60 yrs and up

coblujay

@ridiculous59 I hope you can get back. I got addicted the first time I went 18 years ago. This was my fifth trip to the continent. Any extra funds go into my travel bucket. It was so amazing at a lower weight and I bought most of my travel clothes at Goodwill, which was a huge surprise. I'm already planning the next visit. This is another reason to stay focused on getting healthy. I want to be healthy enough to travel as I get older.

GoRun2

I'm feeling happy today. I'm down 14 lbs. I have 15 more to go to get to goal. We are going on vacation Friday. I hope I can just not gain wait on vacation.

Sue_Smiles

GoRun2 wrote: »

I'm feeling happy today. I'm down 14 lbs. I have 15 more to go to get to goal. We are going on vacation Friday. I hope I can just not gain wait on vacation.

You can do it. You know what you need to do to keep on track. Just try your best, relax and enjoy yourself.

newHampshirite

Hi All,
I am a 67 year old male. I joined MFP in 2014 at 205 lbs (recorded as 202 lbs because I didn't know my scale was off by 3 lbs) and, after about a year or so of gradual weight loss, I reached my goal weight of 165 lbs. Some months after that, perhaps it was a year, I stopped using MFP, thinking I could keep the weight off with the knowledge gained from MFP. That worked out for a while, but now, here I am again and this time, when I weighed in the day before yesterday, I was at 208 lbs. I feel I owe most of the success I had the first time around to my weight loss friends here on MFP so I am looking for some new weight loss friends. This time around, if I ever do reach my goal weight, I plan on sticking with MFP.

AnnPT77

GoRun2 wrote: »

I'm feeling happy today. I'm down 14 lbs. I have 15 more to go to get to goal. We are going on vacation Friday. I hope I can just not gain wait on vacation.

Maybe you already realize this, but just in case: Don't panic if the scale's up a few pounds when you get back. Shifts in water retention can be surprisingly large after eating a little different from usual, doing some unusual things, and (especially) long drives or flying if those are part of the situation. I can find myself up a few pounds on the scale after some of those combinations, even if just a long weekend . . . but in a week or two, it drops off and I'm at or close to my previous weight (sometimes lower).

ridiculous59

newHampshirite wrote: »

Hi All,
I am a 67 year old male. I joined MFP in 2014 at 205 lbs (recorded as 202 lbs because I didn't know my scale was off by 3 lbs) and, after about a year or so of gradual weight loss, I reached my goal weight of 165 lbs. Some months after that, perhaps it was a year, I stopped using MFP, thinking I could keep the weight off with the knowledge gained from MFP. That worked out for a while, but now, here I am again and this time, when I weighed in the day before yesterday, I was at 208 lbs. I feel I owe most of the success I had the first time around to my weight loss friends here on MFP so I am looking for some new weight loss friends. This time around, if I ever do reach my goal weight, I plan on sticking with MFP.

I reached my goal weight in 2016 but I still log in just about every day (there have been some camping trips where we had no cell service). For me, these MFP forums are what keep me going. I know that I can't do it on my own and every time I get cocky and think that I can, I gain weight. In fact, I am battling a few pounds right now because of that.

But here we are. We know what to do. We know who our cheerleaders are (each other). We know that the stakes are high (our health). We are "in it to win it", as they say. We can do this do together

newHampshirite

Thanks for your kind response Ridiculous59. And congratulations on making it to the front of the canoe and staying there. It was clearly wise of you to stay on MFP after achieving your goal!

marvansmate

Hello All! I am 63 and new to MFP. I just ditched the WW app after 2 years. I started to set up my account and to my surprise I had already set up an account back in 2013, 37lbs ago (yes WW worked for me). I still have another 8lbs to go before I reach my goal and have been on a plateau for the past year so I thought I'd try something different. So far, this app is looking great! And tracking is fantastic because I can see all of the calories broken down into protein/carbs/fat etc.,. This was something I often struggled to see on the WW app. Anyway, I've been thinking more about intermittent fasting to lower my blood pressure, and after a recent blood test showed my cholesterol in the high 270's, I've got that to focus on as well. That's my story so far. Pleased to meet you all!

