Less than 4 weeks in but stalled for the last 9 days

Sounds like your doing amazing to me, I've loss 28.2 lbs so far and its been on average 4 lbs loss a month and I'm bigger than you. Exactly as you said it not linear, some weeks I've been up then down, I count the total loss by month because if I really focus on the daily or weekly I would be frustrated.

You seem to have this though, keep pushing forward. And things will start to move again, don't expect big losses weekly though at your weight that's a lot of loss per week. And usually in the beginning of making changes alot of us drop big pounds for it to slow down to smaller losses per week.

Take care

Women who are in peri-menopause (approx 10 years before menopause) or in menopause often find they have to do things different to lose weight than before.

In this age range, carbs and alcohol might be having a larger impact than they did when you were younger. Look back through your diary to find high net carbs days (or big alcohol days) vs your weigh in 2-3 days later.

I'd recommend that you try a few weeks of keto to see if that helps moving you along.

Best of luck!

As a point of interest I've lost 3lbs in the past 3 days, after not losing at all for the previous month. I mean per the scale that is.

I did not drop 3lbs of fat in 3 days.

I started my period and my body dropped water weight that it was hanging onto. That allowed the scale to show the actual fat loss I had achieved over the month.

LoraMora wrote: »

kshama2001 wrote: »

This wouldn't be related to FAT loss though, would it? I'm peri and have bigger WATER weight swings. (I know it's water because I have full confidence in my food logging and that six pound gain around ovulation certainly was not due to consuming 21,000 extra calories.

My scale goes up and down. When it goes up, it doesn't just collapse down again - I have to work it back down.

I made a huge effort to lose 10 pounds about 2 years ago, and was very good for 22 weeks to only lose 4 pounds. When mustering up the gumption for another try, I researched a lot on why women around 50 can't lost weight. My research pointed to intermittent fasting and Keto making a difference for women our age, who are not making much if any estrogen or other hormones anymore.

I'm a few weeks in this time and I've developed an excel spreadsheet with graphs and charts to try to pick out causes vs effects. I've charted calories, how many carbs (and net carbs), exercise hours and other details. I've been finding my scale goes up 2 days after a higher carb day. It doesn't come back down again without the work to get it back down.

I'm still in the stage of gathering the metadata on myself so I can develop reports to gain more insight on how to succeed with my health for the rest of my life, but so far it's pointing to Keto, intermittent fasting & a significant reduction of alcohol. I loved to enjoy a glass of wine most nights and now I'm limiting to one per week or less or else my results are sabotaged.

You will have to study options and study yourself to figure out the new you. I can only saw what I'm finding about me, but it might not be universal to every woman who's approaching 50.

It's definitely not universal *over* 50. I lost weight fine at age 59-60. I honestly don't pay attention to carbs (for me, protein & fat are minimums; carbs are to balance . . . or sometimes alcohol, within reason). Looking backward, I ate just under 50% carbs through losing 50+ pounds in a bit less than a year, and have done likewise for 5+ years since, still maintaining a healthy weight. I ate (and still eat) pretty freely through my waking hours, including right up to bedtime. (I never fasted, unless you count that annoying colonoscopy prep sort of stuff.)

I prioritize nutrition and calorie goal (on an averaged-out basis), but when those are dialed in, I do drink alcohol. (That was less frequent during loss, because with fewer calories available, it dropped off more often because of taking a back seat to protein, fats, calories.)

My scale will go up after higher-than-normal eating days, but it's hard to isolate the effects of just the carbs, because salt/sodium and calories are also in the mix, given my eating style, and of course I'm not carb-depleted at baseline weight, since I routinely eat close to 250g of them daily these days (more like 150 during loss). It's true for me, though, that the over-goal eating weight spike is fairly quick (and often surprisingly high, certainly disproportionate to calories); then it does take several days for my AM weight to gradually subside back to its normal range. (I don't particularly do anything different to work it down, just get back to my normal routine.)

I don't know whether things would be different if I prioritized alcohol above nutrition, but I see no special effect on body weight from alcohol calories vs. any other calories, personally. (Resting heart rate may go up a bit for a day.)

Sincerely, it's great that you've figured out your personally happy formula for weight loss. That experimentation, observation, adjustment leads to a personalized approach, and I think that personalization is a strong contributor to success. If it requires lots of willpower or determination or vigilance to manage bodyweight, that's going to make things harder. Personalization can make it easier, and "easier" helps when going through periods when other parts of life get stressful, IME.

Every experience is individual to some extent, until we get down to physics. But certainly, different ways of eating can increase/decrease weight via water retention and digestive volume, increase fatigue so decrease activity (even subtle, spontaneous activity) and reduce calorie expenditure, can increase or decrease cravings, etc. It's a great idea to figure that all out, on an individual basis.