Why Not Losing Weight After 50 Is Not Your Fault

I get so tired of seeing so many people saying it’s something you are doing wrong that is the cause of you being overweight.

Here’s why not losing weight after 50 is not your fault most of the time. From working with women who take their health seriously and trying to do the right things, I know that losing weight is not as straight forward as you’ve been led to believe.

I wrote this to explain, why you can’t lose weight after 50 and why it’s not your fault. Our weight is a more complex issue than we’ve been led to believe.

It’s time to give yourself a break and some compassion. I’ve got ideas about what to do in another post, What to Do if You Can’t Lose Weight.

But for now, it’s important to understand why it may actually be almost impossible to lose weight using conventional means.

My solutions do not involve crazy diets. I am the foremost advocate for sane eating, eating enough, and eating food you enjoy. I only promote ideas that can be sustained long term and are good for you.

Being overweight is the result of many factors and of those the least impactful factor is your personal character.

If you keep asking yourself, “Why can’t I lose weight?” then this post will give you some clarity and things to explore.

So many of you spend so much time blaming and hating yourself and I want to help you change that. I know most of you have been trying to do the right thing for decades. But so much information out there just creates more problems and doesn’t really address what does make us gain too much weight.

If you’ve been battling with weight gain that just won’t budge, you’re not alone and it’s not your fault. We’ve been taught for years that dieting is the answer, but the truth is much more complicated.

Here’s Why Diets Fail After 50 

Dieting doesn’t work for the long haul, and it may even make things worse over time. The real problem often lies deeper within our bodies, from hormone imbalances to insulin resistance.

So how do you break the cycle and finally start feeling better, inside and out? Let’s dive in and explore a smarter, healthier way to take control of your weight and your health

Losing weight can be incredibly frustrating, especially when the standard dieting advice just doesn’t work.

The reason many women struggle with weight loss, especially after 50, is due to complex issues like insulin resistance, hormonal imbalances, stress, and autoimmune diseases.

Diets focused solely on calorie reduction and restriction can actually harm your body in the long run. Instead of continuing to follow old advice, it’s important to nourish your body with proper meals, focus on reducing sugar, and address underlying health issues.

This is really important. Even if losing weight is difficult it is very important to take care of your body and health. As bad as it might feel now, if you keep gaining, you are going to feel worse.

Making sustainable changes to how and what you eat, combined with a better understanding of your body’s needs, is key to long-term well-being and achieving a healthier weight.

Why Losing Weight Feels Impossible

There are many reasons why losing weight feels impossible despite your best efforts. Here are some things that you need to be aware of.

We have all grown up in the grip of diet culture. What I mean by this is that we have been told since we were little that thin is better and the way to get thinner is by dieting.

However, study after study shows that dieting is ultimately ineffective. While you could lose weight, the weight is almost always regained and sometimes a little extra.

This isn’t because you suddenly got lazy or are unmotivated. Our bodies are designed to keep a steady weight. We don’t usually gain fast and it is really hard to lose weight.

And as you get older, you may find it’s harder than ever to even lose weight in the first place.

Since I’ve been writing about weight loss; I have always promoted eating food and enough food that you don’t feel miserable.

Because diets that are only calorie deficit are especially insidious. You starve yourself, lose the weight, and then gain it back, adding a little more damage to your body each time.

So, for most of you, trying to lose weight is frustrating, disappointing, and incredibly discouraging.

Now, this is important to hear too.

Even though losing weight is not straightforward like we have been taught, it is still very important to eat nutritious food, stop the gain, and take care of yourself.

What I see instead is women who give up on dieting and also give up on trying to nourish themselves and you continue gaining a little year after year.

I’ve written over 50 posts on what to do instead. I promote eating in a way that nourishes your body and gives you the best chance of losing weight naturally.

However, after your best efforts, and I don’t mean a few weeks of trying, I mean a few months of trying, you may not see any weight loss.

This is no reason to give up. Even women who don’t initially lose weight easily can get these results:

• Less pain
• More energy
• Smaller sized clothes
• Better boundaries (you’d be surprised how often women base their eating on other people in some way or because of other people)

If this is the first post of mine you find, and you want to try a sane way of eating, that will not do more harm, then I recommend reading these three posts to get an idea of what I write and coach on.

10 Tips to Lose Weight After 50

What to Do When You Aren’t Losing Weight

What Stops Sugar Cravings

If you have been trying to lose weight but it’s not budging, here are some other things you can look into.

Why Women Don’t Lose Weight

If you are like most women, you are a long-time dieter who has been obsessed with weight management since you were young. 

So, there are definitely things under your control, which is what the above posts talk about. However, there are body functions that work against you when it comes to losing weight.

But most of these issues are a direct result of modern eating habits and nutrition. I don’t even think that’s your fault. 

We really have grown up with a faulty premise to weight loss. It’s so bad that most doctors will tell you to lose weight and just say some version of “eat less.”

