The older you get the harder it becomes!

Diet is key for weight loss. A pound a week is a good goalYou need to weigh all your food and keep to the calorie allowance MFP sets you. Exercise for fitness and strength. Of course you can earn a few more calories that way.

There are a lot of people on here a lot older than you that are losing weight consistantly using this method.

Keep going, be patient and you will get there. Slow and steady wins this race.

When I first joined MFP I was 58 I lost 32 pounds on here in one year. It can be done.

I then quit smoking and went back to my terrible eating habits and put the weight back on. But I know it can be done no matter what your age.

I am back and I started 1st of Jan and have lost 5.2 pounds and am bang on track for 1 pound a week. So I am confident that I can do this and so can you.

CICO is the answer.

I'm 70 and have been on here over 4 years, i intend to stay its a new lifesyle, dieting then going back to how you ate before will not work. good luck to you, you really can do this.

I think it’s harder if only because you get less food! The first time I ever heard of calorie counting I was in my mid-20s, and the calculator gave me 1350 to lose 2lbs/week. At 37, I have the same amount to lose ONE lb/week. I’d love to have that kind of wiggle room in my diet again, but with each birthday it gets smaller.

SteamPug wrote: »

I’m only 25 but I was thinking how much harder it is now than when I was a teen. But you know what, I don’t think it’s any harder, I just think I’ve gotten lazy. When I was younger I was out every day being active and walking everywhere because none of us ever had money for buses, and I still found time for 40 minutes of cardio at the end of each day.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but personally I believe I’ve just gotten into lazy habits and that I can absolutely make a ton of positive changes to my lifestyle to fix this. Besides, if I just rest on ‘it’s harder now than it was’ I’ll just become defeated and stop trying, or it’ll become an excuse for not trying as hard as I can. I have to believe that it can be easy again, if I can just make the effort in the first place.

This is probably the reason. The older you get, the more sedentary, and thus the less muscle mass you have, so you burn fewer calories. I'm in my late 50's, and yesterday I had a 300 calorie breakfast, Burger King for lunch, some fruit and vegetable snacks, a protein bar, some chocolate, and pizza for dinner. I still had a 200 calorie deficit. Why? I took the dog on two walks, went grocery shopping, and painted a room.

I was 48 when I joined MFP and lost 25 kg/55 lbs.

Losing it was pretty straightforward. Maintaining it has been a bit more difficult. I have trouble balancing the fuel I need for the amount of exercise I do with what I don't need to be consuming when I'm not in full-fledged training.

you lose weight in the kitchen.

you gain fitness in the gym.

aka: you cant out exercise a bad diet.

louisafurley wrote: »

I'm finding it hard to burn off fat the older I get. It's depressing. I used to be able to loose at least half a stone in the first couple of weeks on a diet. Any tips or ideas for good fat burning exercises?

It's not harder to lose weight (burn off fat) as you get older. I started at 64, dropped 50 lbs over 15 months and have been in maintenance ever since (68 years old, 5'2.5" - HW 179, Current WT 128. I finally stopped all the yo-yo dieting when I found MFP which became my post-graduate school university. What worked for me was balancing my calories in with my calories out. I use a Fitbit to help keep my balance by staying active and portion control to eat a reasonable amount of anything I want. On less active days, I eat less. I liken it to balancing my checkbook. Exercise alone won't give you the results you want. Lose slowly, make small changes, and don't kill yourself working out. The weight will come off in time.

I still weigh in everyday, log my food, and stay active even if it's just walking around. Yes, life gets in the way but considering the alternative logging, weighing, and staying active is a small price to pay for better health. You can do this; take one day at a time, learn from your missteps and move forward.

I lost 20 lbs at the age of 39. It is not harder. Be honest about what you eat and you can do it.

Whether it's "harder" or not when you're older is irrelevant!

I never really knew how to lose weight until I learned what I needed to really know to lose weight. I was 53 when i learned. Proceeded to lose 50 pounds right on schedule (fluctuations and all) by following the correct concepts of a calorie deficit.

I'll be 55 in 5 weeks.

I'd never really lifted before, but now I have guys half my age at our gym that can't do what I do. Same reason - I learned conceptually how strength training and body composition work. I have a ways to go, but my physique is better than it has ever been and I am stronger than I have ever been.

If I was 30-something, would all of this been easier? Probably. But the fact is, that I am the age I am and I learned when I learned. The bottom line is that I don't care if it's easier or harder.

[Edit] I should add that if anything, I believe it may actually be easier now that I'm older because I am in absolutely no hurry. Rushing things, especially in this arena, is a recipe for bad stuff....

lynn_glenmont wrote: »

I started on MFP at 50+, because I was started to see blood sugar, BP, and cholesterol numbers that were concerning, and I lost 30 lbs in a bit under four months, by which time my health indicators improved. Since that was my main motivation, I set my weight at that point as a ceiling and focused more on maintenance than losing more. I've maintained for over four years.

I've found it easier and more effective to lose and maintain loss in my 50s counting calories than any "diet" I tried in earlier decades (including trying to count calories in the pre-Internet days, when you had to try to look things up in books if they didn't have a label, and track everything manually).

As for "fat-burning exercise" anything -- any exercise, any movement, any reduction in caloric intake -- that puts you at a moderate deficit is "fat-burning," especially if you get adequate protein and do some resistance training, so that your body gets the message and has the materials to maintain muscles. Exercise that pushes you into an extreme deficit tends to outpace your body's ability to fuel the deficit from fat, and it will be forced to break down lean mass (muscle and, in extreme cases, organs) to make up the additional deficit.

I agree with this. I never counted calories before but had done low carb, Atkins and some other celebrity diets. I would lose usually (up until the last few years when those things DID NOT WORK), but then I'd gain it back once I "got off the diet." There were no plans for maintenance. My weight ballooned in the last 6 years (from 175 to 237) due to stress and eating carbs again after maintaining a lo carb diet for about 7 years.

Anyway, I'm 52 and I thought I couldn't lost anymore but then my doctor told me in June to just start writing down what I eat and that the awareness would probably help. She tried to tell me about calorie counting but I said for the last 4 years I wasn't interested in that. I came to MFP to just record what I was eating, but then I started reading the forums and actually started to FOLLOW the calorie goal that MFP was giving me and I started losing weight! I lost 2 lbs. per week at first, and was also walking and doing some exercise. My SW was 237 at the last week of June 2017, and today I weighed in at 199.8! My goal weight is 137, and I'm set to lose at 1 lb. per week. The amount of calories that I'm eating now, 1610 (not including exercise calories which I eat back), is close to what my maintenance calories will be at my goal weight (1600-1800, depending on the exercise). I do not feel hungry or deprived eating this amount and I think that by the time I get to maintenance I will be fine eating this amount of food.

Using MFP has taught me how much I need to eat and exercise to lose, and also about satiety, and what kinds of foods I can eat to feel full. I've also eaten much more delicious food since every calorie counts and I'm not going to waste them on stuff I do not like!

You can do it!

Yep, it is harder but not too hard to do it! Focus on your diet and add in exercise when you can to keep your muscle mass up. It only gets harder as you continue to age, so setting your mind to focusing on fitness now will make it easier in the future.