230 lb Female, 40 yrs old, need advice

Start by logging. Honestly and everything. Try to stay under your calories but use the first few weeks to learn. Pay attention. What foods are higher in calories than you realized? Lower? What macros help you stay feeling full? Try to get a little movement in.

Adjust as you go. You don’t have to have an ultimate plan right now. It is easy to make this more complicated than it needs to be. As I learn more about nutrition I adjust things. As I started feeling better I kept adding in movement/exercise.

I think why my past attempts failed is because I had a big plan, jumped right in and couldn’t keep it up, then stopped. Getting into it slowly and changing habits has been key for me. This is something I can keep up long term. So hopefully done with the yo-yo stuff.

Like mlitri mentioned earlier, log all of your food/drinks every day. Be okay with continuing to check in stuff, even past your daily calorie goal. Starting out, simply getting used to seeing how many calories you consume on regular daily stuff will already help you find areas you can slim down a little bit. For me it’s starting out with a beer or two less or a handful of pretzels less.

Aiming for a daily calorie goal but not being ashamed when you exceed it will help to not get discouraged and stay involved. Staying the course, staying committed is the way to be a champion.

(Now take my own advice haha)

Buy a scales, weigh and measure your food. Don't cut your calories ridiculously low. Don't cut out all of your favourite foods either find a way to work them in. Walking is a great way to start adding activity into your day. You can walk with your baby buggy. Running after a toddler in the park is a great way to burn some calories. If you have time when baby naps a quick 30 min workout dvd /YouTube video is also a great way to start exercising. Just start and tweak as you go, if you hit any bumps people here will be able to help you out.
Good luck

I have always wanted exercise to be the key to weight loss! But honestly weight is controlled by calories. That is one of the things I like about MyFitnessPal is the calorie tracking. Healthy eating and food choices are so important but it is simply a numbers game and knowing that and tracking what goes in makes a huge impact. Exercise makes us strong and healthy but weight loss is about the food.

I would recommend looking into intermittent fasting. I wish I would have long ago! Over time "only" counting calories will slow your metabolism, forcing you to eat less and less until it's just too low to be sustainable. I fast about 18 hrs a day (only drinking plain sparkling water) and eat 6 hrs, I don't count calories. I've lost over 10lbs in a month and it has been mostly effortless. I highly recommend reading Gin Stephen's book, "Fast Feast Repeat," it's been extremely helpful!

hilaryhill wrote: »

I would recommend looking into intermittent fasting. I wish I would have long ago! Over time "only" counting calories will slow your metabolism, forcing you to eat less and less until it's just too low to be sustainable. I fast about 18 hrs a day (only drinking plain sparkling water) and eat 6 hrs, I don't count calories. I've lost over 10lbs in a month and it has been mostly effortless. I highly recommend reading Gin Stephen's book, "Fast Feast Repeat," it's been extremely helpful!

What the Barbell said. Plus:

Losing ten pounds is good, even if 10 in a month would be on the iffy-fast side unless substantially obese. The first month pretty much always includes a water retention drop that will account for some of that, so probably the rate is less health-risky than it might look on the surface.

I'm really happy for you, sincerely.

But . . . one month?

I hope IF continues to be successful for you in all respects, again sincerely.

But losing any meaningfully substantial amount of weight is a long-haul proposition, months to years. After that, there's maintaining that healthy weight long term, to avoid - or at least defer - being one of the many, many people posting "Restarting" "Back Again" "Regained" etc. kind of threads in the Getting Started topic area.

That puts a premium on sustainable habits, habits that can continue almost on autopilot when life gets complicated, as it eventually will. For some people, those sustainable habits will be IF. For some people, they'll be calorie counting. For other people, it'll be something else entirely. Any healthy path is a good path, IMO.

Me, I count calories. I eat from soon after I wake up, until shortly before bedtime. I've been doing it for over 7 years now, which may seem onerous to some, but to me it's the best investment of a bare few minutes daily that I've ever made, in terms of quality of life benefits.

I was overweight/obese for around 3 decades. I lost weight for just under a year, obese to healthy weight. I've been at a healthy weight for 6+ years since then, still calorie counting, with all my blood lipid/blood pressure numbers - formerly high - all solidly in the normal range. FWIW, during loss, I needed to increase calories gradually to slow my weight loss to sensibly moderate rates - the exact opposite of being forced to eat less and less!

If my metabolism has been so horribly slowed by calorie counting, please explain to me why my calorie needs - confirmed by 7 years of logging experience, mind - are 25-30% higher before exercise than the so-called calculators estimate for a 66 y/o, 5'5", 127 pound female? I suspect your book's author has bought into things like the study of Biggest Loser participants, whose extreme behavior has unsurprisingly led to extreme consequences.

Most of the folks on this thread recommending calorie counting to the OP are urging moderation and sustainability. Some adaptive thermogenesis can happen from any long-term calorie restriction - including one created without counting, by fasting - but as long as tactics aren't extreme, it will tend to be a small effect, and will reverse itself once at true maintenance calories.

I wish you and the OP excellent long-term results, on any healthy path that you personally find easy. Your representations about calorie counting aren't accurate, though - no matter what that book or others advocating fasting (or other non-counting tactics) may say.