Losing weight over 50

kshama2001

My mother is 82 and struggles to stay above Underweight because she is so active and eats a lot of high volume, lower calorie food. Also, because she is so busy, it is not unusual for her to skip lunch.

She has a 250 year old house that requires a lot of work, plus extensive vegetable and flower gardens. She walks, swims (seasonally), and practices yoga. Before the coronavirus, she was also strength training twice a week with a personal trainer.

springlering62

@kshama2001

I want to be your momma when I grow up.

lgfrie

There isn't really anything to add to the above insights, but my personal observation as a 57 year old male is that it's lil bit harder (but not much) to lose weight at 57 than when I was 25, but waaaay easier to gain weight than when I was younger.

I've been dieting for 16 months, most of the time pretty consistently but with a few periods of a few days to a week of gaining some back, here and there, and have recently been in a maintenance time-out for 3 weeks. During these 3 weeks, in which I haven't gained or lost any weight (by intent), I've now reconfirmed my NEAT as 2350.

When eating at a calorie deficit, it all adds up nice and tidy such that when I've accumulated around 3500 calories of deficit from my 2350 NEAT, I will have lost a pound. I think my NEAT was more like 2450 or 2500 when I was younger, but that isn't a huge difference.

What IS a huge difference is that if I go on a week bender and accumulate, say, 7,000 calories of surplus, I am not 2 lbs heavier (after water drainage, 4-5 days). It's more like 3 lbs. When I was younger, the 7k surplus would've produced a somewhat precise 2 lb gain but not anymore. I can't explain why. It just is.

What I have learned is that at 57, it is very possible to lose weight, and really, not a lot harder than when I was 25, but I have to be extremely, passionately diligent about not going over maintenance or I gain weight - fast, and it's sticky weight, it doesn't just fall off with the overall water drainage, it sticks around and has to be worked off one calorie at a time. It's very frustrating, but at this point I've kinda gotten the message my body has been sending: line in the sand at maintenance level, for me 2350 + exercise cals, nothing over that or I will pay for it with rapid weight gain.