Pdc654

Welcome @NewHampshirite and @marvansmate. I'm also a returning member. I set up my account in 2013 and reached my goal in 2014. Briefly. Life became very stressful after my dad broke his neck and I became caregiver to him and my mother who had alzheimers. I stopped logging and didn't exercise as much and regained everything plus some. Even though my parents passed in 2016 and 2017 I didn't start back until August 1, 2021. I guess I had finally reached the turning point. I was 100 lbs above my 2014 weight and the doctor had just put me on blood pressure meds (2 of them). I came back to MFP because it worked for me. And now it's working again. 65 lbs down and 35 more until I am back to that 2014 weight. These forums are awesome! So much insight and inspiration here. I've learned a lot. I now know that, for me, it's going to be very important to continue logging after I'm in maintenance.

nsk1951

June 1st ... my, how I enjoy the firsts of 'things' ... It's like flipping to a new page in my diary. A clean slate. Maybe that's why I like mornings so much? ...

This first day of June finds me 4.6 pounds lighter than I was at the first day of May. That makes me very happy. I've had ups and downs during the month, and was actually at today's weight back in the middle of April, but that's ok ... I'm lower this month than I was last month ... I'm at my lowest weight in generations. I'm now working on my next scale goal, 213.2.

Welcome to the new and returning posters, I'll not call out your names because I don't want to leave anyone out ... just know that it's interesting to read your story. We are all so alike in so many ways, besides our struggles with weight loss. Here's Cheers to a new month for all of us ... I hope we all have a measure of success that makes us pleased and happy.

Timberlan127

Welcome to all the new people!! I'm doing ok right now. I've had a couple of hungry days but I've hung in with them. Eating more protein has helped me with the hunger. I've been walking more. Progress is slow but steady with some fluctuations still happening. I have found if I just keep doing the right things they even out over time. This is a tough journey and it's hard not to get impatient sometimes. But I am feeling better and feeling more in control of my progress. I hope you are all doing well. The good weather should help us all to get out more and move more.

Pdc654

Timberlan127 wrote: »

Welcome to all the new people!! I'm doing ok right now. I've had a couple of hungry days but I've hung in with them. Eating more protein has helped me with the hunger. I've been walking more. Progress is slow but steady with some fluctuations still happening. I have found if I just keep doing the right things they even out over time. This is a tough journey and it's hard not to get impatient sometimes. But I am feeling better and feeling more in control of my progress. I hope you are all doing well. The good weather should help us all to get out more and move more.

Restarting exercise for me was a very slow progression since I was recovering from a bad couple months of vertigo and I had just spent 2 years basically just sitting on my couch. I was worried about making my lower back pain worse (exercising did just the opposite) and I was worried about falling due to the dizziness from the vertigo. So I started with a very slow 5 minute walk around my house where I could steady myself with a wall or countertop if I needed. I added a minute a day and gradually increased my speed. I think the slow progression was key to getting back into exercise. It helped me avoid injury and build my confidence that I could indeed do this.

YPLamothe1

Hi, I am 62 I just joined. I am a female. I don't like to eat but I keep gaining wait. I am a workaholic. I joined because I have high cholesterol and prediabetic, so I need to lose some weight. I am looking for a good meal plan that I can follow, so I can learn how to eat normal and on time. I don't like to workout but if I find the encouragement I would.

bethe

I got back on myfitnesspal a couple of weeks ago and have posted here at least once since then. Last time I was active here was 2020, so naturally I gained weight while gone (doh!). Now I'm working my way into keto to see if that works for me. One thing I've learned recently is that women over 60 really need to be consuming more protein than the keto prescribed 20%, so that's a change I'm implementing. I stopped drinking beer except for the occasional social gathering a few months ago, and I haven't had a soft drink in at least a couple of weeks. Lol - turns out cutting out sodas is much harder for me than quitting beer (sugar is indeed the Devil). So, both my carb and sugar loads have gone WAY down. Still overdoing it on the carbs, but my intake is certainly much lower than it was. As to exercising - I used to be a real yoga fiend, but fell out of doing it a few years ago. Decided to start again, and managed to pull a muscle in my back last week doing stretches that I used to think were easy (another doh!).

I have to say that other than the pulled muscle, I can already tell I feel better in general and have improved sleep at night, so that tells me something about my previous diet was certainly jacking with me beyond just the weight gain. Now to get the pounds off and lose the spare tire!

nsk1951

YPLamothe1 wrote: »

.... I am looking for a good meal plan that I can follow, so I can learn how to eat normal and on time. I don't like to workout but if I find the encouragement I would.

