On a very teeny roller coaster... stick with it or change??

I spend half my waking hours ,I swear, repeating the mantra. “The best diet is the one that I stick with for the rest of my life.“

I’m 69 and started my new year similar as you, but I had some additional motivation from my Doctor who said that a lot of my back and leg problems would probably go away if I lost some weight, and another Doctor Who suggests and has been suggesting for years that I could probably lose some of the meds I take if I would lose some weight.

So I’m sticking with the calorie deficit program to get the overweight under control, and along the way I’m allowing myself to enjoy food and if I know that I’m gonna have some thing some event that include food or alcohol that would exceed my calorie deficit goals, then I go to the gym or do some other activity,for a while and bank some exercise calories.

logging food on the app Here is what really holds me accountable to my own self and I am gonna try really hard not to let anything distract me from it again this time.

Wishing us both luck.

I agree with Sollyn about the probabilities/possibilities in the overall scenario. Lots of people get discouraged by water/digestive waste fluctuations, and don't stick with a weight loss routine. If there's something unpleasant to the person about the weight loss routine, that outcome becomes even more likely.

The only thing I'd add is that any calorie estimate from a calorie calculator, MFP, or fitness tracker is just that, an estimate. It's the average calorie need for people in a similar demographic. You nor I are an average. We're each individuals. Our calorie needs can be higher or lower than average. Most people are close to the averages, but a few can be surprisingly far off.

Results are a clearer and more reliable gauge of individual calorie needs than any so-called calorie calculator or fitness tracker.

If you truly keep logging and stick close to that 1450 calories for literal months - no significant cheat days, slips, unrecorded bites/licks/tastes or condiments or beverages or anything - and literally lose no weight for those months . . . you've found your maintenance calories, and will need to cut eating a bit further in order to keep losing, or add activity.

I see that you say you already exercise moderately. I'm not sure what that means, in quantified terms. You certainly don't need to "become a marathon runner". Any extra movement, daily life stuff or exercise, will burn a few more calories. I'm sure you know exercise isn't a huge calorie burner, but even working your way up most days to half an hour more extra of something fun - at least tolerable and practical - will make a contribution.

I also don't know how challenging your strength exercise is compared to your current capabilities. More progressive or challenging strength exercise can even add a tiny bit of a boost to basal metabolic rate (BMR) over time, if increasing intensity is an option for you.

IMO, taking Wegovy or one of the other GLP-1 drugs isn't likely to improve things much in your case as you describe it, since you're not telling us that eating 1450 is a huge struggle with "food noise" or appetite. Certainly, to the extent a large fraction of your eating is processed foods, you could try eating more whole foods because for many people that increases satiety.

If you're getting less than ideal nutrition - even if not terrible - improving that can increase satiety, too . . . maybe even improve energy level. Particularly common among women in our demographic is lowballing protein intake. Protein is sating for many people, requires a tiny bit more calories to digest/metabolize, and helps keep the muscle mass we have, and - like I said - more muscle mass is a tiny boost to BMR calorie burn. At our age, it becomes more important to spread protein through the day, too, rather than focusing it in one or two meals.

If you can't stick with 1200, don't. But stick with something consistently, seeking satiety and very slow weight loss. That can work.

I'm older than you are, 69 now. My main weight loss was 9+ years ago, class 1 obese to a healthy weight. I've been at a healthy weight and in the same jeans size ever since then. Over the first four years of maintaining, my weight crept up a few pounds, maybe 10-12. I decided I wanted to drop it down those few pounds, but I didn't want to do a big cut.

Essentially, I aimed for around half a pound a week of weight loss or a bit slower, but still ate over calorie goal on the rare day, so it was even slower in reality. I based my calorie intake on my personal-experience calorie needs data, not on some calculator/tracker.

It took me around a year or a bit more to lose those few pounds - I lost only around a pound a month. There were times in there up to a month or a bit more when even my weight trending app thought I was gaining or maintaining weight, but I was pretty confident from long logging experience that I still had that small deficit.

If I'd relied on day to day scale weights - rather than the trending app - there likely would've been even more times when I thought nothing was happening. But in each case, eventually the expected weight loss showed up on the scale, sometimes suddenly.

The good part, though: It was virtually painless to do it that. It's not for everyone, but for someone with as few pounds to lose as you have, it's an option to consider rather than giving up. It requires reasonable consistency on average, and persistence over time, but IME it's easy and sustainable.

None of us can tell you exactly what to do: You're the only one who knows what the tradeoffs are for you of revamping eating/activity habits permanently vs. staying at a higher weight than you prefer.

I'd like to see you succeed, because reaching and staying at a healthy weight has been a major quality of life improvement for me, so I want success for everyone. The above is about all I've got to suggest, though, based on the limited info you've given us.

Best wishes!

