home for the family, and that sort of thing; then as we get older, we may start relaxing more, enjoying the fruits of those labors. Some young folks do more clubbing, dancing, outdoor fun stuff as their social life, where many of us as we age are having more dinner parties, going to movies/theater, that sort of thing, that's less active. Also, some folks downsize their home, maybe even move to a condo, once the kids have grown up, so there's less movement for cleaning and home maintenance. Even hiring out some maintenance chores we did ourselves when younger and more financially challenged can make a difference in daily life movement. I'm not saying that's you, I'm just saying some of those things are pretty common, and the changes are super slow over decades, pretty unnoticeable.

    As a PP said, 3 pounds gain a year just needs about a daily 30-calorie surplus, on average (if it were truly showing up gradually, of course . . . but the same could come from vacations or holiday eating or something, a little more suddenly, maybe still unnoticed (hiding amongst those water fluctuations for a while, for example). Three pounds is roughly 10,500 calories over maintenance. That's a lot extra to eat in a day or few, but much more achievable in a week or two, or a couple of long weekends, through some combination of increased calorie intake and reduced movement.

    One of the things I like about my weight-trending app is that it keeps detailed history: For example, I could see that mini-spikes from long-weekend travel each Spring was super-gradually bumping my weight up, which made it easier for me to reverse the trend. (I'd see a water weight spike after the travel, which would drop quickly, but leave me just a tiny bit - ounces, really, unnoticeably after one such trip - heavier as a baseline weight. Multiple trips, multiple spikes and drops, with that tiny baseline gain each time: Over a year, it's a small number of pounds, for me.)

    Again, I don't mean this as accusatory, and I know nothing about your lifestyle, I'm just brainstorming ideas to consider, saying these are theoretically possible parts of the explanation. If they don't apply to you, they don't apply.

    If there is a chance that subtly, gradually reduced activity is part of the picture, there are things one can consciously do to move in the other direction. There's a long thread about that sort of thing here, where people talk about ways to move more in daily life, some of which don't take extra time out of the day:

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10610953/neat-improvement-strategies-to-improve-weight-loss/p1

    Some of those ideas will be unappealing or impractical for you, but there are really a lot of different ideas suggested, so maybe something might apply. Regardless of underlying causes of slow gain, increasing daily life activity can be one part of countering it, especially in a "3 pounds a year" kind of scenario.

    Just a few thoughts to consider - hoping you can find a solution!
  • Bridgie3
    Bridgie3 Posts: 139 Member
    as you get older you need fewer calories to survive. less repair etc.

    you might have to lower your daily calorie intake? have you done a review of your necessary calories for maintenance? When you change your age in the calculator the calories go down... :(
  • elisa123gal
    elisa123gal Posts: 4,350 Member
    Sounds like you have your fitness routine down. It makes you strong and toned.. but not so much skinny. That's done in the kitchen. I am just guessing...but I bet you could be eating or drinking excess calories and not realize it.
    I hear the advice of logging (weighing your food) every single thing eaten or drank for two weeks and be brutally honest.and see where the problem could be.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 35,342 Member
    pirateslady819 wrote: »
    Thanks everyone for the words of encouragement. Looks like I need to really take a closer look at how accurate my logging is and see if my new doc has any additional insight (I meet with her this week). You’ve all given me plenty to think about and I appreciate it - I’m generally not one to reach out for moral support:)

    As it’s about to start a new month, I’ll check back with you in a few weeks to let you know how it’s going and if I figure out where the opportunity for success lies!

    That sounds like a plan - we'll look forward to hearing from you in a few weeks, hoping that it will be that you've found a way to get things sorted. Best wishes!
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,116 Member
    edited March 2022
    Bridgie3 wrote: »
    as you get older you need fewer calories to survive. less repair etc.

    you might have to lower your daily calorie intake? have you done a review of your necessary calories for maintenance? When you change your age in the calculator the calories go down... :(

    Not really. The body needs to do more repair work to start with as things don't work quite so well anymore compared to when you were younger.

    It's more likely a certain nonchalance related to movement. Younger people move more, have a more unsteady life, are more active in general - and hence burn more calories. Once settled many people get lazier, stop working out, drive everywhere, etc. Which leads to muscle loss, which leads to possibly even less movement. Remaining active seems to be the key, and not settling into a comfy nest and not getting out.

    edit: oh yeah, in women less oestrogen can lead to weaker muscles in the end. I wonder if this can be quantified in terms of calorie burn though. Totally anecdotally: Getting closer to menopause, I have no desire to stop taking the contraceptive pill. But still need to take a break every many months. Every time I do my muscles and joints complain (I'm hypermobile, and softer muscles = problems), and that's also the moment I would be able to do a splits challenge on facebook. Without training for it.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 35,342 Member
    "Metabolism" changes little, for the typical person, from 20s to 60:

    "Total expenditure increased with fat-free mass in a power-law manner, with four distinct life stages. Fat-free mass-adjusted expenditure accelerates rapidly in neonates to ~50% above adult values at ~1 year; declines slowly to adult levels by ~20 years; remains stable in adulthood (20 to 60 years), even during pregnancy; then declines in older adults."

    Note the "fat free mass" part. Inactivity = unhelpful, especially avoiding strength challenges = unhelpful.

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34385400/

    Full article is paywalled, abstract available free; perhaps your library has an online subscription.

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