The No Diet Diet

HealthNotDiet

Hi I'm new here and have been on many diets throughout my lifetime. I'm becoming convinced that dieting has been my problem all along and I need to move in another direction. I welcome advice on where to start. I'm 57 years old, am 5'4" tall and weigh 168. I would like to get to 145.

ThickMcRunFast

Welcome! This is a good place to start

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1080242-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants

PikaKnight

Welcome! This is a good place to start

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1080242-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants

^This and here is a little more reading material:

http://body-improvements.com/2013/05/24/undiet-your-diet/

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1122891-9-reasons-fat-loss-is-always-slower-than-you-d-like

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1105036-article-on-flexible-dieting-by-armi-legge?page=1#posts-17068746

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/ihad/view/the-myth-of-good-and-bad-foods-by-eric-helms-588801

patrickfish7

No. 1 failure: Adopting a diet. To do so implies you intend it to be only temporary. Losing weight takes time and needs to be less aggressive as you age. Eat lots of veggies and fruits, lean meats and staying clear of processed foods, sugars and saturated fats (to a lesser degree). Exercise three times a week at least. There really isn't much more to it than that. Your body can adapt and evolve to the conditions you put it under so it can go both ways.

HealthNotDiet

Thank you so much! This is very helpful!

Warchortle

SHIIIIT you're already one step ahead of most people.

W0rthless_Her0

Retrokittyx

Diets don't work because we see them as "temporary." What you need is a life style change. You are older so your metabolism will be a bit slower. I suggest just eating clean. Eat whole foods that aren't processed. Try to shop on the outside of the aisles at the grocery store. If you do go down the middle ones try to focus on packages with less than 5 ingredients, and make sure most of the ingredients (if not all) are something you know.

bwogilvie

"Diet" is a tricky word, because we use in two senses in the modern US. The first is "a short-term set of foods that I will eat while losing weight, and then give up when I reach my goal." That's like the Grapefruit Diet, or the Atkins Diet. The second sense is "the balanced set of foods that I normally eat," the way people talk about the "Mediterranean diet" (which is more of an abstraction) or the traditional Inuit diet (very high on protein and fat). People who lose weight on the first kind of diet usually put it back on, because they return to an unhealthy diet in the second sense, and go back to overeating a little bit.

You need a healthy diet in the second sense: a good mixture of foods that provides a balance of macronutrients, with plenty of vitamins and minerals. It has to be something that can sustain you for life.

You need to avoid a diet in the first sense: arbitrary restrictions of foodstuffs.

However, there's no escaping the laws of physics: if you want to lose weight, you have to restrict calories, so that you burn more than you take in; the excess will come from metabolizing your body's fat stores. Don't think of it as a diet; think of it as temporary calorie restriction.

If you want to keep from losing too much muscle while doing this, you'll also need some resistance training.

And if you're like most of us, you'll need to continue to be vigilant for the rest of your life once you've reached your goal; physiological changes caused by weight loss persist some time after you reach your goal weight.

Good luck on your journey!

judychicken

This is a great site to be in to lose weight!

HealthNotDiet

Thank you all for taking the time to answer! You have given me a lot to "chew on." Lol!

Sabine_Stroehm

Welcome! This is a good place to start

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1080242-a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants

Always a good place to start.
Then tweak as needed. Many women "of a certain age" find that they need to reduce their carbohydrate intake a bit, or change the type of carbohydrates they eat... but start with the sexypants thread and go from there.