Over 40 and trying to lose weight

My first question would be - are you keeping track of your foods in the journal? Exercise only helps so much - eating less is really key. Sometimes we think we are eating less- but unless you write it down, you don’t really know for sure. That has always been an important part of losing weight for me.

Everyone is different, but for me, stress (unconscious or conscious) drives my eating. Once my stress is more manageable, my desire for comfort eating lessens.

Recent research suggests that metabolism per se is quite stable from around age 20 to age 60.**

For many of us, what changes as we age is that we:
* Gradually lose muscle mass, because we don't continue to challenge our strength,
* Slowly and subtly become less active in our daily life activity (less physical jobs, more sedentary social life, sometimes hiring out home chores, etc.)

Because of those things, we burn fewer calories than we did when younger. It doesn't take much: Moving 100 calories less, or eating 100 calories above our needs daily on average will add 10 pounds per year. It's easy to do that without even noticing. Gaining 25 pounds in a year means eating the daily excess calorie equivalent of maybe a moderate serving of peanut butter on a thin slice of hearty bread, or a medium-sized cookie, or even an extra dollup of rich salad dressing.

Both muscle loss and reduced movement are reversible, fortunately - completely under our control.

In addition, people who've done repeated extreme weight loss efforts can lose extra muscle mass from cutting calories very far, getting too little protein on reduced calories, doing intense cardio but no strength exercise. Once that gets too hard, it's common to regain all the weight (or more), mostly eating fats/carbs (still not enough protein), and not getting much exercise. In that scenario, the loss phase loses unnecessarily much useful muscle, and the regain phase adds back pounds of fat but no muscle. Sadly, that's a common scenario for weight loss attempts, though I have not idea whether it applies to you.

I lost weight at 59-60, while not just menopausal but also severely hypothyroid (properly medicated), just by getting my calorie intake under control. I've been at a healthy weight for 7+ years since, same way. I was already active (even while obese), so didn't really change exercise to lose weight. For me, it was all about managing my food intake. It can work.

I didn't adopt some radical new way of eating, just ate the same range of foods in different portions, proportions and frequencies to hit the right calorie level for sensibly gradual weight loss. This is pretty much what I did:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10636388/free-customized-personal-weight-loss-eating-plan-not-spam-or-mlm/p1

That won't be perfect for everyone, because IMO no one strategy works universally, but it worked for me (and others here have been successful doing something similar), so it's one option to consider.

Best wishes - I'm cheering for you to succeed, because the results are very much worth it!





** https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8370708/