Post menopausal

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qjcz2kwh65
qjcz2kwh65 Posts: 2 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi, I’m DD Just started here.

A bit - ok VERY - confused. My entire life I’ve been able to lose weight when I REALLY tried. I’d fool myself for a while, then deny, then kick and scream, then finally, get on a calorie counting app and lose the weight.

This time, I did the same. Only kept on gaining. I’m eating under 1000 calories/day. Cannot drop even a pound. Have never been at 148 pounds in my life (my normal weight is i130) - except when pregnant. I did gluten free for 6 weeks. Nada. If I’m bad for a day, if I don’t correct immediately the next day, it becomes permanent. I’m sucking down water like crazy as well.

To be fair, I’m not an exerciser. But even when I did the 7 minute exercise thing for 5 days/week for a month, nada. It probably helped me as I didn’t gain anymore, but it never helped me lose. I was about to start Keto but I think that’s a bit too much for me. If I can’t have a couple of beers over the weekend (maybe a six pack all weekend?) I’m can’t get behind it.

So close to 20lbs up. And no end in site.

Has anyone faced this?

HELP. IM SO LOST!

TIA

Replies

  • qjcz2kwh65
    qjcz2kwh65 Posts: 2 Member
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    I neglected to mention that I have a lot of energy and I may not exercise but I have done 5 miles just walking around my yard making myself busy. This time of year is just a killer in New England. Hate the cold.
  • penguinmama87
    penguinmama87 Posts: 1,158 Member
    edited March 2023
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    Can you provide a little more information? How tall are you? How did you settle on 1000 calories/day and how are you measuring that? How long have you been doing 1000 calories with no results?

    You don't have to do a special diet or anything crazy. If you want to lose the weight and keep it off, you'll have to find something you can stick with long term. I wouldn't think about it in terms of "bad" or "good." Many, many regulars here, even those who have been maintaining a long time, have high calorie days. But yes, you'll need to learn and put into practice better habits most of the time.

    Depending on how tall you are and what your goal weight is, you might have to go quite slowly. If 130 is an appropriate goal weight for you, then I'm thinking 1000 calories/day probably isn't enough. But if you're only loosely measuring, you might be eating more, possibly a lot more, than 1000. It's a good idea to keep track for 4-6 weeks (at least one menstrual cycle if applicable) to see if what you are doing is working, then look at your data and adjust. A few days or a couple weeks might not tell you much besides water weight fluctuations (totally normal and good.)

    ETA: Just reread the thread title so oops, yes, the cycle thing doesn't apply in your case. But the basic mechanism of weight loss is the same, and it might take a few weeks for things to settle out anyway to see your basic pattern if there is one.
  • sarabushby
    sarabushby Posts: 784 Member
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    Regards not losing from doing the 7miunte workouts…. If you only did 1 x 7min circuit, once a day, 5 days a week, it’s no wonder there was no tangible difference in your weight. The calorie burn was probably around 30 calories per session so the same as forgetting to log 1 sweet or underestimating your cereal bowl weight.
    If you genuinely didn’t have any offset from those things you’d need to do it for 23wks or more to see just 1lb weight loss if you go by the straight maths (3500/30 = 116 /5 = 23) but in all likelihood I doubt you’d see any change from such minimal extra calorie burn.
  • sollyn23l2
    sollyn23l2 Posts: 1,638 Member
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    Just a note, you casually mention drinking as much as a 6 pack over the weekend. That's at least 900 calories, possibly more depending on the beer. If you're nor accounting for that, then that would easily wipe out your deficit. And 900 calories is alot to account for. I'm not saying don't drink at all.... but maybe think about just having one beer per day on the weekend? I'm pretty sure you'll see it become way easier to drop weight. I'd say the exact same thing if you told me you drank a 6 pack of soda on the weekend, for what it's worth.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,973 Member
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    Welcome! I'm 56 and may or may not be post-menopausal. (I no longer have a uterus but still have my ovaries, which are still kicking out hormones.)

