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?

Well now you know! Walking 10 miles a day plus cutting out snacks, alcohol and junk food will lead to decent weight loss. If you think it’s too much weight loss, you could try eating more or walking less.

This is definitely doing loads! 10 miles is loads combined with lessened calories and you're onto a winner. I need to walk 10 miles a day 😩

I don't think OP was stealth boasting but your remark is silly; how would PP know it is painfully hard for her UNLESS she was trying to "do something about it?"

double posted

10 miles a day would take me 3 hours. I already walk about 2.

I think you’re right. My mum never drove and walked a mile to pick us up from school and back twice a day. She walked to the shops in town which was a couple of miles away. She did all the housework and gardening. I agree it’s more about being active all the time rather than sitting at a desk for 7 hours then going to the gym for an hour.

Well on here you can't see shit so maybe wind it in.

She’s doing it as her commute and shopping walk.

Yes, a good idea. The best thing I did for my health was sell my car in the pandemic

Why comment and be snipey then? Just scroll on past…. it’s not obligatory to read or care about what the op has written.

63 and after reading the UPF book, reassessed food (believed already good, but a few poor choices), stopped alcohol entirely (only a couple of units a week with one meal) and have lost a stone and slowing creeping down. I don't crave anything and just eat very differently based on knowing what I should be eating and not being tempted a game changer. Modern food producers are killing us and we need to realise we are the pawns in their money making schemes. Oh, and shopping costs less too surprisingly. Not counted a calorie or consciously cut down, just don't want foods that once shouted at me.

Well exactly. Re what @SmartDog said about how 'everyone has got time to walk 3 hours a day they just CBA.' Most people do not have the time. Maybe some people DO have the time, but they can't do it every day. Not because they don't 'have the time,' (some people will do some days) but a 3 hour walk, (around 9-10 miles) every single day would become time consuming and quite tedious. And I say this as someone who enjoys walking, and goes for a walk of 1.5 to 2.5 miles, 5 or 6 days a week.

Even if you live in the countryside like I do, there's only so much of the woods, country lanes, canal, fields, and river that you can bloody look at. If you live in a town or city it's not much fun trying to get 10 miles of walking in at any time.

And who the F is going to walk to do their weekly food shop?! How the hell are you supposed to carry it?! I can't even carry mine from the store to the car, and have to use the trolley! Unless you have just a small carrier bag full that you can stick in a backpack, walking to do your food shop is untenable. And it's ludicrous to suggest anyone does that.

And not everyone can 'walk to work.' For a start, around half the working population work half an hour's DRIVE - or more from where they live. To walk that, it would take 5 HOURS. (10 hour round trip walk LOL!) Plus people have to take children to school, and then go to work (and some schools are not 5-10 minutes walk from where the family lives, and then you have the work commute on top.) So walking to work after dropping the DC off at school is not gonna work for many. And if you work half hour's drive away, or more (like around half the population of the UK) it will be impossible... Are you going to drop your DC off at 4am?! So you can make it to work for 9am?

And what if it's raining, snowing, very cold, or very hot, is not doable for many people, especially as I said those who live half hour drive - or more from their workplace. If you DID walk, (if it was a reasonable walking distance, like 45 minutes walk,) most of the time, you would be soaking wet from the rain, or from sweat. (Or both.) OR windswept! Who the F wants to work in THAT state all day? And who wants to work near someone who's walked maybe 3-4 miles to work?! And as I said, how will you do it if you have to drop off children at 8.30-8.45am, and your work starts at 9am? (And your work is 3-4+ miles away..)

Some truly daft and ludicrous posts on this thread from (some) posters who clearly don't live in the real world!

Far better to set a small walking goal - like 1.5 miles (around 4000 - 4500 steps.) Much easier to do. And you're more likely to stick to it. NO-ONE is doing 10 miles walking a day LOL! (Waits for the usual predictable 'I walk 10 miles a day, every day, doing my job claims. )🙄(No you don't!)

These threads always make me laugh. OP comes on and states that she's changed her lifestyle and now eats properly (i.e. having the kind of exercise levels and food intake that we are MEANT to have, and naturally used to have in the old days before modern Western lifestyles and processed foods became a thing). With the obvious result being weight loss, hopefully settling at her natural weight. I'm guessing that the next stage would be that she would start to feel hungry more often if she wasn't taking in enough calories for her exercise levels and baseline natural weight. All this is great and well done, OP!

But instead you get people posting "You're not eating enough calories, according to this source you're supposed to have x, y, z amount" when they don't know anything about OP's frame size or her natural metabolism. Or "I eat one meal a day and walk loads and have lost nothing" when clearly it's not healthy or normal to fast all day every day and you're fucking your metabolism up by doing this, or "You need to add more protein in" when OP gave just ONE DAY's example.

