Over 70 ... anyone been successful at this age??

Hisfatangel

I've struggled with my weight all my life. Back in the early 90's I lost 60 lbs (highest weight ever 234--but I'm 5'2") now I'm back to 201 and I am struggling big time. I am T2 diabetic with an A1c of 7.8. I am off and on low carb. Definitely ADDICTED to carbs. I have arthritis and cannot walk like I used to. I can maybe do 1 mile of moderate walking every day without suffering in my hips/knees/lower back. I'm hoping to find others close to my age with 50# to lose. I am an emotional eater and a social eater. Seeking support!

nsk1951

Hi there @Hisfatangel ... I am 77 years old, and we have similar stories to tell about our overweight. My height is 5'3" and my highest weight was reached when I was 63 years old (a high of 278.0)... I started to try to lose weight and joined (not for the first time) a Weight Watchers program at work where I successfully lost 32 pounds .. and felt like I was on a role and looked forward to being slender once again in about a year from then ... HA-HA on me -- it turned out to be a case of 'counting my chickens before they were hatched', because instead of continuing to lose I started regaining and all those hopeless, fruitless, self-doubting and self-loathing thoughts we might get when we are down on ourselves crept in and I gave up. But then, 4 years later, when I was then 67 I decided that I had to try again ... but from a different approach. OH, I still had big dreams of getting more slender by the time I reached 70 ... and by 2015 I had lost enough so that my weight was then what your's is now. Still not the weight I wanted, but I'd lost enough so that my health improved (all the same tick-offs you mentioned, plus some) ... Well ... this morning I weighed in at 220.8 ... so it took me another 10 years ... and I recognize that I will be on this track for the rest of my life because now I have finally found the way to eat and live my life without having food be the focus of my weight loss efforts. So, that's my story ... and here's what I've learned along the way that I am planning to stick with.
1. Exercise is not what you need to lose weight. Eating less of the foods that make you have cravings is what helps more.
2. You DO need exercise ... but it doesn't have to be at a gym or anything that you purposefully do to be active ... you just need to become more active by doing more of everyday things ... things that keep you off you butt on an your feet, moving your body in all different ways. Going for a walk is great, but if your knees are bad and it hurts like all heck when you walk, then you won't want to go for that walk and will make excuses about why you cannot ... So maybe what you need to do is get a knee brace of some sort, use a cane to help distribute the weight, and walk less at one time, but do it often for little periods of time.
3. You gotta recognize the foods that make you tell yourself you are addicted to that food ... when you say CARBS ... I bet you really mean flour and sugar containing foods. I don't think people get addicted to broccoli or apples, but I sure know a lot of them, myself included, who can not stop with just an ounce of potato chips or a scoop of ice cream or one sandwich made on bread, or one donut, or just a serving of any pasta (2 ounces dry) ... Find out what those foods are and work on one at a time to: either learn how to control your consumption of them, or: ban them from your house to only enjoy the little bit you can have when you are in a place that you will not overindulge in them ...
4. Eat less often during the day, but when you do eat, eat as healthfully as you can, and do satisfy your hunger. Do not stop eating until you are no longer hungry. Then do not eat again for as long as you can go ... start by cutting out snacks ... we don't need to graze on food around the clock. Our bodies actually work better when we give it a rest between meals. Start with getting into the habit of just eating 3 times a day, and don't eat after supper .. let your gut rest until the next day.
5. It will take time. There will be small losses, small gains, large losses, large gains along the way . We didn't get obese in a short period of time and thus why do we think it will drop away from us fast? Aim for a steady small downward trend ... and when you do weigh yourself and the scale has moved one way or the other, look/think back on what you ate in the past 2 days or so ... because sometimes the clue is in there about how our own body responded to what we put into it.

Good luck. I hope my experience will shed some light on how you decide to proceed with your weight loss journey. It will be long and crooked, especially for us senior folk, but it does have a beginning, and it will come to an end. I hope that end finds both of us at a much closer to our ideal body weight than we are today.

AnnPT77

Hello, and welcome to the MFP Community!

There are a lot of 60+ folks around here. Is that close enough?

If so, you might find some of them, and some support, in this thread:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10718336/60-yrs-and-up#latest

If you open that up and see old-dated posts, don't panic. It's just that people have been chatting there for a long time. It's still active, but the newer posts are at the end, on the high numbered pages. It has a nice mix of participants at various stages, from just starting out, to in long-term maintenance after weight loss.

I'm "only" 66, joined MFP in 2015, lost 50+ pounds (class 1 obese to a healthy weight), have maintained since at a healthy, slim weight I hadn't been since my 20s.

The post above is good advice. (I'd quibble a bit around the edges: For example, I didn't and wouldn't use that "eat until not hungry then don't eat until hungry again" strategy. That would be a disaster, for me. One of my personal quirks is that it seems to take my body a longer amount of time to tell me it's full. If I keep eating during that whole time, I'll overeat. I'm better off to eat what I know is a reasonable meal or snack, then wait 20-30 minutes (doing something else as a distraction). Usually by then, I feel sated. You may vary from either the poster above, or from me, but you can figure that out.)

I think that it's useful to think flexibly about eating patterns, and personalize them. Satiation differs between people. Some people do best with strict eating patterns (time of day, amounts, food types, etc.) some do better with a more varied/situational routine. Some people can't exercise on a full stomach, others don't do well exercising with an empty one. Ditto for sleep: Some people sleep poorly if they eat just before bed, others don't sleep well on an empty stomach. You can figure out your patterns, and tailor your tactics accordingly.

I'm on the route of "varied number of meals/snacks daily, eat a bit before exercising, eat right up until bedtime", and have lost/maintained weight fine that way. I hate strict rules and routines, like flexibility. Personalization is key, IMO.

It's useful to realize that it takes roughly 3500 calories, above/below our current needs, to gain or lose a pound of body fat. If we're eating consistent calories, doing consistent activity (both exercise and daily life), we'd notice if we ate that much all at once, or moved that much less than usual.

The implication is that an overnight/quick gain of 1, 2, 3 pounds or more isn't about what we ate, if we were on a steady course. It's about shifts in water retention, which can be bigger magnitude and quicker than fat changes. Our bodies can be 60%+ water, after all. It's fat we want to lose, and that's a gradual thing, small daily amounts over a longer time period, when consistent. It can play peek-a-boo on the body weight scale with those bigger water weight shifts for a surprisingly long time, sometimes!

Sometimes people let those quick changes discourage them, or make them frantically change course to fix the (non-)problem.

Patience, plus setting a sustainable course (moderate loss rate, reasonably happy personalized eating/activity patterns) - those are a useful foundation for success.

Wishing you excellent results!