I know we are hard on ourselves. There's no magic thing I can say that will make you feel better about yourself. I got myself out and walking when I started feeling crappy about myself. On edit, how awesome that you quit!

I shouldn't even talk about this.....it's just tonight, ugh.... tonight a party I had to go to, and I just felt so bad because nothing I put on felt right, and was not happy going to it. When ya don't feel comfortable, ya just don't have a good time. Happy I quit, but the result..... not so much. But thank you for the hug.

If you have a regular doctor there are different things you can do to help get through menopause.

Screamingmeemie is right about the walking...it's amazing what a difference even 20-30 minutes a day can make.

Sorry you had a bad time at the party...been there, done that.

Hang in there, a kennedy!

thank you, and I do exercise daily, wish results would happen overnight.

When I was 19 years old and weighed 120 lbs at 5'6". I wouldn't wear shorts because I thought I was fat. I wasn't fat at 120, and I wasn't fat at 140 a decade later. It was all in my head, and it was a lot of wasted energy.

Fortunately, if we care to do so, we can change our weight. There's probably a balance between caring too much about body image and simply wanting to be as healthy as possible. You can find that balance. Best wishes.

Thanks

Of course, you'll put on some pounds. You can taste food again and there's that oral fix.

You know the drill for weight loss: No junk food or fatty foods, smaller portions and exercise.

Now is your med team in your face about your weight and/or blood counts? If so, do what they tell you. If not, stop fretting. Unless you're three feet tall, you're not fat.

thank you.

I quit and put on weight. Can be painful buying a whole new wardrobe.

Once I lamented to my doctor about quitting, then gaining weight. His answer, "So? Which is better, a couple handfuls on the hips or lungs that look like sacks of coal?"

I mean you've got to change something in the long run or else the weight comes back but there are things one can do to jump-start the process.

Use smaller plates. We're conditioned to fill our plates then eat everything on our plates. The average person can cut their caloric intake by 25%+ by doing nothing more then eating off a smaller plate. I generally eat off of 7" round salad plates...if I want more food, I get seconds. It thus requires a conscious act: "Do I want more food?" Usually the answer is "No."

Get a big glass of water. This works as doubly-effective for smokers. It fulfills the oral-fixation, instead of eating or smoking, you sip your water. The water has no calories and has a volume, so by the time you finally eat, you're already full. I have water at arm's reach 24/7. A person who drinks 96oz. a day and consciously changes no other habits will lose about 5#/year. Really. Don't drink more than 100oz quickly though, can cause water-drunkenness which is potentially-lethal.

Fiber in your OJ. You know that quick-dissolving fiber powder they sell at the grocery and doctors recommend to elderly and middle-aged patients to maintain regularity and colon-health? Did you know using it will cause you to lose weight? Rapidly. You mix a teaspoon into your small glass of juice or a big glass of water while you're making your meals and it makes you feel sated faster. It also works to clean residual waste out of your system. There's some evidence it may lower cholesterol too. (As a side-note, if you can stand it...pulpy OJ is better for you than pulp-free.)

Snack. People who consume small healthy snacks when hungry between meals lose more weight than people that don't. I'm a fool for popped-corn. Also for fruit.

And the best one. Splurge. You're more likely to stick to any diet if you don't feel restricted by it. I can have once-a-day a ramekin (about 1/3 of a bowl) of ice cream, the highest-fat most-decadent stuff like Haagen-Daaz or a 3" square of frosted cake or 4oz. of bread pudding (my favorite). OR you can have some cheese and crackers or a reasonable-sized (the 3" square) piece of lasagna or a half-slice of cheese pizza. In fact, I recommend it. It makes you feel like you're not being forced to give anything up for weight loss. Because it's portion-controlled, it's a bearable calorie-load: <200 calories. It's an extra 15 minutes on the bike or out for an evening walk.

Just needed to be reminded of that.

She's under 4'11", weighs all of 95 lbs wet, had three daughters, does karate six days a week, spends all day standing up in her teaching job, wears a size 3 pump (find one of those!!! Bonus points for a pair), size 5 panties, and she STILL complains about her pouch. I went from 175 lbs back to my normal 125 over the course of a year. She never complained about MY weight. All she complains about is her "pouch". Sorry to bitch about it, but that's a typical difference between men and women. Guys can have a beer gut from hell and expect their babes to look like supermodels. Even if they DO look like supermodels, they'll still complain about their own shape. I've never figured that out and never will. As long as you aren't suffering health problems from the weight (which I WAS by the way), look in the mirror and think, "you got it girl".

I'm fat too, and I dislike it. I guess if I dislikedit enough I'd do the insane amount of work it takes not to be. But my life is so much more, and so much more NOW because I've learned that middle age is one of the richest times of life, when appearance isn't ever going to be the same as it was but will have its own distinctive nature that you can shape, and the you that you wanted to be when you grew up can blossom as doing the "right thing" and giving way to others' ideas of what you should be moves back.

Menopause is a royal pain. Oh well...