Hi, and welcome. Good luck on finding a good meal plan that you will want to follow. Perhaps the place to start is to list the food you like to eat and then you can figure out which ones are good or not-so-conducive to your food goals. Then you can build a small, starting, list of meals using those as a base?

GoRun2

This is on finding a diet you can follow. I started looking at the 1200 calorie a day diets to see what they do. Too much variety and too much cooking for me. I tend to have the same breakfast every day, makes it easy. Lunch is either a sandwich or left overs with carrot sticks. I go through the dinner recipes. This works for me.

AnnPT77

Guilty admission: Here's another long Ann opinion-essay, this time on the subject of choosing a meal plan.

When it comes to finding a more healthful eating approach - including appropriate calories for our weight-management goals - I think there are a spectrum of options, and that we need to figure out what best suits our preferences, and is sustainable enough for us to continue long term, ideally permanently.

"Preferences" in the preceding paragraph is not just about what we find tasty, but also about being practical to buy/prep, and affordable, among other things. "Sustainable" means not just "I can grit my teeth and power through eating this way", but rather an eating style that's reasonably pleasant (or at least tolerable), even if not exactly what we've done before or that absolutely maximizes hedonic enjoyment. "Permanently" implies that for many of us - like me - who tend to overweight/obesity, weight management is not a project with an end date, but instead something we need to continue long term.

Ideally, we new find habits we can continue almost on autopilot, without bucketsful of "willpower", "motivation" or "discipline", because those things are fleeting, and life gets complicated. Us 60+ folks, of all people, know that!

An advantage we have at 60+ is knowing ourselves pretty well (preferences/strengths/limitations), and having long experience in using that self-knowledge (plus some learned skills) to accomplish other life goals. Here, I'm talking about the life goals that are huge, but we chip away at them patiently and manageably over a relatively long time, things like getting an education, building a career, making a home, raising a family, etc.

Losing weight, improving fitness, and maximizing health can take advantage of the same kinds of self-knowledge and skills.

At one extreme of "meal plans" are highly structured plans that recommend exactly what we should eat at each meal, including the quantities. Sometimes doctors or dietitians will give us such a plan, but usually those are generic handouts, not personalized to us. Another example of that general sort of thing would be the services where you literally buy meals from the service (or at the grocery store from a specific company according to plans on their app or web site). There are also books that have a meal plan.

There are now apps and web sites that do a similar thing, in a slightly more customizable way. Here is a web site that's an example of that:

https://www.eatthismuch.com/

(I don't use it, I don't benefit from linking it, I just cite it sometimes because one can experiment with it without giving them any personal information, to get an idea of main features. I think it maybe does have some "for pay" options with advanced features, but you can sample how it works without paying or logging in.)

Another "in between" option would be books/web sites that have strict food-choice rulles, like maybe Whole 30 or Bright Line Eating. These may have meal plans, but much of what they do is "never eat flour" or "eat leafy greens every day".

Similar in-between options would be the plans where you drink some purchased limited-calorie shake for one or two meals each day, then eat a normal (healthy) dinner.

I'm an impulsive aging-hippie hedonist who doesn't like rules, so none of the above is very appealing to me, though I know they can work great for other people with different personalities. (No judgement implied!)

For myself, I used a "remodel my eating" approach. Loosely described, I got a calorie goal, then started gradually tweaking my food choices - always eating foods I enjoy and find practical - to improve my nutrition over a period of time, rather than trying to do one of the structured plans to instantly revolutionize and perfect my eating. This is a thread that explains a way to use MFP and that kind of "remodel your eating" pproach:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10636388/free-customized-personal-weight-loss-eating-plan-not-spam-or-mlm/p1

IMO, personalization of tactics is key to success. I'm not suggesting everyone should do what I did, because that won't universally work. I'm suggesting that anyone may want to look at some of these options, maybe even experiment with some, and figure out what best suits their personality and needs.

Wishing the new folks - and everyone here - success in reaching your goals!

AnnPT77

Hello and welcome to all those new to the threads, and greetings to y'all who've been here a while. This is just a mini update.

