I lost 60 lbs at age 51, Anyone Can, Any Workout

It took me two years to lose 60 lbs. The secret; eat less and move more. It is not easy but it is simple and sustainable and it works.

I'll tell my story first, and put a few before and after pictures down at the end. All the pictures here were taken at home with my husband's camera.

Over the years I ran and lifted weights, I practiced martial arts, ran marathons, hiked, skied, and biked. Over the decades the weight piled on. I kept on working out harder and harder thinking I would lose the weight but it kept growing. I tried various diets, lost, then gained, lost, then gained, the typical yo-yo story. At age 48 I finally reached my peak of 171 lbs. at 5’1″. I had chronic back pain, low thyroid, and adrenal fatigue. I kept working out and running one marathon after the next thinking maybe this time it will work. Nope, the weight stayed on. Everyone told me to give up; this is what happens when you get older. I never gave up.

The problem is we eat too much. Our society has an overabundance of food and the smaller you are the less you need to eat. I’m small. I never realized how small until I finally lost the weight. I had the muscle and I always thought I had big bones because of my size but when I lost the weight I learned this is not true. I have strong bones from lifting and a healthy diet, but they are not necessarily “big”.

I always put running first and weights second, but I lifted consistently. I did the typical split routines and copied the exercises the guys did; flat bench, decline bench, incline bench, several back exercises, curls, tricep extensions and squats. Usually 10-12 reps. Day after day, year after year. I looked strong and hefty and big boned but never like the athele I wanted to be and it got worse as my weight crept up.

I don't watch TV. We have not had TV at our house for over 20 years. We got used to our life in the mountains without it and when satellite came out we figured why bother? I worked at a high tech company for 25 years before I retired and the last thing I wanted to do with my spare time was be on a computer so I've avoided it. My point for mentioning this is I am still somewhat ignorant of all the wealth of information out there. I've never really participated in an online public forum until now and I'm fairly clumsy at it. I also don't really know a lot about fitness and diet except what worked for me. I am no expert. What I write here is about what worked for me and I'm not telling anyone else what to do. This is what I tell myself.

So what I learned in the last 20 years is that you can't exercise away too many calories. The smaller your are the less you get to eat. The lifting routine I did for years made me strong but did nothing for my female shape. Diets don't work because they are unsustainable and usually don't address the true issue which is eating too much. If you don't give yourself a break from eating your body never gets a chance to burn off excess fat. Oh and I was at my biggest weight when I was a 100% Organic Fanatic. Even 100% clean food will make you fat. Too much food is too much food.

At age 45 and after 25 years at the same company I retired as a software engineer and went through the police academy. Even at 150 lbs I could run circles around the young guys and I was pretty proud of it. I am proud of my uniform and serving the community in a unique way as a volunteer deputy, but to my horror my weight kept creeping up and I had to buy a bigger uniform even though I was working out as hard as ever. It didn't seem like I was eating too much. I don't pig out. I don't mindlessly eat. I don't binge. I just didn't get it. I thought something was wrong with my metabolism. The last straw for me was when my patrol partner and I were taking someone to jail and the guy sat in the back seat calling me a fat *kitten* the whole time. Little does this guy know he was the straw that broke the camel's back for me.

So I just did my own diet thing, cherry picking from all the diets I had done. Once I had the portions down so I started eating what I called "mini meals" and put my food in small portions on a small dessert plate. One diet said don't eat after 7pm so I followed that. I ate healthy foods that I like, lean in the carb department. I limited myself to one or two very small servings of carbs a day, focused mainly on protein and veggies. I did not count calories. I got a feel for the right portions because the scale trend was going down fairly consistently. So some days I realized I probably had enough to eat so I stopped at 5pm or even 3pm. It was hard. I went to sleep at night feeling hungry and it was not fun, but I always felt great when I woke up and the weight consistently went down at a slow rate and I felt strong at the gym. That said..

You body loses weight in chunks, not linear. I have found that you can do everything right and your weight loss seems to plateau but if you are patient and keep exercising and eating at a deficit (however slight) you will lose it, it will suddenly "whoosh". There are so many variables for the scale; water retention, digestion, allergies, sodium, carbs, water intake, DOMS, inflammation, the list goes on. People mistakenly think they lose or gain weight when they eat more or less because of these fluctuations.

Losing weight requires tremendous patience. You will not lose it when you want it or where you want it. The body does its thing. Some apparent plateaus can last a month or so. You can not make it happen faster. You must focus on two things; calories and exercise. Nothing else matters. Scales and metrics don't matter. The day in and day out grind of exercise and calories are all that matters. It is not very exciting until things fall into place. You get your victories and you ride one victory to the next.

The scale is a trend tool. The scale is good but put it away and only check once a week and only use it as a trend tool. It will fluctuate, it does not matter. Take front side and back progress pictures at least once a month. You will see differences that the metrics won't tell you and it's that little bit of NSV that will keep you going until the next victory.