She isn't obsessively counting calories every meal time, rigidly sticking to "sins" or checking if it's "free". She is simply living how people used to live, and it's obvious from a lot of that replies that some people just don't want to hear it or believe it. Yes, if you really haven't got a clue about healthy portion sizes or how many calories is in a typical meal that you would eat then by all means check it for a couple of weeks so that you know what a nutritionally balanced meal is and the correct portion size. But there is no need to do this on a permanent basis once you have an awareness of the basics, and understand the kinds of foods that will satisfy you for longer without adding in excess calories which will just get converted to fat. If you are hungry between meals sometimes then have a banana or something, or a small handful of nuts. Don't buy packets of special diet bars or rice cakes or low fat crisps. There is no NEED for processed snacks, they never existed years ago.

Same with the exercise levels. If you drive everywhere and never walk , and never go to the gym, then you're never going to be as healthy and fit as someone who does and if you're overweight and don't do anything about cutting out snacks and shit food and possibly drastically reducing your portion sizes then yes, you're not going to lose much if anything.

The last thing that many people don't like to admit is that, growing up in our Western society with access to all the food we could want 24 hours a day, means that we have simply got used to consuming too much and don't know how it feels to have a stomach that is sometimes empty. It is normal to have faint hunger pangs on occasion between meals and then they pass after 20 minutes or so, and then it's soon your usual meal time anyway. So many people not trying to lose weight would eat something the minute they feel even the slightest bit hungry, and so many who ARE trying to lose weight are following such strict calorie-controlled or fad diets that they are literally starving between meals, and that is never sustainable long-term, because it's miserable.

So well done, OP, for not falling victim to our frankly unethical diet and food industry, which make a LOT of money out of many people's total lack of common sense or knowledge about our actual food needs and often an unwillingness to face up to the fact that it is their own continuing preferences for crisps or a Mars bar over an apple, for example, that is making them overweight.

I think that posters are confused about is that the OP is saying she’s reduced her calorie consumption and increased her exercise, but is worried she’s losing weight. Surely that’s the natural consequence, and not particularly worrying? If the OP doesn’t want to lose any more weight then she needs to eat more or move less. If she’s happy with losing weight, she can carry on with what she’s doing.

I was concerned because the changes I'd made don't seem that drastic to me, and because it's "supposed" to be difficult to lose weight at this age. Also that I didn't have a lot to lose, so 2lbs per weeks seems a lot and it's continuing now I'm below my preferred weight and doesn't feel difficult or a hardship. I've spent decades hearing how that can't happen.

All coloured by the fact that we initially celebrated DH's weightloss, thinking he'd done well with small changes to his diet, when in fact he was dying.

To be honest it feels like a thinly veiled dig as posters on here who have said that they’ve struggled to lose weight in menopause, or who have said ‘I’ve changed my diet and am exercising more and I’m not losing any weight’. A faux naive ‘I thought it was impossible to lose weight at my age but mine is just wooshing off and I have no idea why!’. It’s not ‘supposed’ to be difficult… some people find it difficult for various reasons, and some don’t.
If you don’t want to lose any more weight then the only solution is to eat more or walk less.
I’m sorry to hear about your husband.

I should add that if you’re concerned about your weight loss then see a GP.

Well there's nothing veiled about that dig 🤣

It wasn’t intended to be a veiled anything, just my interpretation of your OP!
If you’re honest with yourself, are you thinking ‘if people just did what I did then they’d be able to lose the weight too’?

No. I'm not. I set out to be "healthy" and hopefully lose a few pounds, expecting slow progress. I'm genuinely surprised at how it's happened and probably have some health anxiety following what we went through with DH and being left as all DC have. I.e. if I get sick too, what then?

But, if you prefer to see the worst in people....

Like I said, just my interpretation of your post.

Ignore the haters OP. My best friend of 50 years lost weight some years ago. She is much smaller than she used to be but is healthy. Once she started losing weight it just dropped off her and stayed off.
I struggle to lose weight as she did but just different metabolisms maybe? We both walk a lot and both eat healthily.
I am so sorry you lost your husband x

I'm also entitled to express my opinion that the tone of the thread is not particularly helpful and sounds a little goady, and others found it the same, even if it was not intended that way. Particularly when the OP was not overweight to start with- people feel comfortable at different weights and that's fine. But most people will have tried all of what she suggests and have not had much success, or certainly not in such a short space of time. It just reads rather "Why don't fat people just eat less and move more?" I mean yeah, no shit Sherlock, we'd never thought of that.

So what are you going to do op? Carry on? Or use the car more ? Or eat more?

That’s not what the OP was posting about though? She posted that she was losing too much weight and was wondering why. Then revealed she was walking ten miles a day.