Hi ladies! My name is Rae and I just turned 55 this month. I've had a rough year and a half with serious health issues, but I'm ready to get my health and stamina back for good. I've been on MFP since mid-January and have lost about 12 pounds. It's a slow loss, but going in the right direction.

Happy to join you and motivate each other! Feel free to send me a friend request or personal message.

Hi... I'm 56 and have been doing MFP since the beginning of Feb. I lost 18 lbs. then Easter hit and I've been off-track since then. I haven't stepped on a scale since because I think I gained it all back. Really want to begin again and go forward!!

Hello, I'm 57 and have been doing MFP since December 2014. Since then, I have lost 22 pounds and have about 40 to go to reach my goal weight. Already feel much better eating healthier foods, staying away from most heavily processed stuff, getting more sleep, and actively dealing with life stresses. I am enjoying being more active, especially with walking, hiking, and gardening. There have certainly been some ups and downs since December and the support of others here on MFP has been a major part of the overall success of this journey.

Went to my oldest granddaughter's 9th birthday party - at a karaoke place. It was lots of fun and I was encouraged by seeing lots of food and only eating the things I'd chosen ahead of time from the menu and entered into my food diary. Being in a place with lots of good food accessible is usually a diet killer for me.
I have a barbeque with friends coming up on Wed. evening. Already gearing up for battle. Any helpful suggestions for dealing with that kind of situation?

Happy Sunday ladies!! Today is a glorious day and I've made some great healthy choices today. Went for a 3 mile walk with friends along the riverfront this morning. One of my friends gave me some tomato starts so I came home and worked in the garden this afternoon. Healthy food choices for breakfast and lunch and plans coming together for a healthy dinner. Hope everyone else is doing fabulous today!!

AEPHubinc2015 wrote: »

How long have you been at this, RaeBeeBaby?

I've been here for about 10 days and woke up to a less enthusiastic mood about it this morning than I've been feeling for the past 10 days. Not a good sign since I really want to make this a lifestyle change for the duration and not a "diet".
I have a vague long term goal of losing 25 pounds in the background and a few more present short term goals:

1. Sticking to 1200-1300 (healthy) calories a day

2. Adding some more cardio-type exercise to the 2 hours of yoga I do a week (I teach 4 classes a week but can only really claim 30 minutes of yoga in each class since I spend a bunch of time making adjustments with my students and guiding them through seated meditation.

3. Becoming accustomed to portion control.

I had a client once who inherited enough money from his parents not to work...and didn't. We once talked about how he spent his days and he said that he spent them "not drinking" ( he was a recovering alcoholic). I thought it to be a challenging response at the time. But recently I'd gotten to the point where I spent a large portion of my day "not eating" so after 25 years I understood his response firsthand.

My biggest goal is to change THAT!

I've yo-yo'd a lot throughout my life, but this time I've gotten serious about it since mid-January. It's been slow, but I've dropped 14 pounds since then. I'm very committed to sticking with it this time for good. Ideally, I'd love to drop another 20 pounds, but we'll see how it goes. I like to set smaller goals for myself and that seems to work for me.

A couple things I've discovered for myself:

1200-1300 calories is not enough food for me. I stuck with that for the first couple months but I wasn't happy about it. I was losing, but I was always hungry and felt deprived. I would often go over my calories and feel like I'd failed. I also didn't have the energy to workout at the level I was aiming for. A few weeks ago I decided to increase my calories a bit and see how I felt. I just made the change in MFP to only lose 1 pound a week (instead of 1.5 or 2) and now I get 1410 per day not counting exercise calories. That has really made all the difference for me. I try to exercise most days and I do eat back most of my exercise calories (so I'm actually eating around 1700 per day with exercise). This week I still lost 2 pounds! I've had many weeks of no loss, but it's trending downward so I'm happy.

Cardio is great for the heart and for fat burning, but doing strength training has made a big difference for me. I used to lift heavy weights about 10 years ago, but back-to-back injuries derailed me. I'm not lifting real heavy right now - sticking to 5-10 pound weights and bodyweight exercises. I have lost inches everywhere. When I first started up again in January I measured everything. I re-measure about every 2 weeks and have dropped 2 inches in my waist and 2 inches in my hips (smaller amts elsewhere). That's a good gauge of body changes when the scale isn't moving. I still do cardio, but I mix it up.

Portion control and not eating all day are big challenges for me, too. I retired this past September so I'm home most days. Just me and the dogs and the fridge. You just have to get the mind-set of not needing to eat until your stuffed. After a few weeks at the 1200 calories it didn't take that much to make me feel full. Then a couple times I overate and I felt terrible. I do a lot of food prep early in the week so I know what I'll be eating. I keep healthy snacks on hand. I usually make a couple big salads and just add protein for various meals. You can eat a ton of salad greens, cucumbers, peppers, celery for little calories and it does fill you up. I also pretty much eliminated chips and cheese, which were my "go to" snacks. I don't really miss them anymore (although hubby was eating kettle chips last night and his munching was really getting on my nerves, LOL).

I totally get where you're coming from about feeling less than enthusiastic. I ran across a great article about motivation that I will post here later today.

I'm very fascinated about your job as I'm just getting into doing yoga for the first time in my life. I'd also love to figure out how to meditate. I try, but I have a monkey-mind and it just jumps around all over the place. I have a hard time sitting still unless I'm on the computer, otherwise I'm always busy. I think I need guided meditation because I stink at doing it alone, LOL.

I just got sick and tired of being overweight so I decided to do something about it.

If I can help support and motivate you (or anyone else) in any way, I'm thrilled to do that!!

~Rae

I created a new thread specifically for motivation and support. Check out what I just posted there!