I burn about 2200 calories each day, so when I want to lose weight, I eat 1700 calories a day. That helps me lose a pound a week. I take a lot of breaks… When I want ice cream, that means I need to walk an extra four miles. If I want potato chips, I need to walk two miles. One Oreo cookie means an extra mile. I eat a lot of greens, chicken, and fresh fruit. My snack is SkinnyPop popcorn - 39 calories per cup. I try to do a lot of little things - I do not drink alcohol often, park in the last parking place when shopping, and my Fitbit is my dear friend.
Great advice, saintfan!
Eating less helps. Cutting down on carbs helps a lot.
But it’s also critical to exercise, and walking isn’t really enough. I’m convinced that we need to do things with weights - and exercise the upper body as well as our legs. Push ups, kettle balls, pull ups, that sort of stuff.
It takes a 3500 calorie deficit to lose a pound of fat so if you want to lose 1 pound per week you need to shift 500 kcals per day. It would be pretty easy to add 250 kcals of extra exercise and eliminate 250 of intake. Double that for a 2 pound per week loss. About 1-3 lbs per week ongoing is considered to be a sustainable rate of weight loss where you won’t kick your body into a catabolic mode or slow your metabolism because your body thinks you’re starving and it needs to hold on to what’s coming in.
Also . . . be careful of sugar spikes. Insulin has 2 jobs: one job is to be a “key” to get blood sugar into your cells. The other job is to help in storing excess blood sugar as fat. With a big sugar dump into your system your insulin levels spike and it will store that extra sugar for later.
also . . . sleep (
Focus on working your big muscle groups (the little ones will get it vicariously).
Yes, yes – sleep! That is very important. When my kids were young, I had a horrendous commute, and I was only getting about five hours of sleep a night. I felt horrible most of the time, and I got chubby too.
What a horrifically depressing statement!
Now is a great season, though, because it is grilling and salad season. Everything tastes better grilled so you will be less tempted to go for sauces and other added things. You can grill fish or chicken or we like to do London broil along with veggies and sweet potato (I slice them the long way into surf board shaped slabs with a brush of olive oil). EVerything is simple and fresh and yummy that way.
I don’t want to never eat bread or have to treat myself to dessert just once a month. That sounds horrible.
I have horrible genes that, if not watched, would let me balloon like there is no stopping. My maternal uncle who I look a lot like died of a heart attack at the age of 50. I’d rather enjoy my remaining allotment of bread, wine, and ice cream over 50 years than over 5. So I eat bread (only the good kind, and only a slice at breakfast!), drink wine (in moderation), and have a dessert of fruit or occasional ice cream - but I try to spread it out over a longer period, and this means eating smaller portions at a time. 
I already almost never eat bread or have desserts. Seriously don’t remember the last time I had something sweet. Eat very low carb. lots of veggies. Lean meats. lots of exercise (serious walking, biking, kayaking, weights). All that kept me from gaining, though did not lead to weight lost. About a year ago, weight started piling on, and now I have an extra 20 or so pounds more than before. Am at wits end. How little am I supposed to eat?
(seriously, when I read “just eat sensibly” I want to scream–I cannot GET any more sensible, unless I stop eating.)
Lack of sleep caused me to gain weight. I do eat dessert on special occasion. Not trying hard to loose it but I’m weight aware, I need to loose about 10 lbs. I’m maintaining my weight because I don’t have time to do regular exercise. But doing a lot of yard work, my upper arms are tone, no wings flap.
Dave’s Killer Bread (21 Whole Grains and Seeds) . . . the food of the gods. Toast it, slap a fried egg on top (pepper but no butter) and you have yummy breakfast perfection (plus nice portions of carbs, protein and fat).
OP (and others), I don’t recall seeing anyone mention tracking your food intake on this thread - did I miss that? Because tracking - not using a piece of paper in a notebook - but using an app or computer program like MyFitnessPal or MyPlate is VERY eye opening. You can enter the type of food, amount and time you ate it and get a lot of data about what is going in your body. Many are shocked to see how quickly they reach their quota of sugar, salt, carbs in a day - often before breakfast is done!!
It’s kind of fun to track - dedicate at least two weeks to tracking EVERYTHING you eat/drink. Seriously. Do it.
I’m 55 and weigh the same as I did thirty years ago, although the weight has been “reallocated” over the years. IMO, the only way to keep the weight off (and still eat enough to enjoy life) is to build lean muscle, which really fires up your metabolism. Muscle also adds shape and definition to your body and makes your joints feel better. I do rigorous Pilates, TRX, and some yoga about four times a week. Cardio is obviously healthy, but it won’t really burn enough calories to make a difference for most people…you need to build muscle, which we really lose as we age.
In my 20’s I could literally eat bags of fried pork rinds and not think twice about it. But in the last 2 years I’ve gone up one clothing size. 
very, very frustrating…
My strategy for dealing w it: **cut back on the wine/b. And I have an every growing collection of Spanx.
Abasket, I have used the fitness app. Too tedious for me. Didn’t work in the end.
To add to what abasket said… That ounce of cheese you think you are eating is probably 1.5 oz. That apple is more like 2 servings, not one. And so on! The solution: get a kitchen scale and start weighing foods. Pretty soon you will get a feel for what a serving of your favorites and staples looks like.
@abasket I mentioned using My Fitness Pal in post #34. It was my best friend for the 6 months I was on my weight loss journey. I had it synched to my FitBit and also Map My Walk and Map My Ride. It was my conscience.