So I lost 40 lbs doing my own thing and I called it "mini meals" and "mini fasts" because I realized for the first time in my life I was fasting from my last afternoon meal until breakfast the next day. I was really excited and was working patrol with one of my super fit colleagues and I told him my story. He said he lost 30 lbs the same way and told me to look up "Eat Stop Eat" on the web. I trust this guy and he is my friend but I was leery of the ESE book. But my friend who I trust said it was good. I researched reviews and it seemed that even the skeptics ended up saying it was good and backed with very good research. So I decided to get it. Along with it was a special deal for a workout, so after waffling around with my decision I finally decided to get the workout as well. This is when my life really changed.

The smallest I've ever been as an adult is size 8. I figured if I got there I'd be happy. But the unique goals designed for me in my new workout pushed me beyond what I thought possible. I showed me I limited myself. I got down to a size 2-3 for the first time ever at age 50. I had to start shopping for clothes in the juniors' department because most women's sections don't even start small enough. LOL imagine that, the juniors' department at age 51! Cute stuff BTW.

The workout I did for years didn't do much for my shape. I realized this once I started my new routine. I now put weight lifting first and cardio second, but I still do cardio (mainly running). I change up everything all the time. My running is sometimes long easy runs, sometimes HIIT, sometimes shorter medium pace runs. My weight routine changes each day, each week, light circuits, heavy low rep sets, pyramids, a little bit of splits, constantly changing it up. I mostly do a lot of full body workouts with a lot of leg work. In addition to DL's and Squats I do Bulgarian Split Squats, Lunges, Reverse lunges, Curtsey lunges, Step Ups, Crossover Bench Step Ups, and a Lunge Matrix. And then I constantly change up the routine with Circuits, Intermittent Super Sets, Fibonacci Pyramids, X-sets, Progress Venus Pyramids, and some splits, everything a variety of Strength, Hypertrophy, and Endurance.

You can do what I did with any workout. Some might say the workout I do is expensive. This is an individual choice and I felt it was worth it to me. I paid $40 for a workout I enjoy. This was the entrance fee to a transformation contest. I entered the contest and won 2nd place and enough prize money to pay for the next workout (which ended up being a life time membership) and then some $$ left over. Then I entered the next level contest and won first place and won enough prize money to more than cover the cost of the photographer for the contest photos. But more than that I WON because I'm happy with my body now and living my dream. I don't care of the company has my pictures and they get to make money off my pictures. I HAVE MY LIFE and I'm happy and that is the big WIN.

Listen to my body and change up the routine according to how I feel. If I'm not feeling strong enough to do pyramids I do circuits, X-sets, Intermittent Super Sets. In fact everything I do with food and exercise I will alter according to how I feel and not necessarily the "plan". Every day is an oportunity to workout or rest, whatever is needed. I find both strength and hunger comes in cycles. If I'm in a "more hungry" cycle I will eat at maintaince. I'm I'm less hungry I go with the flow and will take adantage of the time to eat less. I eat only when I want to eat. I have taken total control of that part of my life. Never again will anyone pressure me to eat when I don't want to eat or eat how many calories they think I should eat. I can skip any meal I want. I DECIDE. I OWN MY BODY.

Lift weights is KEY. I recently had my DXA scan done and at 51.5 years of age I have the bone density of a super athletic 30 year old. That is a direct result of lifiting for over 30 years. Now if that is not scientific proof that lifting weights keeps you younger I don't know what is!

So once I got lean I found it harder to stay in control of my diet. It was somewhat easier when I was losing because all I had to do was "eat less". Now that I'm lean I must eat more because I truly run the risk of starvation mode now. I'm walking a fine line now, too little and it hurts me, too much and I back slide. So this is when I started using MFP and I've found it to be a life saver for me while maintaining.

So now that I track calories I have a pretty good feel that I probably ate around 1000 calories a day while losing weight and once I started ESE I ate less than that and I did a lot of "one meal a day" 24 hour fasts. I felt awesome and did very strong workouts at the gym while doing this. Again, everthing I do is about listening to the body, giving her what she needs and staying healthy. Health is number one, above all else. All of my doctors said I was super healthy while doing this and my blood work and hormone levels stayed good.

It is silly to get hung up on a calorie number like 1200 calories. This number is relative to your BMR. If you are a bigger person this is a low number, if you are small like me this is a large number, barely below my RMR.

If you have a lot of body fat reserves you would be surprised at how little you can eat (unless you have emotional eating issues or disorders). The leaner you get the less your body has to draw from and then you have to taper up your calories. There is no such thing as starvation mode for woman over 12% body fat or men over 6% body fat. I pretty much proved that for myself by staying strong and building muscle and doing what I did. I'm the leanest, most muscular, and most fit that I have ever been in my life at almost 52 years old.

Seperating out the the two things worked for me:

1) Eat less to lose fat.

2) Exercise to gain or maintain lean body mass.

Ignore exercise calories because it's insignificant when you don't have to worry about starvation mode anymore and it's highly over rated. Of course you burn energy, but not nearly what any of the devices say you do.

If you are not doing a weight training routine you need to start one and do it the rest of your life to ward off osteoporosis.

Here pictures of me just enjoying life as "The New Me":

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/734137-the-new-me-pictures-not-posing

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MFP Blog http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/californiagirl2012