Struggling with Weight Loss and now I have high cholesterol

aliscol

hi, I'm a middle ages women that has gone through the menopause, I find losing weight, even through my diet has changed, a huge struggle and to make it worst just found out I have high cholesterol. Anyone have any tips on both really, I dont really want to go to down the route of taking tablets

yirara

Find foods that you enjoy and that make you full. Eat less of it and you'll lose weight. Don't believe those newspaper adverts that tell you it's possible to lose 50lbs in 2 weeks. Weightloss is slow and depending on your current weight will not be more than 0.5-2lbs per week. That means, you might not notice weightloss at first because there's so much more to a human body than fat. One massive thing is water weight that constantly fluctuates and can mask actual fatloss. A bit of constipation will influence scale weight. The clothes you wear. What you've already eaten and drank that day. All influences scale weight yet has nothing to do with fat loss.

Thus stick with it. Expect weightloss to be slow and find a way to make it as enjoyable as possible. If no weightloss after 4-6 weeks, preferably measured in the morning naked after loo and before food (and if still present the same moment in the menstrual cycle) then it's time to search for reasons why it's not working.

yirara

Oh, and use a foodscale if you can, and weigh everything with calories in grams.

sollyn23l2

aliscol wrote: »

hi, I'm a middle ages women that has gone through the menopause, I find losing weight, even through my diet has changed, a huge struggle and to make it worst just found out I have high cholesterol. Anyone have any tips on both really, I dont really want to go to down the route of taking tablets

Agree with everything Yirara said. I'll just reiterate.... track track track. Track your calories. Track your weight. Weight slowly moving up or staying the same over a few weeks? Decrease your calories a bit more.

PAV8888

aliscol wrote: »

I find losing weight, even through my diet has changed, a huge struggle

I am not sure if you picked a change to your diet that you want or one you've been told will help you lose weight.

Sometimes switching to more satiating and more minimally processed foods makes people consume less calories due to the food being more satiating (and in some cases more voluminous) and they "naturally" consume less calories and lose a bit of weight or stop gaining.

Losing a significant amount of weight will probably take some setup and will involve some effort. But many people go all in I will only eat a single slice of stale bread at night and then wonder why they find it painful to diet.

Pick a sane rate of loss. Very few people need to be starting at more than a 500Cal a day deficit which represents a loss rate of up to a lb a week when successfully applied. Very few people also have a TDEE (daily burn) where a higher deficit can be accommodated. Accommodating a higher deficit requires a great abundance energy stores (fat stores) and daily energy needs that exceed the level of 2500 Cal per day. Are you in that category? Your OP doesn't make you sound like you are.

Just log the food you're eating and the drinks you're drinking other than zero calorie ones with no add-ons. Preferably before you've even consumed them. And regardless of whether you've hit your targets or not.

At the end of the day or the next morning review your previous day and reflect on which items were worth the calories you spent on them for you. Both in terms of satiety but also in terms of other reasons they may have been appealing to you. The more commonality you can introduce between how you intend to lose weight and maintain your lower weight the higher your chances of doing so. At least that's the school of thought I belong to!

Whatever you don't consider to have been a good investment of your limited Calories, consider replacing it with something that would have been a better bargain! Go shopping for good bargains you enjoy(ish)! That should be fun, right?!?!

Then after using the bathroom but before eating or in any case in as reliably similar circumstances as possible jump on the scale and plug the number in a weight trend app. Consider your weight trend not your daily weight and if influenced by monthly cycles compare your weight loss to the same point of your cycle the month before. 500 Cal a day is about 50lbs a year or 4lbs a month. A cycle can have many females retaining more water weight than that.

Unless you are already very active in your day, if you can increase purposeful moderate movement (not necessarily even "hard" exercise) in your day.. do so. Your body will probably thank you if you trade some screen time for moderate activity time!

Do some research as to what affects blood cholesterol. About 70% of people are minimally affected by their dietary cholesterol (saturated and trans fats especially are suspected of having more of an impact on blood cholesterol for example). The remaining 30% are hyper-responders and blood cholesterol is more affected by dietary cholesterol intake. Do you know which category you're in?

Take care and best of luck!

AnnPT77

Good advice from those above, speaking myself as a post-menopausal woman who used calorie counting and MFP to lose from obese to healthy weight at age 59-60, maintaining weight since, now 68. (I'm severely hypothyroid besides, though medicated for it.)

If an undisciplined, hedonistic aging hippie flake like me can do this, I'm pretty sure other people can, too.

Oh, and I also had high cholesterol (plus high triglycerides and high blood pressure), with my doctor recommending statins I didn't want to take. For me, all those "high" things normalized during weight loss, when I was still technically overweight but down 25 or so pounds.

