Hi! i'm 38 years old. i have quit smoking in October last year, and this had caused me moving from overweight area to obese.

[Nadya]

I'm 164 cm, my weight in October last year 75 kilos, and now 83 kilos. i'm really upset and frustrated. my eating habits haven't changed since October, i'm also very active - i jog at least 3 times a week, also do one 10K race a month. but my weight is still going up. i checked my thyroid and results are normal.. i'm eating healthily, avoiding carbs after 5PM, lots of vegetables, fruits only before lunch, but the weight is keep on going up. Advice anyone?

Nadya

[Hidden]

Hi Nadya,

You sound quite active and I'm wondering if your size is going up, or just your weight.

Remember it's very important to keep up a food intake that has the full range of nutrients and sometimes when people cut the carbs too much, they push their diets into being too protein heavy.

You do need carbs to replenish your glycogen stores. And you do need some fats in order to get your EFAs and things like that.

The game is to create a calorie deficit and then try to encourage your body to resolve that by burning more fat, as much as is possible, rather than glycogen.

I sneakily suspect that perhaps you need to look at your eating regime. as perhaps you are going too long without food and thereby triggering your body into a low blood sugar situation and into fat storage mode. You seem to be doing quite a bit of serious exercise that that will be upping your heart rate and generally the faster the heart rate, over about that caused by a brisk walk, the more glycogen - rather than fat - will be used by your body.

Perhaps a read around the NHS live well lose weight pages and the NHS live well good food pages would be helpful for you. The nutrition stuff and the eatwell plate are good advice.

It is also possible that you might just be gaining muscle, but really only you can tell. If you stand in front of the mirror and you look more like teletubbie than olympic athlete, then muscle gain is unlikely to be the problem. And you can have muscle that is still sheathed in fat, too!

My advice would be to have a good long serious look at your food intake. Perhaps you're not fully counting your food consumption or your calorie intake, which are common causes of not achieving the calorie deficit.

Or perhaps you are achieving the calorie deficit, but not the fat burn by allowing your blood sugar to go too high (perhaps with sugar 'spikes' from "energy" drinks) and/or too low, or for some other reason such as stress, lack of sleep, etc., etc.

Good luck with your weight loss efforts.

And well done on kicking the smoking habit.

I consider giving up smoking - now many years ago - as being one of my best ever life decisions.