Debbie -- I do lurk here, but very rarely. (Usually only when I notice a good amount of traffic coming to my blog from this forum and want to see if someone posted a link.)

NiceKitty -- you are absolutely right! I'm 37, and I am not afraid to admit that I am dreading "the change." I already have to fight pretty hard just to *maintain* my current weight (let alone improve), so I can only imagine how much more difficult it's going to be as the hormonal wheels fall off the wagon. Looking at the older women in my family, it is a head-on collision with disaster. BUT, I eat and live very differently from how they do (and did), so hopefully I'll fare at least a smidgen better. I still expect it to be a struggle. A difficult, frustrating, and infuriating one. I am trying to build a good baseline of muscle mass now. It's not the answer to everything, but I think it's a very important piece of the picture, and will be addressing it at some point in the "why am I not losing weight" posts.

The older women definitely seem to have it rougher than anyone else. Of course I think hormones play a role. But I also think we, as a society, have misplaced expectations that a 60 or 70-something-year-old woman should have the body of a 25-year old. Especially if you've given birth, worked in or outside the home, done the vast majority of the cooking, cleaning, worrying, playing chauffeur, etc., for a few decades. That really takes a toll on a gal over the years. Plus, women with a little more meat on their bones -- not necessarily obese, but just not rail thin and frail/fragile/scrawny -- seem to fare better as they age. Maintaining strength and mobility is crucial for vitality later in life. You don't want to be one of these stooped-over little ladies who can't carry her own grocery bag to the house from the car. (Granted, we'll probably all end up there someday [if we're lucky!], but it should happen when we're 90, not when we're 65.)

I read somewhere once: "A low-carb diet will get you as lean as you can be, but that might not be as lean as you want to be." I do think there are other tweaks that can help things go a little further, but to really go all the way, I'm just not sure. All I know is, I'd love for Stephan Guyenet to spend ONE WEEK in the body of a post-menopausal woman and see how inclined he is to pontificate about eating less and moving more.

Aaaanyway, sorry for the ramble. The things I'm going to talk about for why people might not be losing weight on a LC diet won't be limited to women. I will probably mention more than once that older women have to work harder to get anywhere. And I was going to try to keep things brief...like JEY100 said, my posts are way too long. They take far too much time to write in relation to what I earn from them, which is a cold, hard zero. Just wanted to warn you, because I don't want to disappoint anyone. I was going to talk in generalities, to give people some ideas to think about, should anything happen to resonate for them. (B-vitamin deficiency? On a statin?) I mean, as always, I'll try to explain things with enough plain English so people understand why the things I'll mention could hinder fat loss, but I don't want to write a dissertation on each individual factor.

Thanks for reading, everyone! And yes, like I said in the comments, I'm not anti-scale...when it is used in an intelligent way.