You can do this, and it will be worth it (in quality of life improvement) if you do, I predict.

PAV8888 wrote: »

(snip for reply length)

Do some research as to what affects blood cholesterol. About 70% of people are minimally affected by their dietary cholesterol (saturated and trans fats especially are suspected of having more of an impact on blood cholesterol for example). The remaining 30% are hyper-responders and blood cholesterol is more affected by dietary cholesterol intake. Do you know which category you're in?

Take care and best of luck!

One comment on this: This (above) is a thing to discuss with your doctor or registered dietitian. You might get a hint, though, if you know whether close relatives (especially parents/grandparents) had high cholesterol, especially if they were people at a healthy weight. High cholesterol at a healthy weight is more likely to have some genetic inclinations contributing to the situation.

However, the route to improvements still includes the same things: Reaching a healthy body weight, getting some exercise if possible (especially cardiovascular exercise in this case), getting overall good nutrition, avoiding artificial trans fats (hydrogenated oils are a common case) and managing saturated fats.

Best wishes for success!

Surrealmuse

My husband has high cholesterol whereas I've always been told I have excellent cholesterol. The biggest differences in our diets is that he has an addiction to soda and fast food whereas I regularly eat homemade overnight oats. Every four days, I make a new batch. My basic recipe is rolled oats, flaxseed, chia seeds, hemp seeds, applesauce, dairy/non-dairy milk (your preference), maple syrup, and vanilla bean paste. Then I flavor with different fruits each week like frozen berries or cinnamon and apples. The recipe while healthy can add up in calories quickly so figure out what works best for you and your fitness/diet goals. But the great thing about overnight oats is that it keeps me full so if I have a busy day I can keep going and eat later than usual.

You can also use yogurt instead of applesauce but it might be a migraine trigger so I've been avoiding it.

jraekeller

Dear Aliscol,
I'm sorry to hear about your struggles with weight loss...I know them well. I found a way to lose weight in a way that has not been discussed here. No pills, no deficit dieting, no tracking, and therefore it will be controversial on this platform. My advice is to FIRST of all read ingredients NOT nutrition facts. Seriously this changed my life and physique. I am 60 and I look better now than in my college days!! You will find ingredients that are secret killers of your diet. Most health food and protein bars contain these ingredients which are holding you back from your goals. I know because it happened to me. Google search the "names for sugar" and you will find 100's of names that are in your foods. When a food says "sugar free" it just means sugar has been replaced with another like Maltitol, Maltodextrin, Tapioca Starch, Potato Starch....so many to list. The only sweetener I use is monkfruit sweetener, Stevia drops, and sometimes Eurythritol. These are all zero calorie and sweeter than sugar!!
I found the hidden sugars in places you would never suspect such as, salad dressing, chicken broth, garlic salt, pretty much every single thing in my fridge and pantry had a bad sweetener even when sweetener is not needed in things like marinara, cheese, deli meat. Yes I eat cheese, full-fat heavy cream, cream cheese, sour cream, and other foods that are not usually recommended AND the weight has fallen off. I never choose low-fat or fat-free because that means high carb! I eat healthy carbs by the way. If you want to know more please ask. I lost 25 lbs in the last 6 months.

neanderthin

Eat mostly whole foods and breath heavy a few times a week from exercise and it won't matter what your cholesterol levels are because the people that live the longest don't have the lowest cholesterol levels and their overall health is good and considering cholesterol is near the bottom of the many risk factors, it's probably better to focus on weight, diet, blood pressure, blood sugar, CRP which is our inflammatory marker, elevated triglycerides et al than worrying about something that isn't going to budge much until these other issues are addressed first anyway.

From what I understand the acceptable levels of cholesterol are going to be lowered again soon, bringing the eligibility for statins even younger. Cholesterol is a big money maker with statins but the biggest is a drug that lowers that pesky inflammation and it cost 50,000 a year. Both of these are problems that can be reduced and eliminated simply by eating healthier and losing weight but somehow in general, that appears to be too much to ask, so then that reductionist myopic logic comes into play that tells people they can actually fix their cholesterol with just 1 simple thing, like don't eat saturated fat for example and all's well on the cholesterol front, crazy stuff but it's a damn good story to sell and it makes them a hell of a lot of money. imo

VegjoyP

I am 51,and when I changed to a WFPB diet, my body changed completely. Calories matter whatever foods you eat. From my experience, the biggest change came from not having dairy, chicken abd meat. High fiber, lots of vegetables, and using plant sources of protein( legumes, tofu, etc) dropped my cholesterol, balanced my crazy hormones, cleared my skin. Reduced inflammation and improved my digestion.
Whatever you decide, remember it's lifestyle change and long tet.term.. find things you like, experiment. Keep a food journal, scale for food and see what ages you feel the healthiest.