60 years old and 60 extra pounds?! How did I get here?

Hello and welcome!

I'm not exactly on the same road, but I once was, so I thought I'd post to say "hi" and (if I can) offer some encouragement. I joined MFP at age 59, close to your current age, also quite active even then. I lost about 50 pounds, and have been hanging around for nearly 10 years since to keep my head in the game and stay at a healthy weight. So far, so good.

Back when I was losing weight, the current weight loss drugs weren't available, or at least weren't common, so I didn't use them. They do seem to help quite a few people now, though, so I'm not critical of those who make that choice.

When it comes to motivation . . . well, that's not my strongest suit, hedonistic aging hippie flake that I am. 😆 I'm a fan of making the easiest-to-follow plan that triggers gradual weight loss, and just persistently chipping away at progress. Why? That requires minimum motivation, willpower or discipline - the things I'm not good at . . . but it can work.

A lot of people seem to arrive here with an aggressive "lose weight fast" plan: Restrictive eating rules, maybe one of the trending named diets, possibly stack punitively intense, miserable daily exercise on top of that. That usually doesn't end well, but typically and sadly ends quite quickly. (I'm glad you don't seem to be heading that way!)

As far as hacks go, I don't know. Mostly, I just stuck with my pre-existing enjoyable exercise schedule, maybe being a little more consistent with strength training while losing; plus tried to eat nutritious foods I enjoy and found filling that add up to the right calorie level. Up front, I decided I wasn't going to do anything to lose weight that I wasn't willing to continue forever to stay at a healthy weight, except for a sensibly moderate calorie deficit until I reached a good weight for me. That put a priority on experimenting to find then practice new permanent eating and activity habits that could continue almost on autopilot long term.

When I got to goal weight, I didn't need to learn a bunch of new habits, just add back a few daily calories and keep up the same practiced, relatively easy habits. Around 10 years post-loss, I haven't regretted that approach so far.

But different strategies work for different people, so I'm not saying everyone should look at it that way. I think personalizing the methods is a key success factor. Each of us has different preferences, strengths, limitations, and lifestyles.

I do think that at our age, we may have an advantage over some of the young'uns: By this point, we usually know ourselves pretty well, and know ways to maximize our strengths and minimize our weaknesses, while chipping away at some big goal in small, manageable steps. We've done that to get an education, pursue a career, maybe raise a family, make a nice home, or other things like that. That same skillset and self-insight are what's needed to lose weight or improve fitness or both. It's just applying those things in a different domain.

I'm cheering for you both to succeed: If your experience is like mine, the quality of life improvement that can result is more than worth the effort it takes to accomplish it.

Best wishes!