WOMEN AGES 50+ FOR NOVEMBER 2020

Put your current numbers into MFP
Select sedentary as your activity level
Choose how much you'd like to lose (i.e. 1 lb/week)
MFP will give you the number of calories to eat
Eat those calories
... and weigh (with food scale) and log every bite.


A few extra things have helped me along the way:

1) Exploring my grocery stores and markets to find delicious, filling low calorie foods. It's amazing what's out there.

2) Exercising as much as possible. Exercise gives me extra calories to work with so that I can have things like pizza now and then ... but to keep my sanity and not wear myself out, my exercise quantity varies as does what I do for exercise.

Also, I tend not to eat all my exercise calories back.
If I've just done a little bit of exercise like a 3 km walk or something, I'll eat about 50% of my calories back.
If I've done a moderate amount of exercise like a 5 km run or 50 km bicycle ride, I'll eat about 75% of my calories back.
If I've done a lot of exercise, like a half marathon or a 100 km bicycle ride, I might eat about 90% of my calories back.

3) Eating how I want to eat. This is where everyone is different ... some people prefer to employ fasting, others like high protein diets, some like vegetarian diets, some like to eat 2 or 3 meals a day, others like to graze. Go with what works for you.

Personally, if I had to define what I do, my diet is probably most similar to a Mediterranean diet with a vegetarian lean ... and I'm a grazer. I also have to adjust what I do depending on my cycling events ... they're tricky because I need the fuel without going overboard.

Stick to it for 5 weeks, then reassess how things are going.


Regarding Cheat Meals
When I was on a mission to lose weight in 2015, I never went over my calorie limit. I stuck to the plan like glue. And I lost the weight.

But I broke it up into weeks. When I started I had 16 weeks until we were going to Canada so my plan was to stick to the calorie limit for 16 weeks and then take a 1-month break while we were in Canada. I did that and lost 15 kg in that time. After the 1-month break, I eased back into it for a couple weeks, upped my calorie limit slightly, and then stuck to it like glue for the next 16 weeks in which I lost 11 kg and took me close to Christmas when I took another break for about a month.


10 Things to Stop Doing If You Want to Exercise
https://www.verywellfit.com/things-to-stop-if-you-want-to-exercise-1231403

It is difficult to make goals because I'm not sure what's going to happen one day to the next. I plan, God laughs ... or something like that. The last couple years have been a lesson in patience and flexibility and giving up a lot of what I would like to do in the interests of what needs to be done.

However, I do have some goals I'd like to accomplish, if possible ...

How to Set SMART Goals for 2020
SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.
https://www.daveramsey.com/blog/smart-goal-setting

Interestingly, he talks about 7 significant areas ...

Financial Goals: Start saving for retirement, get out of debt, or use a monthly zero-based budget.
Spiritual Goals: Pick up a new devotional, start a daily journal, or plug in to a group at your church.
Fitness Goals: Hit the gym more often, take the stairs, and remember to eat your veggies.
Educational Goals: Go back to finish your degree, get your MBA, or read a good book every month.
Family Goals: Plan one-on-one dates with your kids, have a standing date night with your spouse, or make it a point to call your mom and dad on Sunday nights.
Career Goals: Work toward a promotion or raise, learn something new about your line of work, or polish up and send out resumés if you’re looking for a new career path.
Social Goals: Say yes when someone invites you out to lunch or a social gathering—or, for some of us, say no more often.

I've modified this slightly ...

Organisation/Financial Goals -- Getting our taxes done and other paperwork in order.

Spiritual Goals -- I'd like to start attending church a bit more regularly. I'll also include relaxation and recreation in here. Down time. I get very little of that at the moment and need more. For me that might be sleep and photography.

Fitness Goals -- Exercise, Eating, Sleeping -- Working up to running 5 km at least a couple times a month. Working up to cycling 50 km at least once a month.

Educational Goals -- Uni! I would like to finish my Master's degree in 2020.

Family/Medical Goals -- Husband. Never-ending stream of medical appointments regarding his brain injury + projects with 2 or 3 different organisations. And me! A goal is to get me into healthy shape again!

Career Goals -- One of the main things my area is planning to work on is streamlining the processes a bit. Meanwhile I need to learn a lot more SQL and as much about what 2 different people I work/worked with did. I'm also on the board of two organisations now. Both interest me a lot, but I'm also hoping that taking on leadership roles might help advance my career a little.

Social Goals -- Cycling Club and My Personal Website -- I have started working on this. I'd post it here, but not sure if I can: machka . net This had a social aspect in that we go to Wordpress meetings now and then.

I'm Machka and I am in Tasmania, Australia.

Some of my favourite hobbies/sports/activities include:
-- cycling
-- walking
-- hiking
-- running
-- reading
-- working on my website
-- photography

I bake, but don't cook, sew, knit, garden, etc.

Most of my day is spent working with health data, "attending" university (online now) working toward a Masters in IT, doing homework, and spending time with my husband (who suffered a severe traumatic brain injury 2 years ago) and new kitty, Rhody.

My husband is not able to work anymore, so one of his main activities is gardening. He works at that at his own pace and we've got quite a lovely garden of flowers, fruit and veggies.

This is Rhody ... a young all black "domestic" who joined us at the end of March.

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I joined MFP in February 2015 and promptly lost 15 kg, took a 1-month break, then lost another 11 kg. By Christmas 2015, I was down to a weight I hadn't seen in quite a few years ... since my early 30s.

In 2016, 2017 and the early part of 2018 I maintained while increasing my cycling. My sport, within cycling, is ultradistance cycling: Audax, Randonneuring, 24-hour races, etc.

Here's me in 2016 in Brisbane, QLD a couple days after cycling a 300 km event in 18 hours including all breaks.



In late 2017 and early 2018, my husband and I were in great shape and feeling good. We were cycling events and on our own and building up the distances in the hopes of going to France in 2019 to ride the Paris-Brest-Paris 1200 km event. We met on a Paris-Brest-Paris in 2003, and the 2019 one was going to be a bit of an anniversary trip.

And then on March 22, 2018, my husband had a very bad accident at work ... and life changed. He was in a coma for 3 weeks and post traumatic amnesia for 7 weeks and in hospital for 100 days. Then, a year after the accident, he had a tonic clonic (grand mal) seizure which set him back. He'll never fully recover but he's doing better then they originally predicted.

He is cycling again but gets very tired so can't cycle consistently or for long distances.

Because cycling is something we've always done together, this means I'm not cycling the ultra long distances at this point either. In an attempt to boost my exercise we've set up a home gym, and I've got into running again. I hadn't run since I was in my late teens!

But all the time sitting at the hospital and dealing with the aspects of care for my husband, plus working, plus attending university has taken its toll on my weight and I don't look like that picture above anymore! This year I have maintained my weight but I'd really like to lose a bit.

So that's me in a rather large nutshell.