Newbie Here!

Mad_Mazza

Hi,
I'm new to this app so just getting feel for it. Would like to meet new friends who are menopausal and/or struggling to lose weight.
I've been on my weight loss / healthy lifestyle journey since the beginning of the month but moved from Fitbit.
I did join a couple of groups but I can find where they are now! 🤣
Guidance and inspiration appreciated.

cinderbay

It's me. I am struggling and in menopause.

nossmf

Welcome to the forums, both of you! (Obviously I'm not menopausal, but my wife's experiencing it now, so I can commiserate at least.)

springlering62

Welcome to MFP, ladies.

I joined post menopausal, at age 56. I lost over 40% of my starting weight, from a 22W down to a consistent size 4.

Take your focus off the word “struggle”. Struggle implies difficulty, or insurmountable obstacles. If you believe something is a struggle, then by golly, a struggle it’s gonna be.

I decided to treat myself as my retirement “project” instead.

This was my first serious attempt to lose weight. I found that reading these boards to help familiarize myself with the app, learn what’s a weight loss myth versus actual useful information, cooking and meal ideas, and most importantly, the support I got from other users here, well, all took “struggle” out of the equation.

It became simply a matter of numbers, and then of how what I did (or didn’t do) affected those numbers.

I’m in year four of maintenance now, and the bee habits I learned and faithfully stuck to during loss have served me well during maintenance. No yo-yo’ing, other than four or five pounds at worse, following international trips. Those easily came back off when I got back to plan.

I am a boring old suburban, formerly-obese mom and grandma. I ain’t nothing special.

If I can do this, you can do this.

How can we help you get started and stick to it?

springlering62

pS- I listened to an absolute lightning bolt of a podcast a couple weeks ago. I think it was from the fascinating British Betwixt the Sheets podcast, which is about (weird as it sounds) sex and social mores throughout history.

They had a professor whose take on long-held beliefs about menopause, periods etc came from men, dating back to Roman physicians. They didn’t know what to make of women’s bodies and came up with whacko ideas, the best they could do in that age, but these beliefs evolved and grew through out the dark and Middle Ages, and are now accepted as “fact”, and are one of reasons medicine- even female doctors- are now trained to brush off various womens’ health complaints as irrational, “hysterical”, or to simple attribute them to change if life. We’ve been taught to buy into this whole mindset of fading healthwise and shrinking into the background after menopause.

It was absolutely galvanizing. I’m about as far from feminist as you can get (don’t spend any time worrying about it to be honest, unlike my millennial kids) but it was like I’d been hit by electricity. It just made sense. And it actually made me mad.

Highly recommend looking it up.

AnnPT77

Ditto to pretty much everything @springlering62 said up there. I'm not as impressive as she is in ever so many ways, but I did lose from obese to healthy weight here back in 2015-16 at age 59-60, and I've been here maintaining a healthy weight since, now age 68. (I'd been menopausal for around 15 years at 59, meno brought on by chemotherapy at 45. I'm also severely hypothryroid (medicated), if that matters - I think it doesn't.)

I was surprised that weight loss was as straightforward as I found it to be. It wasn't psychologically easy every second, of course, but the mechanics were quite simple. On top of that, the benefits (in quality of life improvement) exceeded any expectations. I could kick myself for not doing it decades earlier.

I have to be honest, it kind of surprises me when new folks starting out here seek friends who are also just starting out (or struggling). Like Springlering62, I learned SO MUCH from people here who'd been in similar circumstances, and who had already succeeded. I even learned from people who hadn't been in my circumstances ever, but who succeeded with particular goals I had that they had shared, and succeeded with.

Participating in the Community, especially reading but also posting questions, can be very valuable, in my experience. The groups and challenges are a way to do that, too.

I understand the value of peer support, so I guess I get the "join up with fellow new folks" in that regard.

If you can't find your groups (and they're literally groups), you should be able to find a "my groups" link. I don't know whether you're using web browser MFP or the phone/tablet app.

In web MFP, when you have your browser view full screen, many pages will have a "Quick Links" box near the upper right. You can click on "My Discussions" there. In the phone/tablet app, when you're in the Community area, click on the 3-lines icon near the upper left, then click "Groups". As you scroll down, there's a section where "My Groups" are listed.

This might be a hint to one of them for you , this time around:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48064553/#Comment_48064553

Don't worry, I'm not stalking you. I just used the Community search function, as any of us can do, to help you with this. :flowerforyou:

You can use that search to find threads you've participated in, too, in case some aren't formally set up as groups. (There are other ways to find threads you've posted in recently; this is just one.