After a week back to tracking religiously with My Fitness Pal, working out consistently, and avoiding junky carbs and added sugar, I’m almost to where I was mid-December. Relieved to see downward scale trend again!
@colorado_mom love sardines, protein and calcium and fish oil, three-in-one! And our Hs could go out together :))
Lost 0.6 lb last week. If any of you had posted that, I’d be commenting “great job” - but I’m disappointed not to have lost more. Working on that positive self-talk 
.6 is more than .5 - it’s a win!!! 
Now that scales will give us fractions of numbers (so not just a whole number on the scale) we can measure those “smaller” wins - sometimes depending where you are in your journey a pound lost is sort of hard to come by!
What is everyone doing to stay motivated? I dropped about 35 lbs. since September but it’s getting more and more difficult to keep up the same level of exercise (for me it’s walking, biking, and gym machines). I’m OK with the eating side (healthy food, smaller portions) but I feel a bit discouraged because weight loss is slowing down even if I work out harder.
Wow!! That’s fabulous!! I’ve lost 5…
Thanks, @abasket! I have gotten used to seeing bigger drops on the scale but after ten months it’s not surprising that progress is slowing. I never had much sympathy for people who complained about how hard it was to lose five pounds when I weighed nearly 250. Now I get it!
@TooOld4School Think I need to change up my routine a little, both diet and exercise. I’m also going to try intermittent fasting (just narrowing my eating window a bit - currently I have breakfast early and then have a snack after dinner, so my overnight “fasting period” is only about 10 hours).
Here’s what I have done:
Daily calorie intake is my BMR, plus or minus 200 cal. Stopped buying junk food, limited alcohol. Much easier to do with kids in college.
Exercise: 750 min/week. I mostly substituted walking for driving for anything <2.5 mi to find the time, and do 60-90 min of high intensity exercise 3-4x per week on top of that.
@TooOld4School wow! What u have achieved is amazing!
I am not doing nearly as well, not losing weights but only “dropping” sizes, I will take that too. Lol
I am not really a self-motivator, so I go to exercise classes, have a group of buddies to motivate each other. Also, maybe u have already done that, incorporating weight/strength training into ur routine? I do at least 2-60’ TRX per week and absolutely love it.
That’s fabulous, @TooOld4School . I have to get DH to sync the scale to my fitbit app (its not working for some reason). I have been very slow to restart exercise since I broke my ankle a few months ago, as I still have foot pain and am not supposed to do high impact. So I have to keep the food intake low as I haven’t burned many calories.
@TooOld4School - That is fantastic. You could try making a short term goal to just stay at that weight a while. (Says the lady that added a few pounds at the holidays… trying to undo it now).
@makemesmart I’ll check into the TRX. I have some dumbbells but that looks like more fun. Thanks for the tip.
@jym626 , sorry to hear about your ankle. Have you tried swimming? That worked pretty well for me when I had an ankle injury. If kicking is too painful you can use a leg float.
@colorado_mom The best part of having college kids home over the break is that they ate all of the Christmas cookies. Funny how we now want to give them away instead of eating them ourselves. Grandma/pa-dom is not too far off
Yay… I was able to take off two “holiday pounds” before Feb as desired. At first it was slower going than I’d expected… but then I ended up exceeding target.
I had a recent physical. My eating/exercising habits have been MUCH better in past year, but sigh cholesterol went up (maybe due to age factors)… luckily HDL is high. The doctor’s main concern is about low calcium. So I am on a prescription super-high week dose of calcium. After that, hopefully I can do better on dairy in diet and daily calcium supplements.
@colorado_mom, if your triglycerides are low and your HDL is high, you are probably fine as far as heart attack risk goes. High triglycerides would be a red flag.
Thanks, @TooOld4School . I used to swim, but prefer the gym. I did go back to the gym yesterday, wore the ankle support and comfortable shoes, and took it slow. Hopefully that will work out ok.
Stress has helped the weight loss-- I am down 6 lbs 9 to go.
@jym626 - I’m the opposite with stress I tend to eat less but more carbs and the outcome isn’t good. Hope the ankle holds up. Does your gym have classes for active older adults. I am friendly with one woman at my gym who has been battling plantar fasciitis. She still comes to Nia dance but stays on the floor and uses her arms or “dances” on the stability ball. My Pilates mat class is mainly done on the floor. The instructors in both of my regular classes are always willing to help come up with variations to accommodate injuries.
I am happy to report that the stubborn 2 lbs I gained between Thanksgiving and New Years have finally disappeared along with another pound. My goal is still to lose another 10 but I’m getting a lot of compliments at the weight I’m at. The weight training classes I’ve been attending along with the Pilates have made a huge improvement in my shape. For the first time in my life I have some definition in my upper body.
I am surprised at how much I’m enjoying group fitness. I’ve made some “gym” friends and we encourage each other to up our weights or to try a new class.
Hi @mom60. I do commonly, normally stress eat, but I had a bad cold (don’t think it was the flu) that dragged on for several weeks and kindly cut my ability to taste and cut my appetite. I’ve been stuck at my current weight since I rejoined the world of the living. I have gone back to the gym twice so far, wearing my my ankle support brace thing just to be safe. I may look into a class at the gym (it happens to accept silver sneakers so there are lots of seniors there).
“High triglycerides would be a red flag.” - So I don’t eat much beef anymore. But I did happen to have steak the night before the blood test (thinking that it would mostly reflect long term eating patterns, not food prior to fasting). I asked the nurse if that could impact the readings, and she said maybe so for the triglycerides. The Tri# was 116 this time but 73 in July 2015 (back when I exercised less and had worse diet). At next physical, I’ll make a point to have more of an average diet prior days.
@colorado_mom, high triglycerides are usually the result of eating more refined carbohydrates (or alcohol) than the body is capable of processing properly. This is a very individual thing-some people can eat a lot of refined carbs and sugar and do just fine. Others are not so lucky.
http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/can-high-intakes-carbs-cause-triglyceride-levels-rise-2495.html
@colorado_mom agree with the upper post that triglycerides level is more important, and your level is not too bad if you don’t have family heart disease history. Also, have you checked your vitamin D level? Because if you have low D, just by supping calcium is not going to work and it might cause kidney stones.