Weight Loss and Menopause

AnitaMccarron1970

Good afternoon, I am a 54 year old female and have struggled my whole life with weight loss but so much more so now that I am in menopause. Does anyone have tips that could share with me? Thank you

AnnPT77

Hello: Welcome to the MFP Community and this Over 50 group!

Unfortunately (?), I think weight loss in menopause isn't dramatically different in menopause than earlier in life. Also, metabolism tends to be reasonably stable from 20s until 60s**. It's still about calorie intake and calorie expenditure.

**https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8370708/

But it can feel harder, certainly. Some menopausal symptoms that some women have are things that make calorie needs lower (such as fatigue) or make appetite harder to manage (such as sleep disruption).

Sometimes, though, the issue is that weight loss tends to be a small bit harder every time we do it. I don't know about you, but among women my age in my social circle, it's common to have yo-yo dieted many times.

For much of my life, common ways to lose weight were oriented to losing weight fast, with extreme calorie restriction (or food restrictions that led to the same effect). Often, women would eat mostly salads/veggies (not much protein) and do a lot of cardiovascular exercise. That, with ultra-low calories, tends to trigger more than the minimum of lean tissue loss alongside fat loss (including depleted muscle mass). The effect is small, but when those tactics are repeated, it's cumulative.

After the "diet", regain often meant going back to eating patterns that were high in fat and carbs/sugars, still not much protein; and little or no exercise. Most of the regain would be fat as a consequence.

Perhaps it wasn't true for you, but strength training wasn't common among women around me until relatively recently, either during weight loss or regain.

Over time, that scenario compromises both body composition and fitness. At any given weight, we have a higher percentage of fat, lower lean mass. That in itself, plus the periods of inactivity, tend to make moving less easy and less fun, so we may move less, creating a sort of down-spiral. We also burn very slightly fewer calories at rest, because a pound of muscle at rest requires more calories than a pound of fat does.

A further factor that's common (though not universal) is to have a lifestyle as we age that's less physical. I don't know about you, but my younger life had more physical jobs than I had later, more reliance on transportation that involved walking/biking when young that became driving door to door later, less active social activities with age (dinner parties and theaters vs. dancing or sports), hiring out more physical home-maintenance/improvement chores as I got older and could afford some of that, and having completed a lot of the DIY home decorating/remodeling chores when younger and more passively enjoying the results in later life. I don't have kids, but those who do aren't chasing toddlers as much anymore, either.

Obviously, the less we move during our days, the fewer calories we're going to spend.

The good news is that all of that can be countered: We can focus on tuning up nutrition (protein being especially important), adopt a more well-rounded exercise routine (strength and cardiovascular, ramped up slowly to avoid injury/overdoing), and work on increasing the movement in our daily lives in addition to exercise.

MFP can help with the calorie and nutrition side of things. Exercise tends to be individual choice, but it can be fun as well as productive, IME. There's a thread here where many MFP-ers share their ideas for increasing daily life (non-exercise) movement without necessarily taking a lot of extra time in our days:

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

Not everything in there will suit everyone, but there may be some workable ideas.

Context for saying this: I'm 68 now, was 59-60 when I lost from class 1 obese to a healthy weight using MFP, since loss maintaining a healthy weight. I'm now in the lower 130s pounds (at 5'5"). I'd been in menopause since around age 45, put there by chemotherapy for breast cancer. That was followed by 7.5 years of anti-estrogen drugs that in some ways create a sort of hyper-menopausal state by blocking estrogen created by fat cells/adrenals even after the ovaries stop doing their thing. I'm also severely hypothyroid (properly medicated).

I found that when I committed to managing my calorie intake, and used a process that I thought would be sustainable for me long term (rather than doing that "extreme fast loss" thing!), I could lose weight at a sensibly moderate rate and stick with it long enough to lose the weight. Choosing a moderate path helped me learn habits (eating and activity) that made it possible to stay in a healthy weight range without huge investments of willpower or discipline. (I'm not very good at willpower or discipline, and I'm certainly not able to stay "motivated" to do hard things for the rest of my life!)

Generally, I decided I wasn't going to do anything to lose weight that I wasn't willing to keep up long term in order to stay at a healthy weight. That's worked out pretty well. For me, what worked best was to gradually remodel my routine eating habits, eating foods I enjoy that added up to a reasonable calorie level and kept me reasonably full and happy most of the time; plus adopt activities that were ideally enjoyable (at least tolerable/practical!) to burn some extra calories.

It won't work for everyone (no one approach will), but this was pretty much what I did on the eating side of things:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10636388/free-customized-personal-weight-loss-eating-plan-not-spam-or-mlm/p1

Lots of different strategies can work. For myself, I'm not great with the named diets with lots of rules (low carb, low fat, intermittent fasting, keto, etc.). As basically a hedonistic aging hippie flake, I don't like following rules. However, different approached work best for different people . . . we all have different preferences, strengths, challenges, lifestyles: Our weight loss tactics need to fit into that individual context.

I'm cheering for you to succeed with this: For me, both becoming fitter and losing to a healthy weight were huge quality of life improvements. Once I buckled down and committed, it was simpler than I expected (the mechanics) even though not psychologically easy every single second, of course.

Best wishes!

UncleMac

The dietitian who I consulted when I started my weight loss journey said the discipline of accurately recording food and exercise journal (like MFP) would be one of the best methods for affecting lifestyle change. Even now, +10 years of logging, it keeps me focused on avoiding overeating.