I have cleaned up.my diet and am losing weight at a startling rate

[Waterbortle]

Which was initially good, but now I'm starting to worry.

I was 10st9 and 5'7, so never fat but a bit heavier than I'd like, between 10st and 10st4 is, I think, my ideal weight. Mostly I wanted to be feel better, my diet was never dreadful, but I knew the junkand the booze had crept in.

So since the beginning of June I have:

-Drunk moderately and only once over a weekend. I never drank during the week, but I'd have "a few" at least 2 nights pw. Now I have a couple, once.

• Cut out snacking - here I was probably worse than I realised, and saying no snacks at all makes it easier for me to stick to.
• No takeaways, but they were never that frequent.
• Made an effort to choose healthier options when faced with a menu
• Desserts only at weekends.
• Stopped using the car all the time and walk as much as possible.

I'm 55, an age when weight is supposed to be difficult to shift. I've never been hungry or felt deprived. I've lost a stone in 2 months.

Does this sound right with the changes I've made or is it too much?

Firstly, congratulations on taking control of your diet and eating healthily!

Secondly, don’t worry. You are not losing weight at an alarming rate (i.e. you’re not on a crash diet).

But you are in a calorie deficit, so at some point you’ll need to put that in balance by eating more when you don’t want to lose weight further. Experiment with an extra (healthy) snack per day until the weight loss stops.

(P.S. it would be much better if you calorie count - you can get free apps that help you do it - then you can get a bit more scientific about what amount of calories you need to eat to neither lose nor gain weight)

I agree extra healthy snacks or larger main meals. Experiment. I don’t think calorie counting is that healthy.

Bloody hell, though, there are some green eyed monsters on here. The resentment is pulsing off the page, especially earlier.

I just read you’re walking 10 miles a day !!
That is why you’re consistently losing weight , your diet currently sounds very healthy.
Maybe you could add in a few extra healthy snacks or occasionally use your car so you’re not doing 10 miles each and every day .
I have been away x 2 over the last 2 years to a city where you have to walk a LOT !
I was also eating slightly smaller portions but eating regularly throughout the day and snacking .
Both times I came home 2 kilos lighter which is a fair bit on my small frame .

There's your answer! That's a huge amount of walking..

Bloody hell 😅
Why are there so many bloody women on here who appear positively gleeful at the opportunity to tear another woman - a stranger, too! - to pieces just because you think what @Eyesopenwideawake does is excessive. You and OP obviously lead very different lives, but that doesn't mean that either one of you is right or wrong. It's just different. What's the point of your (bordering on) aggressive tone in your reply? What do you get from it?

@JayJayEl Um, I'm flattered but I don't think you mean me 😆

That’s great that it’s working for you. When I first did WW it worked, then it stopped working. I switched to Slimming World, which worked for a while too, but then I hit menopause and neither WW or SW worked for me. It was literally 1/2 a pound off one week and 1/2 a pound on the next week. I was sticking to the plan 100% my body just decided it didn’t want to play!

I’m now doing calorie counting and it’s coming off… but very slowly.

Whoops - apologies!

Well done, this is similar to a slimming world approach where you can expect to lose 1-2lb a week if you follow it well. So not too quick a loss but it might get harder the slimmer you get. Upping the exercise to that extent will turbo boost the weight loss too.

WeightWatchers change their plan every two years. They changed it in December and it's much better, particularly as potatoes are now a free food!

I agree that you do tend to plateau after a while. I have recently increased my protein intake and that really helps.

Good luck with your calorie counting!

Plenty of people will spend 2.5 hours driving to be fair. It’s not that out of the ordinary.

Does that mean chips/roast potatoes are free or is the oil they’re cooked in count?

The oil you use has points, but I always use FryLight which is zero points.

I do most of my cooking in my halogen oven, so for roast potatoes, I parboil them with skins on using a microwave oven steamer (six minutes), shake them to rough them up, put them on the halogen oven tray, lightly salt them and spray them with two or three squirts of FryLight. I then cook them for 20 minutes at 200 degrees C, turn them and cook for a further 15 minutes.

You can Google all the WeightWatchers zero point foods. It's mainly fruit and non-starchy veg. I pay £7.50 a month for the app. I don't go to any meetings.

