60 yrs and up

@pony4us I’m so sorry about your dog. That must have been devastating and traumatic on so many levels.

We are going to be walking in the “other direction” for a while now, where there’s no foot traffic. No yard. We live in a very urban area, zero lot line homes with a pocket park in front.

I talked to the vet last year about putting him tranquilizers but the vet said he wasn’t a candidate. We came home and had a long talk about his behavior and if it continued we’d put him to sleep rather than put him back in the shelter, where he was miserable (we went back to visit for a training class. He knew where he was and he lost his mind. I guess he thought I was turning him back in again).

He’s very very intelligent, and seemed to understand my distress, and has been golden since then, til in the past week.

He’s had tummy troubles from both ends for the past week. and I’m thinking he’s not feeling well.

Anyway, sorry for the off topic wander.

Hi, I am not over 60, but I am over 50. Slightly handicapped (thus limiting my exercise options) but I’m trying! Getting started by committing to logging EVERYTHING that I eat! I’d love to be your friend and supporter!! We all need that!!

Oh, @MargaretYakoda, I'm so sorry - that's horrible! Sending hopes for speedy healing, and a smoother course ahead!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you south of the border!

Special hello hug to Ann and Margaret, and good wishes for their respective recoveries!

Today is the first day of my last week on the BodySlims program - I need to lose 2.6 lbs to get to the 10% mark, really hoping I make it and gunning for the 220s on my scale. It has been pretty much stuck for about 5 days, so fingers crossed 🤞 that means a drop is coming.

I finally got out of 'poor' and into the 'fair' category on the walking chart today! Feels great!
And my brother is stoked about walking around Stanley Park with me for my final walk challenge - 10k - hope it is dry next Tuesday. It will be a combination of walking the seawall and on trails through the forest.

Although losing weight is most critically about the diet, any activity is going to help with your metabolism and your shape. I am in awe of what Ann accomplished today - please, please take it slow and easy!

I swear I don’t walk like an elderly woman. That’s the dog. He has to sniff every *kitten* thing.

Great job, @BCLadybug888

It feels so great to hit milestones! I hope you enjoy your walk with your brother. Milestone and gift, there.

One of my motivating factors to lose was going in a bike ride with the neighborhood “Ladies Bike Group” we’d organized. We live adjacent to a wide and traffic-free paved trail and a lot of us had “cruisers”.

I was so ashamed I couldn’t make it up a hill when everyone else could, even a lady I privately considered “fatter than me”. Yeah, I judged everyone harshly, including myself.

They had to wait while I got off and pushed my bike to the top and I (thought I) saw the disgust in their faces. One of the lowest points of my life. Came home and cried my eyes out.

Being able to pedal that hill and the even bigger one beyond was a goal for me.

Now, no one wants to do anything with me because I run circles around them, and they’re in my shoes. It was sort of a lose/lose/won it all kind of chain of events, I guess.

I am super grateful to the two neighbors who swapped turns walking me like a dog morning and night when I was in my early loss phase.

You keep hitting those milestones. It’ll happen and it feels GOOD to earn them.

@springlering62, there's some research suggesting that nicotine can help cardio performance amongst people who don't routinely use nicotine. (I think it was endurance and something else, but I don't remember without re-researching.) That's been spread a bit in running-related blogs and such, I think. Snuff may be appealing as a delivery mechanism because smoking has other negative consequences (and prohibitions on where it can be done in public).

Regular use seems to impair performance, though. Not sure how sound any of that research is, though - my interest was vague curiosity about something surprising to me, not a plan to use nicotine before races or otherwise!

Snuff cans are a handy size and at least some are moisture-resistance, but not being a runner I'm not sure how/whether that would be useful as a washed-out container for something.

Was it only a 5k, not also longer distances? It's a little weird to me that someone who'd run a 5k would use nicotine to improve endurance . . . well, betcha you know why I'd say that.

Maybe the cans were just mostly from spectators? People seem to leave their trash on the street at big events, for reasons I totally don't understand.

Yes, I had used snuff a tiny bit in the distant past, briefly. 🙄

@MargaretYakoda, I hope you're seeing improvement from the "emergency dental surgery" scenario, or at least will soon!