Like we don’t all know that!

Look if anything that was talked about weight-loss wise was helpful, then we wouldn’t have an obesity epidemic. From my experience every woman wants to be at a healthy weight and usually has plenty of motivation and desire.

However, the current recommendations of using a low-calorie diet, or a restrictive diet tend to backfire and end up causing us to become less able to lose weight and easier to gain weight.

It’s really unfair and it’s really not your fault.

So What is the Cause of Diet Failure if It’s Not Me?

From everything I have read, our diets, which are often high in sugar and processed grains, lead to a disruption in how our bodies digest and metabolize food.

Instead of being able to use a combination of the food we eat and our fat stores for energy, our body relies only on the food we eat and continues to store more and more fat.

No amount of dieting will fix this and can make a stressed body even more stressed. The problem is insulin resistance and that requires a different approach than just reducing calories.

The only two ways to address this without medication is to lower the amount of sugar and foods that act like sugar that you eat.

Restricting calories will not accomplish this.

The other way, often used in combination with the above is to practice some type of fasting. One type is intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating, which means having a defined eating window and a longer time that you don’t eat. More on that in this post, but I’ll also be talking about this below.

Fasting once or twice a week is another way to help correct insulin resistance. I’m not saying jump into fasting, but much of the world regularly fasts and it can help with insulin resistance.

I believe intermittent fasting has been a key tool in helping me maintain my weight.

Some Common Underlying Issues that Restrict Weight Loss

Hormones

For the most part, women can have trouble losing weight because there are problems with their food-related hormones such as insulin.

If you are looking at pre-diabetes then your weight is also a hormone issue and insulin resistance.

When you have insulin resistance, your body cannot access its own fat stores to use for energy and instead stores excess fat in the liver and then into the fat cells.

Autoimmune diseases

Autoimmune Diseases are common in women over fifty. This can seriously affect your weight and what you do about it. While having a thyroid issue or another type of autoimmune may make losing weight difficult, it’s still worth your effort to eat in a supportive way.

Stress and sleep issues

Most women have a lot of stress in their lives these days. Stress affects our hormones as well and can make it difficult to lose weight.

Lack of sleep is also an issue for many women whether it’s because they don’t have time or they find themselves tossing and turning in the night.

I often find with my clients, they literally don’t have time to lose weight. By that I mean they are living lives that have little room for rest or allowing their bodies to relax.

That always has to be addressed. If you don’t have time to plan, prep, and eat, then it’s really tough to make sustainable changes, adjust behaviors, and take care of your mental health. 

Food sensitivities

Many women have food sensitivities that can lead to easy weight gain. Wheat and/or dairy are two common ones that come to mind.

Do Any of These Sound Like You?

No matter what you are facing, eating in a way that nourishes your body is usually helpful. All of my clients report feeling better when they eat better.

Don’t let not losing weight keep you from taking care of yourself. Nutrition is important. Moving your body is essential. Binge eating and over consuming sugar is hard on your body.

Even though it isn’t fair and it’s discouraging, your long-term success is dependent on you doing the best you can to create a healthy lifestyle. 

Unfortunately many women are told that these problems are their fault and that they need to lose weight to fix it. Again. Your extra weight is a symptom not a moral failing. 

Body fat is a complex body system itself! And it is stubborn in its fight to survive. Honestly it’s like it has a mind of its own.

Every bit of general advice I see online, says to eat less, eat more veggies, and limit processed foods. This is not bad advice but it may not reverse the above problems for women.

How to Get Started 

Feeling better is a worthy goal too! Weight loss may happen at some point, but your body no matter what size deserves to be cared for with good food and enough of it.

Think about it this way, you cannot fix the problem of not being able to lose weight by doing more of the same things that got you into this situation.

You can however eat in a way that supports your body. In general, I always advise three things:

Eat your food at two or three meals a day and no snacking. Wait to eat until you are hungry and stop eating when you feel comfortably full.

Have at least a 12-hour break in eating every day. No food between dinner and your first meal of the day. If you need a small treat, eat it with your meal.

Reduce or eliminate all sugar, sugary foods, and processed grains from your diet.

Those three things are not complicated and they may seem overly simple. But really, was food ever meant to be as complicated as we make it?

Doing these three things always help my clients feel better, have more energy, and stop all weight gain. That’s huge!

When you have a good foundation, you can then look at ways to address the extra weight in a better compassionate way.

I guess the best way I can sum this up is that extra weight is a complex issue especially after 50. While we’ve been told it’s only a matter of not overeating, that is absolutely not true.

Most women I work with need to eat MORE at their meals. Most women need to eat more vegetables, protein, healthy fats, and fiber.

Cutting out stuff without knowing why only keeps the problems getting worse.

Understanding and healing your body will take time. There really are no shortcuts.

Even though it may be discouraging to not be able to lose weight easily, it can also lead you to better health for the rest of your life.

