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drosen4587
drosen4587 Posts: 2 Member
in Introduce Yourself
Hi, my name is Dick, I’m 64, diabetic, avid gym goer. Always, always struggle with diet. The gym side of me needs more but then the diabetic side says less.

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  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 14,889 Member
    Welcome Dick!

    Yes, weight loss happens in the kitchen, not the gym. You can't outrun the fork.

    Set some good goals, and track completely, accurately, and honestly. Pay attention to how different foods make you feel so you can adjust what and how much you eat so you feel like you are fueled well and also are in a deficit to lose the excess fat.

    Then keep sticking to it!
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 37,353 Community Helper
    Hi, Dick, and welcome! I'm 68, and pretty active though not formally a gymgoer (I row, ride bike, work out at home (especially in Winter)).

    Based on my experience losing weight (at 59-60), I think there's a balance to be found, and it's possible to find it.

    Many people arrive here with the idea that it's good to cut calories hard for fast loss, maybe work out intensely in addition to add speed. IME, that can be very counterproductive . . . and while I won't speak for you, I find that extremes work even less well for me at 68 than they did in my 20s. (Sadly, I'm a little less resilient at 68, though I'm in a pretty good spot for my demographic, if I may risk being self-complimentary. ;) )

    Can you possibly try targeting a very moderate weight loss rate, alongside continuing (not severely ramping up) your gym routine? Could that work? On the one hand, losing weight at half a pound a week may seem excruciatingly slow, but it's 26 pounds in a year, and that year's going to pass whether weight loss happens or not. Sometimes a slow loss rate that's sustainable can get a person to goal weight in less calendar time than a theoretically fast loss rate that causes deprivation-triggered bouts of over-eating, breaks in the action, or giving up altogether.

    If you start slow, and it's going great, you could even up the loss rate gradually to find the sweet spot. I was very active already, and had been for a dozen years when I arrived at MFP (class 1 obese at the time). Just figuring out a new set of eating habits got me to goal weight, and has kept my weight in a healthy range for nearly 8 years since (after 30 previous years of overweight/obesity).

    For me, it wasn't even particularly radical eating changes, so it was simpler than I'd ever imagined (though not psychologically easy every single minute, admittedly). I could kick myself for not doing it decades earlier, since finding out that it was much more doable than I'd expected.

    I was already eating a lot of healthy foods, so it was more a matter of changing portion sizes, relative proportions of foods in a meal, and frequencies of some calorie-dense foods. I still eat pretty much the same range of foods I did when I was obese. Obviously, if someone's current diet is heavy on more calorie-dense but nutrition-sparse foods, more substantial changes may be necessary . . . but they can still be gradual, even at our age.

    Wishing you success: The results are worth it!

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