@BCLadybug888, congratulations on moving yourself up a category in the walking speed: That's a wonderful milestone, a really big deal. Keep up the great work (I know you will )! Yes, I'm doing my very best to stick very closely to my doctors' orders.

@Debbitx, in my view, you're welcome to participate here, even if not yet fully at the age-60 mark. For sure, we don't check IDs at the door !

How is everyone else doing - @SbetaK, @MaggieGirl135, @mtaratoot, @SummerSkier, @welshflier4323, and doubtless some other recent participants that I'm stupidly forgetting (apologies!)?

@springlering62 . . . mmmmm, buttermilk biscuits! I love a good buttermilk biscuit. I have a good recipe for "Southern" buttermilk biscuits, best eaten fresh out of the oven, but I avoid making them unless I can take the whole pan warm to a coming-soon potluck or something, because they're very hard for me to moderate.

Yeah, I think I'm healing well, given the kind-of-extreme starting point. At least I avoided the immediate "death" possibility, and so far avoided the "brain surgery" one. (That last one was mentioned within the possibilities when I first hit the ER.)

I hope it continues that way! Along the way, I learned that my blood type (AB) is correlated with increased risk for blood clots and strokes, so maybe extra lucky. (I was given clotting-related drugs by IV in the ER and beyond, too, but the specific one - TXA - prevents clots from breaking down, doesn't necessarily increase risk of causing clots, it seems.)

Snuff is - I believe - entirely out of my life at this point, sniffed or as poultice. The flavored kinds were nice in a way, and nicotine does have a bit of an enjoyable hit at least when new to it. It never became a real habit, though, even back in the day. I tried . . . various things . . . that fortunately didn't become real habits, back in the 1970s and maybe even early 1980s. Not going to be specific.

I got in a 2nd day of stationary bike yesterday, again just under an hour. It felt slightly less draining than the first time, maybe because I timed some extra carbs before it, and drank water a couple of times during the ride . . . neither of which would usually be necessary, but seemed like a good idea now. Planning to try a 3rd ride today, take a rest day tomorrow.

I do think it probable that being in perhaps-above-average physical fitness before the fall has helped with recovery.

My Thanksgiving dinner was a potluck at the home of the wonderful NCAA division I rowing coach who first taught me to row back in 2002, and one guest was a former Olympic gold medalist (1984, so she's only about 3 years younger than me) who's now an NCAA Division III coach, and who headed up several rowing camps I attended in my early rowing years. The latter also coached a composite team of breast cancer survivors I was part of for a row in the Head of the Charles Regatta - one of rowing's big events - many years ago, too.

It was the perfect opportunity to tell both of them how much I appreciate them setting me on the path to 22 years of happy rowing, and say that I was certain I was healthier in general as well as probably healing better now, in large part because of their influence on my life. (Because there's some correlation between regular exercise and reduced mortality from breast cancer metastases, I may even be alive now because of them: I had done an especially good job of getting cancer, multiple tumors, tumors in both breasts, stage III in a disease and at a time when stage IV was nearly universally fatal within a relatively short time. 😬)

I hope everyone's doing well, those with recent challenges healing well, also. Best to everyone, and thank you again for your well-wishes and support! :flowerforyou:

cory17 wrote: »

Could I join in? 63 here and working on weight loss for years. Multiple health issues which make it more difficult. This looks supportive and interesting.

@cory17, of course you can join in! Please post as you go along, ask questions if you have some, talk about what and how you're doing to pursue your goals, etc. IMO, IME, engaging in the Community is useful.

Wishing you success!

Every Sunday is Doughnut Sunday. We treat ourselves to something special from the local gourmet doughnut place, usually a big *kitten* apple fritter.

Apparently, the first customer of the day bought everything they had. By the time the second and third (us!) customers reached the door at 8:01, the cashier was hanging up the “sold out” sign and dimming the lights, while her partner was running to and fro with boxes of donuts.

We turned around and headed home, but remembered the lovely coffee shop a couple of blocks away and went and got some darned good (and fresh!) cinnamon buns.

And bonus, the dog got a squirrel cookie, so he was overjoyed, and the pastries weren’t fried like our usual fritters, and were presumably a lot fewer calories than normal.

