New to MyFitness

jahesa1

Hello Everyone,

I am new to MyFitnessPal and hope this will be what I need to help me make this much-needed lifestyle change for better health moving forward. I will be 58 this coming February, and as of today, after seeing my primary care physician, my weight stands at 352 lbs.

My children have been after me for many years to make changes in the way I live because they don't want anything happening to me. I have cared for others for many years and placed myself on the back burner. Now, I am afraid it is too late for me to be where I am supposed to be.

Now I have high Blood Pressure, Lymphedema, Shortness of breath, muscle weakness, and basically, it takes energy. I don't have to move around, which is rarely because of not being able to breathe or muscle and back pain. On top of trying to change my eating habits and lack of movement, I also want to stop smoking, as I have been a smoker for 42 years. I am afraid that if I quit smoking, I will turn to eating. That is not what I need.

Any help, suggestions, or recommendations would be greatly appreciated, as I will need all the support I can get to motivate me to make the much-needed change in my life.

Thank you, and God Bless.

GogoLourdes

I'm proud of you already. I wish my mother would follow in your footsteps. Take things one step at a time. That is how I personally handle anything difficult in my life. Good luck to you

AnnPT77

It is not too late. Far from it. I'm not the only one here who lost weight at your age or later (I was 59-60), reversed health problems, improved fitness (though I admit I mostly started on the fitness part in my late 40s, but stayed obese for another dozen years, foolishly).

I didn't have your exact list of health conditions, but did have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high triglycerides. Now I don't - in my case, just from the weight loss.

There are people here of your age or older who've put diabetes or fatty liver in remission, who've gone from needing a rest when walking to the end of their driveway to running in 5k races, and more.

I'm not saying it's a snap of the fingers, but it's stuff regular (not extra special) people do, and you can do it, too. It takes patience and persistence more than it takes extreme tactics, mostly.

Weight loss is mainly about getting eating lined up right: Eating moderately fewer calories than you burn. We all burn a big chunk of calories just being alive, even if we were flat on our back all day. For most people, that's the majority of calories they burn. Second, typically, is the calories burned doing everyday humdrum stuff like job or home chores. Exercise is usually third in magnitude.

The implication is that some aggressive, punitive exercise program isn't necessary. Sure, exercise is good for a person. I found that the stronger and fitter I got - very gradually! - the less pain I experienced from osteoarthritis and a torn meniscus. Losing weight further reduced the frequency and intensity of pain. Obviously, exercise is likely to improve shortness of breath during exertion and muscle weakness.

But exercise is anything extra that's a manageable challenge to our current physical capabilities. As we do those mildly challenging things, we get fitter, and we can (need to) do somewhat harder things in order to keep it manageably challenging and keep making fitness progress. That's how fitness improvement works. What a person can start with will vary depending on physical challenges, but common starting points are walking (short distances with rests are fine), pool exercise (there are classes for people with physical challenges), chair exercise videos one can do at home (free on YouTube among other places). We start where we can, and increase when that gets too easy. (It will.)

On the eating front, it's not essential to do some extreme diet with lots of restrictive rules, or focus on "superfoods". Sure, if your health conditions or medications require some restrictions, follow those. Other than that, I found that just logging what I was already eating was super helpful: I could quickly see that the calorie "cost" of certain foods just wasn't worth it to me, in satiation, nutrition, tastiness, or other attributes. Those were easy cuts - either portion size cuts, or frequencies, unless I decided a particular food was never going to be worth its high calories for me personally.

Everything doesn't have to be perfect from day one. A series of small changes in a positive direction will add up over time. Like I said, patience and persistence are key. You can do it.

You say "My children have been after me for many years to make changes in the way I live because they don't want anything happening to me. I have cared for others for many years and placed myself on the back burner." It sounds like you've reached a point of realizing that in order to take care of others, you really, truly need to take care of yourself in order to be there for them. That's great motivation right there, sincerely.

I'm cheering for you to succeed: IME, the results are more than worth it.