Yes I can identify! I have gained 22 lbs in total. The only thing which I found helped was a combo of the 5:2 diet and intermittent fasting. I have lost about 7 lbs now on the scale but funny enough my clothes still feel tight especially around my hips and thighs...I am on HRT. I walk and do pilates and eat VERY careful. What a nightmare!
Hang in there. 7 pounds (about 3kg) probably isn't enough weight to really notice much difference in your clothes yet. It also depends on where you have lost the weight from. Keep doing what you're doing and don't lose motivation just because you can't see it in your clothes yet because you will pretty soon.
I put on a lot of weight over the last 5 years or so, mainly because of the depression I experienced because of health issues (not just meno), and I basically lost all interest in exercising and eating the right food. I've now been doing Weight Watchers since just before Christmas and I've now lost about 7kg (about 15 pounds) and it's only really in the last month or two that I actually started to notice a difference in my clothes. You really need to lose at least 5kg (about 11 pounds) before you start to notice a difference.
To be honest, for years I've been one of those people who has said it was "impossible" for me to lose weight. I've blamed menopause, metabolism, age, HRT, etc for why I couldn't lose weight, but in all honesty it was what I was sticking in my mouth. Oh I said I was eating really healthy meals, and I was, but it's those portion sizes and the mindless stuff you eat between meals that does the damage, or that chocolate bar you eat in the car on the way home from the shops that no one else knows about. Certainly it does take longer to lose weight now than it did when we were in our 20s and 30s, but then a lot of things are different now to what they were back then.
The thing I've learned about myself is that I need accountability and going to Weight Watchers means I get that. When no one else sees what your weight is it's always really easy to justify sticking that biscuit or piece of cake in your gob, but when you know that someone is going to be weighing you every week it makes you think twice before you have something you shouldn't. I still have a way to go, but I'm determined to stick with it until the end of the year.
What has also helped is that I've cranked up the amount of exercise I do. I used to struggle with 30 minutes of brisk walking, but since Christmas I've increased that to anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes a day, depending on whether I walk once or twice a day. I've also found that where I used to struggle with 30 minutes, that now seems like just a brief stroll to me now. I always walk for at least 45 minutes in one go, and quite often it will be for a full hour. I've always loved walking so that's my exercise of choice, but everyone needs to find an activity they like to do, because then you're more likely to do it regularly.
It needs to be a 2 pronged approach - what you eat and what you do. You can probably still lose weight if you don't exercise, but exercise will definitely help you increase your metabolism and that will of course help to burn fat quicker. However, exercise/activity alone won't help if you are still eating the wrong stuff (unless you're an athlete). The other thing we need to be careful of is to not DECREASE what we're eating too much. It's a natural tendency to reduce calories to lose weight, but that's not always the right thing to do. The old "starvation mode" terms gets used a bit too much, but we can certainly reduce what we eat by too much. We definitely need to eat to lose weight - it just has to be the right type and proportion of food.