That left room for a serving of hot air popcorn, which I’ve just enjoyed.

Sundays are 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

For some reason, even including the big *kitten* apple fritter, Sundays are the easiest day of the week to stay within calories. Macros, not so much lol.

I'm still here; thanks for asking. Like some others here, I kind of jumped in before I was really "qualified," but here I am.

I had a very enjoyable Thanksgiving. I was planning to stick around locally and join other "orphans" at a local watering hole where they always have at least some open hours and always make some special foods. Well, some good friends from the city an hour south invited me to join their festivities. I was happy to join them! A mutual friend had said a few weeks ago I should come, but I didn't feel comfortable coming unless invited, and then I got invited. It was a fairly intimate group of seven folks. I knew five of them from project we volunteer on every year. As it turns out, I knew one of the other couple because I worked with him a couple decades ago on a completely different volunteer project.

I made cornbread - sticks and triangles. I have two cornbread skillets that make eight tasty triangles each, and I have two corn stick pans that make seven sticks each. I was also going to make winter squash soup, but the host asked if I could make cranberry sauce instead because the other host was having a hankerin' for it. I've never made it. I typically am not that excited about eating it, but I looked over a whole bunch of recipes and put something together with "local" cranberries from southwest Oregon, two kinds of ginger (fresh and crystalized), orange, and balsamic. I am so glad I cut way back on the sugar; it didn't need it. I bet that's why I usually avoid the stuff; too sweet.

The host are a great couple. One has been a vegetarian for four decades or more. The other is an avid hunter. Well, we had wild turkey roulade. He made fresh homemade bread so he could make the stuffing that went inside. It was quite good. The person I knew from decades ago brought smoked duck he had shot recently and put small pieces on cheese and crackers for appetizers. One friend made a huge green salad and mashed potatoes with chanterelle mushrooms. We had sweet potatoes with prunes. Mmmm. There was persimmon bread. Another friend has a bunch of walnut trees on his property, so he brought walnut pie. We chatted for three and a half hours. I would have stayed longer, but that hour drive home.... It wasn't foggy or raining though, and there wasn't much traffic, so driving on a late November night was less intolerable than usual. Everyone went home with a big "bucket" of extras (half gallon yogurt containers). I have ingredients to make a second batch of cornbread, and as soon as I know I have some folks to share it with I'll make it. I must have altered my recipe with more wheat flour than usual or less polenta than usual because the tooth was more cake-like than usual. Still very good with mild green chiles mixed in and the residual tang from the buttermilk.

A friend and I escaped the inverted atmosphere yesterday and went up into the coast range. We got up out of the cold soup in the valley and were treated to blue sky and warmer temperatures.

Today a friend dropped off a completely dead starting battery from a van that he's looking after for a friend who is out of country for a year. I have a smart charger, and since the battery was already out of the vehicle, it was easier for him to just drop it off for me to charge than for me to teach him how to use the charger. I think it's not the first time it's been totally drained, so it might be damaged enough that he will just replace it. Since it's only six months old, it should be warranted.

I drop my car off at the shop Tuesday afternoon after a few appointments. I need some routine service, and my mechanic is also going to do some diagnostics about a couple things I may need to have done. If needed, I'll schedule a time to bring it back in for the repairs. The truck goes in a week and a half later, again for routine stuff, but possibly also for a new rack & pinion. If needed, I'll make another appointment for that or I'll just leave it there until it's done.

I think the cold weather we've had has put an end to this fall's mushroom gathering. That's OK. I did pretty well this year.

I was out for a pint the other day when a neighbor came in. He ordered a turkey roll - leftovers from Thanksgiving. As he ordered, he said, "Again." Apparently he had been in a couple times already. Also apparently, he had an unhappy Thanksgiving. His housemate made what he called a "sad turkey." Apparently he left it out on the counter for a couple days, but sometimes had it submerged in water and sometimes not. No brine. No basting. Just dry turkey. Poor fellah. I gave him some cornbread and cranberry chutney, and I had to ask....

"Did your housemate at least take the giblet packet out?" Thank goodness they figured that part out. I'm sure your neighbor won't be the last to make that mistake @SummerSkier ....