Frustrated

sheroncooke

hello peeps,

63 yr old woman feeling very discouraged trying to lose weight. I eat healthy, walk alot and ride a stationary bike and my job keeps me reasonably active. Since I went through menopause its been a nightmare.

sollyn23l2

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10942087/frustrated

If you really want to lose weight, you're going to have to track calories and make sure you're in a calorie deficit. Do you track your calories right now?

cmriverside

Yeah, I'm post menopause.

"Eating healthy" isn't the trick, it's eating the correct amount of healthy food to accomplish weight loss.

I agree with sollyn above. Log your food. Learn about calories and how much you need to eat to lose weight. It's not menopause, honest.

AnnPT77

I'll third what they said, as a woman who also lost weight in menopause (and while severely hypothyroid as well, though medicated for it).

Eating the right number of calories is the key. Yes, nutrition is also important, but has at most indirect effect on weight loss. Yes, exercise is good for a body, but pretty much just lets us eat a bit more while losing at the same sensibly moderate pace.

I'd also encourage not over-focusing on menopause as the root problem. Other than HRT, there's literally nothing we can do to change it. (I can't take HRT because of my cancer history, personally.)

If you have symptoms triggered by menopause, such as hot flashes, sleep problems, mood swings, fatigue, etc., there can be ways to counter those. But menopause itself? Nope.

Maybe other people look at it differently, but I think the only productive reason to focus on roadblocks is to plan ways to get over, around, through or otherwise past them. Spending emotional energy on things I can't change doesn't make sense to me.

(There sure are a lot of marketers these days, though, trying to convince us to buy their magic weight loss or fitness solution "because menopause". 😆 It's nonsense. )

I'm confident that you can lose weight, if you work at the process with patient persistence. Many people do. For me, the quality of life improvement from reaching and sustaining a healthy weight has been more than worth the effort it took to do it.

Wishing you success!

tulips_and_tea

Losing weight is only a "nightmare" if you make it that way. Slow, steady weight loss can be achieved fairly easily if you eat the correct amount of calories for your body and lifestyle. You can calculate it either daily or weekly, but calculations and accurate measurements must be done.

Once you get the hang of it it is actually the opposite of frustrating. It is freeing to see that you have control over your health and the food you eat.