Absolutely. The change happens much faster with the holistic approach you are taking. People don't succeed in the long term otherwise. I changed my lifestyle completely a couple of years ago and in 6 months my body was transformed. Strength training, higher protein intake (at least .8 grams per kilo of body weight) & minimising ultra-processed foods (UPFs) made a huge difference in energy & appetite. I also completely lost the urge to snack in between meals & eat late at night, which was previously a huge psychological pitfall & prevented muscle gain & fat loss.

Just keep up your good habits to maintain. You may even eventually need to increase your calories in to maintain the lower weight because you've gained muscle which speeds up the metabolism. I was concerned when this happened to me, so I started consuming 200-300cals/day more and the weight has stabilised.

Good for you. You're on the right track.

Also, fat is not the enemy & low fat does not always = healthy. It's down to the types of fats used in cooking. Olive oil is to be embraced. Avoid seed & palm oils. Do your research. You should be more concerned about hidden sugars, ultra processed foods and additives (those numbers on ingredients lists).

My advice - don't deny yourself roasted potatoes etc. in oil, just make sure it's the right oil. Any fat or oil ( eg. coconut & palm oil) that sets hard in the fridge is a bad idea, fullstop, whether weight loss is your goal or not. Such fats lead to plaque build up in the veins and over time constrict blood flow, eventually blocking veins which causes heart failure.

I refused cut out roast vegetables in olive oil & it did not hinder my efforts to lose weight & gain muscle one bit. DYN people on Europe actually drink olive oil daily for the health benefits?! Look it up for yourself.

Get past your fear of oils & fats. There's plenty of research to back this. Low fat diets belong where they started, from the 1960's (e.g. skim milk & margerine have both since been debunked) to the mid-1990's, when the high protein low carb approach came into our collective consciousness. Personally I can think of few things less appetising or satisfying than par-boiled popotatoes. I daresay thousands would agree. So why deny yourself? It's common knowledge that too much food denial leads to completely falling off the wagon sooner or later. Be kind to yourself, have a treat occasionally & don't punish yourself. It's what you eat 80% of the time that matters in the long run.🥰🙏

I agree with a PP, don’t do low fat. The only time I put on weight in my younger days was when I was eating a low fat diet. As in not deliberately cutting out food but somewhere where there were a lot of low fat substitute foods.

i live in the Med where extra virgin olive oil is used copiously, even on steamed veg to give it a bit of flavour. I don’t drink it (that’s used for constipation sometimes, I used to give it to one of my cats to make him go!), but it’s drizzled generously into salads, I don’t scrimp when using it to sauté veg or fry onions. We even add it to soups when we serve them.

For those telling the OP to eat more to stop losing weight, as our weight reduces so does our daily requirement for calories. At some point she will plateau. She’s not starving herself and is eating real food, the weight loss will slow down. Only if it doesn’t should she get it checked out.

Could you drive and park 45 mins away and then walk there and back each day?

Anyone with dog?

And also she says she walks to and from work which is 45 mins each way plus does all of her errands by foot.

I started walking two hours at least every day when I got my dog. Didn't lose an ounce!

But did you also reduce your food intake ?

Can I ask what was the reason you cleaned up.yoir diet and started exercising more? Were you feeling ill, tired or something?
If there was a cause/reason for this change which was physical maybe it is coming through as an increased weight loss so you need to think back a bit to your original "symptoms".

Read the op.

To the OP saying eating more to lose weight is wrong, let me be clarify.

FACT: Muscle burns more energy than fat. When you increase muscle mass, you require more calories in to maintain the muscle.

So you still obviously need to be in caloric deficit, but as you build MUSCLE & REDUCE FAT, the metabolism will speed up because muscle requires more energy than your fat stores.

At the start of a weight loss program, you definitely need to be in calorie deficit and intake should be at it's lowest to kick-start the initial weight loss. As muscle is gradually built & fat is dropped (on a high protein diet with strength training), you will find you actually need to up the caloric intake (maybe by only 100-200 calories) to prevent losing weight too fast (including some of the muscle you worked hard to gain).

That's the science behind it and this is the best way to lose weight, keep it off and have your best body ever.

It's all over Youtube and the internet, so do your own research.

The days of Jenney Craig & Weight Watchers, when you weighed in and felt shame for putting on a pound or two - that whole attitude belongs where it came from - the 20th century. I don't know one single person who had long term success with that approach. I DO KNOW countless who have yo-yoed & weighed in at Weight Watchers for DECADES, and they're still doing it. So what does that tell us?!