Hello from Torrance, CA

jeangasca1

I'm Jean, 74 years old and wanting to lose 80 pounds . I must lose 40 pounds first to be eligible for surgery, both on knees with meniscus tears and on an umbilical hernia. I do yoga a few times a week and am starting a walking program, but weight loss has eluded me.

patriciafoley1

I am almost 68, so pretty close to you in age. I have lost 60 pounds or so in the last six months, so it can be done.

I reduced calories to generally 1200 per day.

I started walking at 10K steps a day, walking 1000 steps or so an hour. Now I generally walk about 20K steps. But you don't have to do it all the walking at one time. I'm not sure how mobile you are, given you have meniscus tears on your knees, so you want to take that easy, of course. So break it up in small sections of walking, and stop if you have knee pain of course.

I went low carb, from 50 to 20 net carbs a day, (mostly because I was aiming to reverse a T2 diabetes diagnosis, which I mostly have done, reducing my A1c over 4 points. Carbs, however, can hold water weight to process them, so if you are trying to reduce strain and weight on your knees, you might consider going low carb, because every little bit of weight off your knees, particularly since you are wanting to walk more, could help.

I log (and mostly weigh) everything I eat, and enter it into MFP's food diary. And i wear a fitbit that tells me how many calories I am burning, so I can endeavor to keep at a calorie deficit, between calories burned and calories eaten. Fitbit has a link with MFP so it will update your food diary with calories burned. There are other trackers that MFP is associated with that do the same, or you can just try to track it yourself.

So that is how I did it. I do hit plateaus from time to time, where the scale doesn't move for a week or two, but that's normal in weight loss journeys. I just keep going and eventually I get a drop.

Everyone takes their own weight loss journey. So mine is neither better nor worse than any other. But so far it has worked for me. I went from obese to ideal weight (high end of the latter) in six months. i'd like to lose another 20 pounds. So I will keep going. I wish you good luck on your journey. You might want to join a group challenge here on MFP, like "Just give me ten days" or "lose ten pounds" in X period, to give you additional accountability and give you a group to root for and who will cheer you on in turn.

Good luck. And keep us posted on your journey and subsequent surgery.