Post menopausal

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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