Getting fit at 50 and beyond...200+ pound club

To the guy who brought the freshly made, food truck donuts into work this morning, I hate you.

And yeah, I had one but it bombed my food plan for the day! lol At least I just had ONE right?

This week has been craptacular and its only Wednesday.

Went to my parents town because my dad was having surgery (my mom has Alzheimer's, early stages, mostly short term memory loss and broke her femur last year so walks with a walker) and so he needed me to be at hospital. get home and walking in the door and my mom needs to go to the bathroom. I told her to give a minute to put the bags I was carrying down and she went to their room anyway. She "forgot" she needed her walker and fell. Broke her OTHER femur. I ended up spending over 36+ hours awake with her in ER, getting admitted etc. Food diary for past two days was like WTF??? I tried to eat "mostly" healthy food but yeah.....

Weekend weigh in was down 2.5 pounds since march 1 but I suspect I just gained that all back!!

Onward right?

(PS mom is doing fine; they operated, installed three more pins in her body - bionic woman anyone? - and is in recovery at the ortho unit in hospital)

@dansemaillives losing an average of 1.3 lbs a week isn't too fast. Losing over 2 lbs a week is where it gets to be more questionable especially for those who weigh less. However my weight varies widely daily. I can have a big loss one day and a gain another so that is why I said an average of 1.3 lbs which is what your loss works out to over the 9 weeks. You should be eating between your Basal Metabolism Rate (BMR) and your TDEE (maintenance) rate -Total Daily Energy Equivalency. Just google BMR calculator and TDEE calculator to get estimates. If you are eating below your BMR that is too little. BMR is what you need if you were in a coma or lying down all day. You need more than that or you will have a problem. Eventually settling into 1 lb a week loss would be best for the long haul from my perspective. Listen to your body but also check out to make sure you have a reasonable deficit. A 500 calorie deficit usually is safe.

As to eating or not eating your exercise calories different people do it differently some eat them all back or eat some back. However it will catch up with you over time if you start to exercise more and are more active. Then your TDEE and BMR will change and you will need to adjust. The way MFP does it is they are separating out activity level and exercise calories when calculating what your calorie goal is. They are relying on you eating back your exercise calories or at least some. TDEE includes both.

So what happened to me the 1st time I lost weight on MFP is I kept my calorie goal the same but I started to exercise more and more and I wasn't adjusting my calorie goal or eating more of my exercise calories. Eventually my BMR and TDEE changed so that I was eating below my BMR. I needed to actually up what I was eating but didn't know it. I was eating some of my exercise calories most of the time but not all most of the time. I hit a plateau I couldn't get out of whatever I did. Of course the one thing I didn't think of to try is to actually eat more. When I realized that I started to slowly up my calories to my maintenance calories. I immediately started to lose again. I took a 2 week break at maintenance calories according to MFP and then I lowered them to a more reasonable deficit which was significantly higher than my original calorie goal. It was so weird to lose by eating more. So just watch it. If you start to be more active and exercise more then adjust things. Keep checking to make sure you are eating enough above your BMR. If you don't feel hungry, you are losing at a reasonable rate 1-2 lbs, are eating over your BMR and don't feel weak or tired then you are probably fine for now. Sometimes people will notice the day they lose is the day after a higher calorie day. This can be a clue but this takes a bit of figuring out.

Frankly I would keep doing what you are doing if it is working, you feel good, and you aren't losing more than you are on average but keep an eye out especially if you start to be more active and exercise more then you will need to adjust. Listen to your body.