anyone successful dieters in their 50's willing to share their food journal with me

gizmosmom02

I am a 50 year old woman with about 50 pounds to lose. Are there any other ladies my age who would be willing to share their food journals with me to give me some meal plans and an idea of how to start.

ruralife

Hey, you sound like me; 50 yrs old and 50 lbs to lose, only I'm looking at 60 lbs. As for meals, I did this a couple years ago and it was the best diet & exercise program for me. I wound up stopping for a combination of health and personal issues but now am back at it.

Some of the things that worked best for me were:
- try to find healthier substitutes for anything I liked to eat or cook with (like whole grain pasta instead of white), toast instead of potato chips.
- cutting back on the amount of high calorie or high fat ingredients I used in my usual recipes, like less cheese
- increasing the amount of veggies in my usual recipes
- read packages at the store to find new and healthier food
- have pre-prepare veggies and fruits ready in the fridge
- bought a kitchen scale and used it
- measure everything for the first couple weeks. Then you get good at eyeballing something
- fiber, never really understood how eating high fiber foods like baked beans was so good until I started to watch every calorie. Then baked beans because my friend because they are rich and savoury, and filling. Also, a very handy food.

The way you can add your own recipes was really helpful, although time consuming. I would put in my usual ingredient, then try an alternate ingredient and see if the calorie and fat savings was worthwhile.

Right now I am starting out again, and I am tracking everything I eat or drink. Do this for a few days and you get a good look at when and what most of your calories are coming from. During this period, I am also trying to figure out alternatives or substitutions.

I like food and like volume in food. I have found that making my usual meals, or lower calorie versions of them, but including a very large portion of salad helped me feel that I wasn't being denied and feel full. Putting things like chicken salad ( with no fat or low fat mayo) or chilli on a big salad gives me lots of bites, chewing, and savory flavour.

I'm going to stop typing now, because although I am finding it helpful to type out what I am doing and what I plan to do, I don't want to bore you. If you are interested, we can try to be support buddies and see how that goes. I'm looking for new recipes too, but am fairly fussy, and not in to some of the trendy (and healthy) foods (sushi, avocado, to name a couple) that my daughters enjoy.

canadjineh

I'm in maintenance since early March and my food diary is public - you are welcome to lurk if you wish. I lost my weight by doing seriously low carb, but also low fat as well, with lots of lean proteins. While in my weight loss phase I did no beans, seeds, nuts, grains - just proteins from meat, fish, & eggs and lower carb veggies. I took a lot of vitamins to make sure I wasn't missing out on anything realizing that this phase wasn't permanent. I lost 32 lbs in 3 1/2 months and I've still kept it off by keeping my net carbs (carb g minus fibre g) between 100-150g a day. I now eat beans, some grains (I have to be gluten free medically) along with high fat dairy, avocado, nuts and seeds, and EVOO. And a bit of fruit and higher carb veggies. My trick for maintenance is making 1 meal a higher carb, lower fat meal 3:1 ratio, and the other is the opposite. At breakfast I eat a bit of everything to get my jump start for the day. Keeping the carbs & fats dissociated helps keep insulin from triggering fat storage.
- Works for me - You're welcome to lurk (or friend if you send me a note )

canadjineh

Study financed by the National Institutes of Health. Posted in NY Times Sept 2014.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/health/low-carb-vs-low-fat-diet.html?_r=0

canadjineh

Oopsie, I see we already are friends, I thought the name was familiar. Msg me if you like...