55-65 year old women's success?

debtay123 wrote: »

When I changed my mfp from to lose1.0 a week to lose.05 a week, I gained an extra 200 calories too. I could not believe how much better I feel with the extra calories and I have just decided to go slower and be happy with any loss that I have.

I had that experience when I started -- finding it too difficult to manage at 1310 calories per day, so I was better at the 200 calories more: 1510. That worked well on my good days for awhile, but I eventually gave up --- I was feeling too defeated too often (by exceeding that caloric goal).

When I came back again, I decided to set my caloric goal at 1800 --- which would be fine for maintenance for a woman my size at ideal weight, yet still working towards a deficit. Happy to say it has been okay doing that --- without doing any tracking (while away from MFP) I'm sure I regularly exceeded that, so this was good to get me started and control my intake.

Thanks to, I think, one of our crowd (@lovesretirement ?) post about Fitbit, I finally figured out how to connect my Fitbit to MFP, and that has changed things a bit.

Anyway, I realize that with the Fitbit I have to set the caloric goal down, because those steps really add up!

I set my goal back to 1500, as I have not needed to eat the exercise yet. I am pretty sedentary, loving retirement, too, but now I have reset the Fitbit for hourly reminders to move. Now I heed those gentle reminders from the watch to get moving --- I live in an apartment, and I can get in lots of steps up and down stairs and back and forth in the halls. Otherwise, I was driving myself nuts circling around the rooms of our apartment!

Oh, yeah --- 2 lbs down in 20 days -- fine with me -- I haven't really gotten back to full activity and weight training yet.

My main goal is doing all the little things that add up to my final goal of body fat % loss. For whatever reasons my fat loss % has always moved slow like a snail. Even when I’m losing pounds... and this is where I see I have had my down spirals all the time as I get so frustrated!!!

So to rid myself of the 7-8 pounds that keep me returning to the mid 150’s weight range, I’m back to my own personal Boot Camp Basics:
1) logging, 2) sleep, 3)avoid stress, 4)limited to no wine (my friends and sisters r gonna hate me), 5) LNS > avoid eating after dinner unless I’m still hungry after dinner, then I’ll have some yogurt or a protein drink 6) stay engaged on MFP 7) I’ll add hydrating and 8) exercise >I always do those but they’re part of the formula 9) weigh & measure all nutrition

I have Ulcerative Colitis and I’m a cancer survivor. Having good digestion is key for me period, and if I can focus on good digestion then it means my nutrtition is working for me and not against me.

Thanks for the thread.

Let’s do this!!!

I’m 62. The picture in white was taken in March when DH and I celebrated our 20 year anniversary. I weighed 199 lbs ( down from 208 lbs. in September) . After seeing that terrible picture I immediately went on a diet and have so far lost 16 pounds. Current weight 183. Still need another 30 to be at healthy BMI .

Teri you look great! I am 62 and just started on this intermittent fasting and I have lost about 3 lbs a week.

It's 80% diet 20% exercise....i have struggled with weight all my life. I am 52, went through menopause at 45. I hired a trainer and have a nutrition plan on MFP. I have come yo the realization I will be loghing my food for the reat of my life as that is how I lose weight. I have done every diet program out there including Keto and to be honest the only success that I've had on any of these is when I'm actually journaling the foods that I eat all of the diets work. It's after the fact that's more important what are you doing once you reach your goal weight. So if I have to journal my food the rest of my life to get where I need to be then that's what it is I need to lose about 40 lb. So far so good I'm down to in a week!

I am 62, been working out with a trainer since Oct 2019. I got stronger but didn't lose any weight. Jan went on regular low cal diet. After 3 weeks the cravings were killing me! So I went keto. Finally I have started to lose weight. 18 pounds in 5 weeks. It is extremely hard to lose weight at this age, BUT I finally have the time to take care of ME and I am doing it. It feels great to be stronger and working on the thinner. Think of it as your new normal. Live like the you, that YOU want to be.

Hello, just checking if this site is still active. Female, I will be 66 next month. Have lost 31 lbs and am 41 lbs from goal. Would love to hear from counterparts.

Three years ago, (May 2017) I was almost 59, just over 180 pounds (5 ft 3 / 5 ft 2) BMI obese for my age and height. (October birthday)

141.2 or so is the borderline between BMI overweight and BMI normal for me. Being over 60 and not "super-active default lifestyle" (even before work-from-home became my norm) aiming for the dead-center of normal BMI (124) was not even CONSIDERED as a target.

It took two years of slow&steady, but I made it to 135. (didn't discover MFP's monthly Ultimate Accountability Challenge until maybe halfway through - but it was a HUGE element to my eventual success.)

In April 2019 at age going-on-61, I declared myself at maintenance (the first time) - left the UAC in May or June 2019 thinking I would be FINE just heading off on my own (too-loose tracking though the 2019 summer and fall, but still weighing in everyday) and all stayed nicely within target range until the Holly Daze season (Christmas / New Years 2019 / 2020) when I started staying a bit too high above what I had chosen as the top end of my maintenance range, and flirting toooo close with that borderline back out of normal into overweight.

So I came back to UAC in March 2020 (two weeks before Canada Shut Down) which REQUIRED tightening up on tracking and therefore higher self-awareness / reality checks and by mid-April I could declare "working to stabilize again" (added the difference between shedding-calorie intake and maintenance-calorie intake in small increments over a 6 week period instead of all at once) and I am still sitting nicely within an average daily weight variant of lower-to-upper 133.X

Daily fluctuations don't phase me. I know from experience (and am easily reminded as required by a graph of 3 years of accumulated daily weigh-in data on my Wii Fit Plus) that simply resuming "normal eating / activity levels" the next meal or day WILL result in weigh-in auto-self-correction within just a few days.

The days that are over into 134.X or even low 135s are always the day-afters where I had eaten within calorie goal, but had a heavier or higher salt meal, like stew-on-toast or a national-brand oven-ready pot-pie or else the day after a pre-planned Special Meal event.

Special Meals / outings are now savored and become Special Memories. I no longer tend to treat the entire day leading up to the event-meal as a free-for-all - like auto-overloading on the bbq pre-meal high-fat-but-nothing-special bowels of chips&snacks nibbles that are usually spread out ...

I save all the "already pre-planning-to-go-over" room for an extra cob of corn (which we never have at home because DH can't eat it), seconds of MEAT, and two different desserts instead.


From the time I started "stabilization-into Maintenance" (the second time) in April 2020 I have remained steady week-to-week.

Keep in mind ... this isn't a race. Faster (unless under direct medical supervision for some specific reason / life-threatening condition) is NOT the best long or even short-term strategy.



It WILL happen. You WILL get there.

My two favourite meme / posters are:

General Attitude:


and When Life Happens, and you get thrown a curve ...