    There are mistakes that people commonly make that cause them to not lose weight that we might be able to spot if you change your Diary Sharing settings to Public: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,740 Member
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    Keto involves a "borrowed" loss in the beginning which is "regained" every time you replenish your carbs and "re-lost" every time you lower them sufficiently. The initial big drop makes people real happy and the regains (whether adding carbs intentionally or unintentionally) often have a negative mental effect. you have to be prepared for that and willing to deal with it and to differentiate between long term fat level loss and short term scale loss.

    Do you log your food and drinks EACH AND EVERY DAY? The weekend is not "free", it is still part of your weekly deficit or surplus.

    You need approximately 3500 Calories of deficit to lose about a lb of fat reserves. With less than 20lbs to lose I wouldn't be trying for more than 0.5 to 1lb a week, i.e. I would be aiming for a total deficit of 1750 to 3500 Calories a week.

    I am always hesitant when I hear one or two drinks. Maybe a six pack. Reminds me of myself with a large multi kg bag of miniatures candy bars that I was logging religiously. At a time that I wasn't even trying to lose weight: i.e. it was for my own satisfaction that I was logging accurately with zero pressure. Only when I added up my logged weights over the week it took for the bag to run out... I had about 25% of the total weight un-logged. Verify your logged drinks against stash inventory and purchases to make sure you're capturing everything! :wink:
  • dvdiamond11
    dvdiamond11 Posts: 24 Member
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    Post menopause is a tough time for most of us to lose weight. Everything slows down. Add in any medication you might be on and that can slow things down as well. The weight will come off, just slower.

    A couple of things - 1000 calories is not enough to sustain.

    Depending on the beer you are probably blowing a lot of calories by drinking that many of them.

    Exercise is super important for all over health, but it needs to be with a diet as well. You can blow a great workout with a meal, or even a snack.
    The amount you were working out would not make a dent in burning calories.

    Are you tracking your food and calorie intake correctly? Are you recording every single thing you eat and drink? If not then I can pretty much say with confidence that is where your problem lies. Being accountable for everything we eat and drink is key to keeping our calories within range. It also is a great way to inspire us to eat more nutritionally dense foods and not waste those precious calories on junk.
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 9,970 Member
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    Obviously you got a few things wrong or you would be losing weight. Start again. Cheers.
  • lizabethcraig
    lizabethcraig Posts: 1 Member
    edited March 2023
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    First - DITCH THE BEER! I agree with those who say that 1000 calories is not enough. If you go too low your body will go into survival mode and start conserving calories. Go on line and find a BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) calculator that will tell you how many calories you should take in for weight loss. Here's one from Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/in-depth/calorie-calculator/itt-20402304. Also, step up your protein intake and start weight training. Forget those little quickie work-outs and fad diets; they're worthless. And the most important thing - patience! I'm 67 and had your same issue, and this plan is working for me. Slowly, yes, but it's working. Good luck!
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,019 Member
    edited March 2023
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    lizabethcraig wrote: »
    First - DITCH THE BEER! I agree with those who say that 1000 calories is not enough. If you go too low your body will go into survival mode and start conserving calories. Go on line and find a BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) calculator that will tell you how many calories you should take in for weight loss. Here's one from Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/in-depth/calorie-calculator/itt-20402304. Also, step up your protein intake and start weight training. Forget those little quickie work-outs and fad diets; they're worthless. And the most important thing - patience! I'm 67 and had your same issue, and this plan is working for me. Slowly, yes, but it's working. Good luck!

    Or, you could just use this site that you're on to calculate...that one at Mayo Clinic uses a different calculation. That calculator at Mayo Clinic is NOT a BMR calculator, by the way. It is a TDEE calculator (Total Daily Energy Expenditure.) It asks you about your activity including exercise and rolls all those calories into a goal number. That is not how Myfitnesspal calculates.

    If you are going to allow Myfitnesspal to set your Goals and you're going to log food here, you also need to log Exercise separately, it is not used as part of your daily calorie goal when Myfitnesspal sets you up. You also have to choose a realistic rate of loss based on how much extra fat you're carrying. Choosing an aggressive (i.e. "Lose 2 pounds per week") rate of loss is only for the most obese; such as being 50 or more pounds overweight.