Trending apps are still "scale oriented" in a sense. Loosely, what they do is try to use statistical techniques, usually some fancy variation on a moving average, to smooth out day to day scale-weight fluctuations that are more likely to be about water retention shifts or variability in digestive waste on the way to the exit. Their aim is to estimate the underlying trend of actual bodyweight, the fat/muscle/bone kind of weight.

I use Libra for Android, though I have to say I'm not delighted with an algorithm change in a semi-recent release of the app. Other options I've heard about are Happy Scale for Apple iOS, Trendweight (which I believe requires a free Fitbit account, but doesn't require owning a Fitbit device), and Weightgrapher on the web. I'm sure there are others.

It's important to realize that they're not a crystal ball. It's just statistics, not magic. 😉 I weigh every morning unless traveling, after bathroom before eating, in the same state of (un)dress, and put the day's weight into Libra. I don't pay much attention to the daily weights, and definitely don't stress about minor ups and downs of a few pounds. Minor ups and downs like that are normal.

For me, weight loss significantly reduced both frequency and severity of joint pain from osteoarthritis and some other issues. I lost around 50 pounds in total, starting in April 2015 at 183 pounds, in the 120s by early 2016. I overshot goal weight by a few pounds, and now prefer to weigh around 125, but currently sitting in the lower 130s. Someone once posted here that maintenance was like losing and regaining the same 5 pounds repeatedly, which doesn't seem like a crazy thought to me. 😆 I'm 5'5", narrowly built - honestly kind of built like a 14-year-old boy 😆 - no breasts at all because post-bilateral-mastectomies besides. If it matters - I think it doesn't - I'm also severely hypothyroid, but medicated for it.

I'm pretty active, but being active is a thing I started in my late 40s after full-bore cancer treatment, and continued primarily for fun longer term. I stayed overweight to obese for a dozen years while working out pretty hard 6 days most weeks. Weight loss, for me, was all about managing the eating side of the calorie balance. (Calorie counting was perfect for me, as a method.)

These days, in Summer, I row on water around 4 days a week, occasionally more, for about an hour, and often bike or something else another 2 days a week.

In Winter, I mostly alternate rowing and biking on machines shooting for 6 days a week, but am admittedly less consistent in Winter these days, and particularly so this year: I fractured my skull and caused a brain bleed in November, spent some time in the neurology ICU, and have been trying to figure out since what combination of exercise frequency and intensity works without aggravating the fatigue that's a side effect of healing the head injury.

I'm not talking anything like marathon training intensity in my case. This past week, a pretty good week, I machine rowed twice, once for an hour, once for half an hour; took a "Bulletproof Knees" class for an hour; did two one-hour stationary bike rides; and took an intentional walk for around 1.8 miles that took about 40 minutes total. Because I've been quite active for a couple of decades, I do include some higher-intensity exercise in the mix, but most of the time is moderate.

My overall health is pretty good these days, solidly normal or better in terms of things like blood lipids, blood pressure, etc. I'm not medicated for any of those. Like I said, I'm hypothyroid (likely genetic), and I have osteoporosis, probably mostly triggered by some of the cancer-related medications. (I'm not complaining: Alive is a really good start on the rest of my day, considering the actual alternative.)

Right now, I'd probably be trying to creep my weight down slowly by a few pounds again, but I'm instead trying to hold pretty steady to maximize healing of my skull, a slow thing to heal at this age especially. (The more worrisome brain bleed has resolved, according to my neurosurgeon.)

There are quite a few 60+ women - or close to that age - here who've lost weight successfully, and maintained the loss. It can happen. Like I said, mostly about reasonable consistency on average, plus patient persistence. Finding personally sustainable new routine habits is key, IMO, and what those habits are is going to be different for everyone, because we're unique individuals.

Best wishes!

Maybe you need to accept the weight you are, and consider building muscle and shedding fat. A personal trainer or a coach might be helpful if you can afford it. It is possible to lose fat without the number on the scale going down. Focus on dress sizes, not the number on the scale. Some people say sometimes eating more can cause your weight to go down, if it makes your metabolism faster, but I'm not sure if that's true. Either way, I'm sure you look great.

:-)

Sanity checking entries by entering 100g and seeing what pops up is useful. I also tend to occasionally double check that the macros multiply out to within range and look for more accurate / better matching to gov sources entries, if they appear to be too far off.

Just wondering if hormones are your disruptor? I'm on a similar journey. Up until I was 56 the system of ⬇️ calories in and ⬆️ calories burned worked by the book and easily dropped weight and maintained a range of 144-150lbs. Fast forward to age 61 (now 181lbs) and absolutely nothing seems to be working no matter my diligent efforts. The couple things of note that I'm curious about, hence the hormone comment, are that I am 13 yrs post meno and three years ago suffered a bad bout of COVID which stuck around as long COVID. That's about the time my weight and body aches fired up as well.🤷🏻‍♀️