Discouraged

All you have to do to lose weight is to eat fewer calories than your body uses in a day. You don't need a special diet (like keto).

Commit to logging everything you eat into the food diary on this website. Don't even change what you are currently eating. Just log honestly. Do that for a week or two. Then look through your food diary and find where you can make small, sustainable changes that you can do for the rest of your life. Maybe you can swap out one soda per day to diet or water. Do that for a week or two. Once that feels natural, then make another small change. Rinse and repeat.

Small baby steps get us to our goals. Making huge sweeping changes, like "eating 100% clean and exercising 7 days a week" lead to failure.

LisaMelton1 wrote: »

I’m 63 at 267 lbs. I lost about 25 lbs since January but when I hit a plateau 2 months ago I tried keto. That made me sick as I have no gallbladder and I got dehydrated from diarrhea. I’ve joined a gym but with arthritis in my knees and ankles my workouts are either inefficient or maybe I’m expecting too much too soon either way I’ve about had it. Im tired of being sore and hungry on 1200 calories. Maybe it meant for me to be big and beautiful.

I'm 62, and have no gallbladder either, so we have some things in common.

Since you say 1200 calories, I'm thinking you must be trying to lose 2 pounds a week. If the 1200 is kind of miserable for you, have you considered trying for a slower loss rate, like 1 pound a week? I know you'd like to have the weight off ASAP, but it's inherently a long term project (it took me almost a year to lose 50 pounds), so keeping it sustainable and achievable is also important!

At your current weight, your BMR (basal metabolic rate, basically the calories you'd burn if you were immobile in bed all day) is probably in the 1700-1800 range, so you're eating well below your BMR. That can be very stressful, especially if physical problems limit exercise and health issues constrain diet besides.

Any kind of movement you can do will help to burn extra calories. Bonus if you can find movement that's actually fun for you, since most of us want to do things that are fun, so will do them more often than things that are painful or difficult. There are all kinds of arthritis exercises, chair exercises, and gentle exercises on YouTube. Maybe something like that would be a good start? Also, if you have access to a pool or lake, water exercise can be easier on the joints than regular land-based exercise, because the water supports some weight.

That said, it's possible to lose weight without exercise. Exercise is good because it burns extra calories and helps us maintain existing muscles while losing, but the actual weight loss is all about calories. (Calories for weight loss + macronutrients and micronutrients for nutrition + exercise for fitness = best odds for good health.)

As your weight loss progresses, I predict you'll start feeling more able to move more, in different ways. It will get easier, so don't be too hard on yourself right now.

One of the things that surprised me was how very much better my arthritic joints felt after I lost weight. It went from routine discomfort and frequent pain (sometimes interfering with sleep), to occasional discomfort (actual pain is now vanishingly rare). The pain reduction alone is worth the journey, IMO, even though it's a slow and challenging process.

Personally, I didn't do any special "named" diet to lose. I just ate many of the same things I'd always eaten, in smaller portions and different proportions, and tried to get enough protein, healthy fats, and plenty of fruits/veggies in there. This is a post I did about one way to think about eating for weight loss, without doing any fancy contortions in what one eats (it's pretty much what I did, with the mistakes and back-tracks left out ).

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10636388/free-customized-personal-weight-loss-eating-plan-not-spam-or-mlm

If you truly want to, you can do this: I know you can!