Almost 50 and over 200! Any others?

July 4, 2015 60 years old and 220#s, BMI 31.6, waist 42". January 13, 2016 will be 61 in a week or so, 190#s, BMI 27.3, waist just under 38".

Set your MFP account to lose a pound a week. Log in your intake. Log your exercise (it's not necessary for weight loss, it does make it easier and makes you feel better). Stay below, or at, you calorie limit. Don't panic, ever. It is a slow, continuous process that is best thought of as a new lifestyle. As you go along, you fit your new life style very well and all gets easier. Stop using being "almost 50" as an excuse. If you want to, you can do it. No one else is going to help you do this, unless you plan on them coming to your home and dragging you out to work out and monitor your food for you.

MFP sets a plan that works. All you have to do is follow it. And not necessarily all that strictly. We have all fallen at some point. One day of "sin" does not condemn all your efforts, past and yet to come. You do, however, have to come back.

Make the dream of losing weight work? Set up your account, get your program for losing ONE pound a week, follow that plan. Log your food, track your exercise (if you're doing any), don't punish yourself too hard for messing up on occasion, and start to enjoy your new life style that will lead to a thinner healthier you.

Have fun and good life to you.

It can be done! I was 496 last January. Yes I did have wls in August but by that time I was down 100plus pounds! Today Im at 287 lbs. Hang in there, log your food,, it comes down to calories in verse calories out. We tend to make it so confusing sometimes with programs, macros, supplements etc... Not that these are bad but it all comes down to what we take in and how much we burn. I really enjoy flexible dieting, I set my caloric intake for the day and with intuitive eating it seems to be working. Good luck with your journey! You can do this!!

I was 50+ and over 200 lbs when I started on MFP. I lost about 30 lbs in about four months and have maintained that (fluctuating from that point and down to about 40 lbs from SW) for two years. This has been the easiest, largest (in % as well as raw number of pounds), and longest-maintained weight loss of my life.

For me, the important things have been using a scale whenever possible (I don't carry one to work or friends' or restaurants, although I do weigh food from home if I'm taking it for lunch or breakfast at work); logging consistently, even on days when I go over my goals; checking the database entries I use against package labels, manufacturer or restaurant websites, and the USDA nutrient database, as appropriate; and not "sweating the small stuff" (also known on MFP as "majoring in the minors").

In that last point (not sweating the small stuff), I include not obsessing over hitting the precise macro breakdown every day. I pay attention to at least hitting my minimums for protein and fiber, and I would pay attention to fat if I didn't pretty much always get plenty anyway. At the end of the day I usually take a look at my vitamins A & C and iron and calcium results, and if I don't like what I see, I take a multivitamin and I take it as a reminder to eat a balanced diet with lots of nutrient-rich foods.

Not sweating the small stuff also means to me not worrying about which foods meet some restrictive list of "healthy" or "clean" foods. It means accepting that there will be occasions when I have to eyeball and estimate servings (such as at restaurants that aren't chains) and occasionally will have to just a choose a "that-sounds-similar" database entry for something I eat at a restaurant or party. I usually try to deconstruct a dish, e.g., log x amount of whatever were the main or calorie-dense ingredients, log whatever my best guess is for fats and oils used in the dish, but sometimes something is so complicated or unfamiliar that I just have to take a stab with a similar-sounding dish, preferably from a restaurant that I'm familiar enough with to be able to figure out whether the serving size would be similar.

To me, not sweating the small stuff also means not worrying about hitting the exact calorie goal every single day -- averaging close to it across a week is fine. Later, after I'd lost that initial 30 lbs that made a huge difference in my health, not sweating the small stuff meant to me that it was even OK to occasionally have weeks where I averaged at maintenance, or even over maintenance (such as on a vacation).

Remember, 50 is just a number, and so is 200. With age comes wisdom and hopefully character (patience, determination, self-accountability). You can do this now, maybe better and more easily than you ever could before.