    I eat a couple hundred calories ABOVE what Mayo Clinic says I should be eating for the most active of its choices, yet I'm retired and all I do is walk for exercise five days a week. I found out my calories by logging food over time and understanding how the calculators work. Don't trust any of the calculators, they are meant to be a starting point. Your own calculations and logging are the way to determine your goal calories.

    Just so you know the difference, here: https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032625391-How-does-MyFitnessPal-calculate-my-initial-goals-

  • age_is_just_a_number
    age_is_just_a_number Posts: 630 Member
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    I feel like I’m in the same place as you. I’m just about to cross my 1 year menopause threshold.
    I’ve typically been around 135. Two years before the pandemic I got down to 125 and felt great.
    The first year of the pandemic I didn’t gain, but the last two years I’ve gained and lost but mostly gained. Now I’m at 145.
    Someone at work said they are starting 75 hard. I looked at it and decided I’d do 30 medium (75 hard is just too big a jump for me).

    I’m tracking intake in mfp and I use a Fitbit for calorie out tracking. I do exercise daily and go for a daily walk (which hasn’t been daily through the winter). My goal is to expend more than 2000 calories and eat less than 2000 calories.

    My strategy is to track, use the fasting timer in mfp to ‘close the kitchen’ after dinner, drink water throughout the day.

  • sjharvey04
    sjharvey04 Posts: 1 Member
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    Is it possible you aren’t eating enough calories, and your body is fighting to keep the energy needed to just maintain, and not think it’s in starvation mode?
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,436 Member
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    OP, check in with your doctor, if you haven't. Get some relevant blood tests.

    It isn't simply menopause. Women lose weight in menopause. (I did.)

    You've tried some trendy diets (none of which should be essential to a healthy person, at appropriate calories . . . but they should work, at appropriate calories). You've tried some trendy (very short) exercises. The latter sort of worked, sounds like - you maintained, which suggests that if you exercised more, you might actually lose.

    We do tend to lose muscle mass as we age (especially if we haven't routinely done strength-challenging exercise), and will burn slightly fewer calories as a consequence. We also tend to have less active lifestyles (what we do in daily life), so need fewer calories to maintain.

    Both of those things are subtle, but they can make hundreds of daily calories difference as we age, potentially. They also conspire: Less muscle mass and general decline in fitness make it less easy and less fun to move (daily life or exercise), so we do less of it, lose muscle mass and fitness faster, move still less, etc.

    Both of those things are under our control. We can do some strength-challenging exercise, intentionally move more in daily life as well as adding calorie-burning exercise. Those things burn calories. Those calories add up.

    That suggestion to open your diary and have the old hands take a look - that's a good offer.

    (While a six pack of beer is going to take up a fair fraction of your weekend calories and limit adequate nutrition, I'm not going to tell you to ditch it. That's up to you. I drink some beer. It has down-sides. It can make me snack-y, make it hard to stay within calorie goal, maybe even make me spacey enough to forget to log some stuff (that can happen well short of drunkenness, for the judge-y folks who may be reading). I don't know whether it has any of those effects on you. As long as I count the beer calories, and all the snack-y calories, and stay within calorie goal, my weight does what I expect. And yes, I'm in menopause: I'm 67, went into menopause in my 40s as a side effect of chemotherapy.)

    There are also some stress-related things that can happen that can gradually increase water weight to a surprising extent. I'm not saying that you're fully the kind of case this article is talking about, but the article explains the stress-related water retention issue pretty well:

    https://bodyrecomposition.com/research/dietary-restraint-cortisol-levels

    But if you haven't, see the doctor, get relevant blood tests, maybe even ask for a referral to a registered dietitian.
    sjharvey04 wrote: »
    Is it possible you aren’t eating enough calories, and your body is fighting to keep the energy needed to just maintain, and not think it’s in starvation mode?

    No, that's not possible. It's possible to under-eat to the point where the body slows down some less vital-to-life processes (like causing fatigue, slower hair growth, maybe a little lower core body core body temperature, etc. - not good stuff). That will make a person burn fewer calories than expected, but that effect is pretty limited. It won't stop weight loss when a person is eating extremely low calories.

    There's more here about what can actually happen, in science-supported terms:

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1077746/starvation-mode-adaptive-thermogenesis-and-weight-loss/p1


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