Losing weight during menopause

pnrbor

2024 has been the year from hell for me. I don't know if I have menopause but I have the symptoms (to much prolactin in my blood, apparently caused by my head injury). The hormone changes have caused me to pick up weight quickly and I have picked up 7kg or so.
I need to really try to lose weight in 2025. Has anyone managed to lose weight during menopause systems. Any advise. I am even trying ozempic although it made me really sick and my tinnitus worse (also due to head injury).
I am so self conscious now and I am going on a beach holiday in April.

AnnPT77

Yes, if you commit to doing what's needed, losing weight in menopause is achievable, IME . . . despite what people say.

I lost weight in menopause, around 50 pounds (around 23kg) in just under a year, class obese to a healthy weight, and have stayed at a healthy weight for 8+ years since. I'm far from the only one to have done something similar here.

What's needed? Better balancing eating and activity, which is usually IMO easiest to accomplish on the eating side.

If you choose to go the calorie counting route with MFP, the outline of the process is to pick a sensibly moderate weight loss rate, get a calorie goal from MFP, log the food you eat, figure out how to most manageably reduce the calories your eating to the MFP estimate.

Once that's dialed in, stay close to the calorie goal on average for 4-6 weeks. Don't try to cut way below the goal: That's usually counter-productive. At the end of those weeks, compare average weekly weight loss over the whole period to your target, and adjust calories as needed.

Along the way, keep working on figuring out which foods and food timing help you stay mostly full and satisfied, plus ideally add up to overall reasonable nutrition (which is for health primarily, with at most only indirect effects on weight loss).

Adding some enjoyable extra movement - exercise or daily life stuff - lets us eat a bit more alongside achieving the same weight loss rate, while promoting better health. The sweet spot is movement that's enjoyable (at least tolerable and practical), manageably challenging, but not fatiguing.

If health conditions interfere with increasing activity, it's still possible to lose weight entirely through changing eating patterns.

The overall idea is seeking new habits we can keep up long term. Losing weight isn't a project with an end date for most of us . . . keeping at a healthy weight requires finding practical new habits we can stick with to stay at a healthy weight. That's a different mindset from "lose weight fast then go back to normal". "Lose weight fast then go back to normal" is the recipe for yo-yo loss and regain. Long term weight management really needs to be about finding a new, sustainable normal.

Best wishes: It's worth the effort, IME.