Menopause weight gain!

angiewunder

I’m 52 years old, in full blown menopause and I’m HOPING someone can help me find a community here on MFP. I’ve never struggled with weight until I started peri-menopause. The last 4 years have been SO difficult!
HELP!

springlering62

Welcome to MFP @angiewunder

Wow! “Full blown menopause” sounds like a dread disease, as we used to call it in my line of work.

Stop thinking of it as a barrier and a hindrance. It’s not. It’s your line of thinking that blocking you.

I was well into menopause when I started here. I didn’t know it was “supposed” to prevent me from losing weight. So it didn’t.

What really happened was I moved less and less and less, and when I retired, I was bored and filled that boredom with eating, boosting me well into obese.

I know it sounds trite but it all boils down to calories in/calories out, move more/eat less.

It really is that simple for most people, unless you have some kind of medical issue, and menopause generally isn’t that issue. It’s an excuse we create for ourselves, a rationalization to go down gracefully (or not) like our mommas did.

I lost so much weight simply doing that that I actually had to add some back. I’ve been down ten dress sizes, and maintained there for nearly five years now.

Read these boards, learn from the “sticky” threads at the top of each, ask questions, seek support here.

Oh and investing in a fitness tracker that will sync with MFP is flat out an investment in yourself, and your health.

AnnPT77

I'm with Springlering62 up there: Weight loss is possible.

But it isn't easy for anyone and everyone. Most people have some reason why "it's so hard": Too old, hypothyroid, movement limitations, don't like vegetables, spouse/partner/parent sabotages them, menopausal, eating in college dorm so can't accurately count calories, hyperpalatable foods that are irresistible, genetics, hormones, and more.

Looking around the Community, there are groups where people are commiserating about how hard it is. A person who wants them can find them, but I'm not going to point them out, because I don't think that's helpful (and do think it would be rude to call them out).

What I think: Mindset matters. For a person committed to a goal, the only reason to focus on obstacles is to figure out a way to get over, under or otherwise past them, IMO. Yes, some obstacles are insurmountable. If my lower limbs were paralyzed, doing Zumba probably isn't a realistic goal. But moving more in some other way may be. (Permanent wheelchair users have succeeded here.)

How to do that? Sorry, I'm going to write an essay, because I feel passionately about this, and essays are sadly what I do. Losing weight and improving fitness have been hugely positive quality of life improvements for me. I want that for everyone. I want that for you. I think pretty much everyone can do it, with a sensible plan. That includes menopausal women, and includes you.

I'm going to put the essay in a spoiler. If you don't want an essay, don't click the spoiler.

As Spring says, weight loss is going to boil down to calorie balance. There's ample scientific proof of that, and it's basically a confirmation of basic laws of physics: Can't make something out of nothing, can't make body fat out of no food intake. That's true for everyone, no matter the obstacles. If we want the goal, we have to deal with that calorie balance.

With aging, also including menopause, we may find that our calorie intake needs are lower than they used to be, and eating even less is not entertaining. We may find that our enthusiasm for hearty exercise is reduced, and maybe even that if we've been pretty inactive for a while, such exercise is actually quite difficult and some types even impossible.

With menopause specifically, we can have some symptoms that increase the challenges: Fat may gravitate more to the midsection than before, we may have sleep disruptions from night sweats and such, and more. Those are facts, though somewhat variable across the whole population of women.

Difficult is not the same as impossible, and there are paths that can gradually improve the situation. We can also pick a relatively easier path - something I recommend - which is more achievable, but is likely to take somewhat more time. On the other hand, sometimes an easier path gets a person to goal weight in less calendar time than a more aggressive plan that causes bouts of deprivation-triggered over-eating, breaks in the action, or even giving up altogether.

I'd assumed weight loss would be difficult, maybe impossible. While it wasn't easy every single second, what I needed to do was logistically quite simple, and it even turned out to be easier than I'd expected, once I committed to do it.