I'm still maintaining a healthy weight - past the anniversary of my weight loss start date (5/17/2015) at class 1 obese, coming up fast on my join-MFP anniversary (7/15/2015), and the date when I first hit the top end of the normal BMI range (8/14/2015). Yes, I still remember those dates, because they were a big deal, part of a quality-of-life improvement that was more major even than I originally would've guessed.

I'm also still up a few pounds since the holidays, creeping up, creeping down, but not down as far as I'd like. TBH, I feel like I'm struggling a little more ineffectively than usual, not sure why. (I'm 5'5", 129.2 pounds this morning, would like to be more like 125 again.) Since I'm still in a healthy range, I'm not too stressed about being up a little . . . which is probably part of the reason why I'm still up a little. 😆 Enchiladas, pizza, and that sort of thing are tasty! (Hedonism is one of my main challenges.🙄)

In happier news, after what seemed like an extra-long Winter, Michigan has finally actually found Spring (briefly) and Summer (soon after), so I'm back to my main-loved activities, on-water rowing with a side of road/trail cycling on my hybrid bike (not one of those semi-motor guys, but in between a road bike and a mountain bike). Rowing was a thing I didn't take up until my late 40s, after cancer treatment, but I've done it ever since, even for around a dozen years while obese. (Before that, I was very unathletic, one of those "picked last in gym class" kids.)

It's so good to be outside again, seeing my rowing buddies (most of them also 60+, but a few young'uns in the mix). Right now, I'm helping out with my rowing club's learn-to-row class.

I know this rowing thing is unfamiliar to many, so I'll share a photo that one of my rowing buddies took of me last week, sitting in the bow of my rowing double, after she and I had had a nice row. This will give you a view of "my" river on a lovely day, and an idea of what our funny-looking boats are like. As you can see, the seats run on tracks - somewhat like rowing machines at the gym - so we can use our legs as well as upper body power to move the boat.



Wishing everyone a happy and productive June!

Pdc654

When my doctor and I discussed losing weight last summer he suggested Weight Watchers which he said worked for his parents and many of his patients. I'm sure it did and I know it's a good plan. However, I told him I was going to use My Fitness Pal because it worked for me before and I actually like calorie counting. I'm sure he thought it would be too tedious but it's actually not. So much easier now with the extensive database and being able to scan barcodes and copy repeat meals, etc. It's really one of the most flexible options and gives you the opportunity to review what you're eating and tweak your meals to optimize nutrition while eating to satisfy hunger. I've tried many plans in the past. In the 80s it was low fat. There's been many low carb diets. Then there was carb cycling where every other day you eat low fat and every other day low carb. Do they work? They do because the common thread among them all is eating less calories than you expend. But for me, it wasn't a way of life. When I stopped I gained. With CICO, I don't have to give up anything I don't want too. I just can't eat all the things all the time. So I eat what I like, but I am trying to eat healthier more nutrient dense food than before. Because of that I am able to stay within my calorie goal without getting hungry cause I can eat more food for fewer calories. There are many good weight loss plans out there. Just choose one you like and can do forever, even in maintenance.

ridiculous59

@AnnPT77 thanks for the beautiful picture. I'd love to try rowing. Maybe one day when I'm on holiday somewhere that has a rowing club I can trade my paddles for oars. 🙂

Meal Plans: I find that for me, most meal plans have foods that require too much cooking or are wasteful. For example "Day 2 breakfast: half an avacado". But what do I do with the other half until Day 2 cycles round again??

Here's my meal plan and I managed to lose 90 pounds, though I realize it's not for everyone. I eat the same thing for breakfast most days: plain Greek yoghurt, berries, and a homemade muffin. When I was working I ate the same thing for lunch most days. On Sundays I'd make a big pot of soup or a big bowl of salad. Every day I'd take a portion, plus some protein, which might be leftover meat from the night before or a can of tuna. My husband and I generally eat the same dinner, though my plate has more veggies and I rarely eat rice or potatoes (taste to calorie ratio not big enough for me).

And that's my meal plan. Most days I ate 1200 calories but I was never one to turn down a piece of birthday cake or a glass of wine for a special occassion. Notice I say "special", not "regular". I usually ate back about half my earned exercise calories. Since retirement I've managed to put a few pounds back which I'm dealing with at the moment however I'm still within a "normal" BMI (though at the high end). I just like the way my clothes fit when my weight is a little lower.