Best Practices for Sustainable Weight Loss

Food choices

The old way diet culture says just eat less and says it doesn’t matter what you eat as long as you are in a calorie deficit.

This has been proved over and over to not be true.

A calorie deficit can actually decrease your metabolism and make you miserable. An arbitrary number of calories teaches you to NOT trust your body. Why in the world would we believe that a set number of calories is right for everyone, every day.

If you engage in restrictive eating, you will be battling willpower and hunger all the time.

You can gain weight even if you aren’t overeating!

So what do you do?

In general, low carbohydrate eating and changing the timing of your eating can help a great deal. 

You could safely eliminate all sugar or flour products and get your carbs from vegetables, fruits, nuts, and beans. 

Most of my clients do not need to do extremely low-carb but most of them do need to eat less processed food and sugar.

So, food choices are important. Too many carbs, especially the ones your body can easily use for energy can cause weight gain. If your body can’t use all this energy, it will store it as fat.

The timing of your eating

For the past 30 years or so, we’ve be told to eat around the clock. Eat your three meals AND have snacks.

This results in a messed up metabolism. Our bodies need breaks in food consumption. That’s the only way our bodies can access their fat stores.

If you keep eating around the clock, your body will only be able to use the food energy and will keep storing the excess as fat.

The foundation of healing this is to begin to limit all your eating to your meals. In my experience most women restrict too much at meals, fall prey to the “portion control” myth. 

Instead, I believe it is better to eat two or three meals a day and eat enough that you feel satisfied, comfortable, and full enough to make it to the next meal.

When you eat like this, it’s pretty easy to not snack or eat at night once you eliminate hunger as a reason to snack.

Working with your emotions

Almost everything we do in life is so that we can feel better.

For what it’s worth, food is probably the primarily way we try to feel better. 

What I’ve seen in my work with women, an obsession with weight and food has become the way women avoid dealing with their actual lives.

Instead of feeling uncomfortable emotions, food is used for comfort and for numbing.

It’s important to realize that this is natural and not a personal failing. However, it doesn’t fix anything in your life and will ultimately make your life more uncomfortable. Instead you end up fat and still unhappy about things.

I hear it all the time. “I have a good life” and you probably do. But is your life today, the way you want your life to be.

Most women are living lives that are so wrapped up in what other people need, that they have lost connection with who they are at heart. 

Lifestyle changes

Believe it or not, your lifestyle can get in the way of being able to lose weight or maintain your weight.

These things can affect your weight:

• Overwork
• Not resting
• Poor sleep or not enough sleep
• Not having fun
• People pleasing

Often when I begin working with a woman, it becomes clear that they are overdoing in some way or another.

They might be working sixty hours a week and feel too exhausted to plan healthy meals.

They might feel it’s lazy to rest or do something pleasant, when there are things still on their to-do list.

They might be catering to partners, children, bosses, or parents leaving them without the energy or time to take care of themselves.

Your lifestyle change is based on where you are neglecting or abandoning yourself. This will make some of you cringe but the only way to change your body in a truly healthy way is to put yourself first.

You heard me. You have to be the priority in your own life.

I know, I know. You’ve been taught that is selfish and bad. 

But is it?

Why in the world should you come last? Your life is just as important as everyone else’s. 

It 100% is. 

For too long, many of you, and I would say most of you, put others first believing this is loving.

It’s not. It’s the most unloving thing you can do sometimes.

(I’m talking about doing to much for grown up adults)

You are saying at an unconscious level you can’t figure this out, do it on your own, or do it correctly. That is NOT loving.

Let everyone else figure out their own lives! 

When you begin to do that, you’ll see people can figure stuff out. You don’t have to do everything.

And you will have more time to take care of your own precious body. 

When Will I Lose Weight?

I don’t know. For sure you can stop the gain with the kind of mindful eating I’ve described. Some women will lose just doing that. 

Other women will need to really pay attention to sugar and carbs. Getting those low enough may prompt your body to access your fat stores.

If you have insulin resistance or an autoimmune disease you may need medical intervention. 

But having a healthy lifestyle is good for you because you can’t get there without addressing your physical, mental, and emotional health.

Do not fall into the trap of thinking if you can’t lose weight easily it’s not worth changing.

This doesn’t even make sense. You can be overweight and feel great. Or you can be overweight and feel miserable.

Here’s the thing, it is harder to figure out your own solution when you feel miserable. It becomes easier when you feel better.

My Goal in Writing This

I want you to feel good. I want you to feel better. 

You cannot hate yourself into losing weight. That never ends well.

When you love yourself and treat yourself kindly, you begin to finally feel better. When you feel better you can make decisions that support your health and wellbeing.

Instead of focusing only on the scale, you focus on so much more!

You discover the parts of your life that are part of the problem and you expand your capacity for feeling good.

When you reach that point, you can play with your diet to figure out what works best for you and your body.

This will change everything my friend!