In my 40s, I was an inactive, stressfully-employed, recently widowed lump, pretty much, and class 1 obese. Then I got locally-advanced breast cancer, went through surgery-chemo-radiation. That made me even more lump-like and physically depleted. After that cancer treatment I was on anti-estrogen drugs for about 7.5 years, which create something similar to a hyper-menopausal state. I got diagnosed with severe hypothyroidism, osteopenia, a torn meniscus, osteoarthritis, sleep disruption insomnia, sleep apnea, high blood pressure, very high cholesterol and triglycerides. (By some miracle, I didn't develop diabetes.)

It wasn't fast, and was even slower because I did some dumb stuff along the way, but let's fast forward: I joined MFP at 59, lost from class 1 obese to healthy weight, an d have stayed at a healthy weight and in the same US size 6 jeans until now, age 69. Along the way, I'd become athletically active even while obese, which was one thing I did right, mostly by discovering an active thing so fun that I wanted to do it. (I still do it.)

I'm substantially fitter and stronger than most women my age. My blood pressure is solidly normal. My doctor called my cholesterol/triglycerides now "phenomenal". I still have arthritis, but pain is very much less frequent and severe. I can do home/yard chores easily that my 40-something self found difficult or even impossible.

I'm not a special unicorn. I'm pretty much a hedonistic aging hippie flake, with a super low budget of willpower, motivation, or discipline. I figure that if I could do this, most any adult who seriously commits to do it can do it, too. For me, that was the hard obstacle: Seriously committing. (Mindset. If I knew how to bottle and sell the way to flip that switch, I'd bottle it, sell it, make millions.)

I know this seems very hard. Honestly, just start. Get a calorie goal for sensibly moderate weight loss, maybe a pound a week if you have a fair amount to lose, otherwise half a pound to start. Yes, that will take a while to show up on the scale. It will also be . . . less difficult.

Learn the ropes, make that achievable, maybe you can increase loss rate later, if you have enough to lose to make that achievable.

For many of us, once we start to log food, and review those logs, some relatively easy calorie cuts will jump out. Work toward your calorie goal, don't try to undercut it, and don't stress if you're not there on day 1 (or day 6, or whatever). It's a process. Work toward it, and toward finding foods/timing that keep you mostly full and happy when reaching it. This is a long term investment, finding new happy habits, not a quick fix.

Down the road, figure out how to move a little more. There are ways to do that in daily life. Other MFP-ers share ideas about that here:

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

Make some easy changes, eating and activity. When those get automatic, add some more. Keep going.

After a while, think about intentional exercise. It needn't be miserable, punitively intense, or every single day. In fact, that kind of thing can be counter-productive for weight loss or fitness. Ideally, find something you think is fun, or at least tolerable and practical. Walk in the park, bike ride, splash around in the pool, a little ping pong, dance in the kitchen, take a class, whatever. Doesn't even have to be the same thing every time. Experiment, give things a fair chance: Lots of things seem impossible the first time, but become easier; and instantly easy things IME get boring fast.

For menopausal women specifically, something that challenges strength is a good thing. We can lose muscle mass, which not only burns a few less calories at rest, it makes all kinds of movement less easy and less fun, so we subconsciously move less. That's a down-spiral. Strength exercise can reverse it significantly. Weight lifting is the most efficient route, but anything that progressively challenges current strength can be effective, just somewhat slower.

For eating, daily life activity, and intentional exercise, my advice would be to build it all up gradually, evolution rather than revolution. Focus on experimenting, finding new relatively-happy habits, practice those until they can run almost on autopilot, then do some more. Keep going. It adds up. The big goal is not "losing weight fast", it's reaching and then staying at goal weight long term, plus getting stronger/fitter so life is more fun.

It's like a fun, productive science fair project for grown-ups, this process of establishing new habits. Along the way, not all individual experiments succeed. That's OK. Those aren't personal failures, that's learning things that don't work for us personally, so we can cross them off the list, try something else (improve our plan/habits). If we keep going, we succeed. Only giving up the effort is a fail.

You can do this. IME, the quality of life benefit is MAJOR, very much worth the effort. Gotta wanna, gotta commit, gotta keep chipping away. Those are decisions a person can make.

I'm cheering for you to succeed!