I need to lose 3 stones but it seems an impossible task. Please help me.

[ApolloandDaphne]

i am age 61, 5'6" and about 14 st 7lb. I have a dodgy hip and so exercising is difficult.

I don't know where to start really. I think losing weight would help my hip issue. It's just me and DH at home.

DH is tall, lean and a runner. He eats a lot and loves all the carbs. Would think nothing of eating a huge bar of chocolate, pack of biscuits, family bag of chips etc. I think i need to ditch carbs.

I am retired and do all the shopping and cooking. DH works long hours and is often home late. I hate eating late. I also can't deal with loads of treat food around the house.

I don't want anyone to know i am trying to lose weight, especially not my DM. She is a tiny 6st and likes to crow that she doesn't deny herself but just look at how thin she is, you get the idea.

We like to socialise and go out a fair bit or have visitors to our house and i don't know how to factor this in.

My perfect scenario would be to go away to a retreat for 6 months and have someone cook for me and help me heal. I am tired and sore a lot of the time.

Sorry this is a bit of an essay. Where do i even start? Any advice would be helpful. Thank you.

@teaandtoastwithmarmite

thats a fab weight loss I think! Well done slow and steady wins the race as they say

I am 2lbs away from losing 2 stone. I started mid July. I have always calorie counted but always felt restricted. I read a thread on here in AIBU about someone who had fasted and read all the comments and so many people were raving about it and posted their successes (I have the thread saved I think so can find it if you want it.)

It really motivated me and the next day I tried fasting. I thought I wouldn’t be able to get through the day without having breakfast in the morning but over a few days I pushed my eating window back and I now eat at 1pm everyday (work lunch time!) so technically skip breakfast. I have my tea at around 5pm and then that’s me done for the day. So I usually do 19:5 most people do 16:8 though. After not very long it was just so easy! Since mid July I have had 3 days where I ate breakfast when we were on holiday. I technically can’t say I’m intermittent fasting because I drink no added sugar cordial as I just can’t drink water. I am slowly trying to water it down though but don’t ever think I’ll be completely on water. But it really does stop me being hungry.

On top of this I try to do 10000 steps a day although again this doesn’t always happen. Like someone above says it’s making small lifestyle choices which help in the long run. If you feel like you’ve got a long way to go I recommend an app called happy scales which splits your weight loss down into small chunks. I also weigh myself everyday as that motivates me personally.

With things like this you have to find something that works for you!

@Cookiedough123

do you find your weight fluctuating before it actually goes down?

Lots of good advice here. Thank you. I need to take time to read all the posts and see what might be best for me.

So mine goes like this

11st 7
11st 6
11st 7
11st 6
11st 5
11st 6
11st 5
11st 6

Then last week I saw 11st 4lbs!

Then gradually I’ll not see the 11st 7 anymore and it sorts of phases out like that

just wondering if it happens to everyone?

I was similar and for similar reasons wanted to lose weight. I also don't like saying I am on a diet. I was told to swim and cycle to help my hip and did both and really enjoy both, especially the cycling.

I struggled to get going on the diet side, so decided to do a pre-diet tidy up of my diet by just cutting out eating between meals and not drinking anything that wasn't water or tea/basic coffee, but allowed myself fruit and veg. This has been enough to lose weight steadily. I have also found it sustainable. Better still no one really noticed as it just meant saying no to being offered a treat between or after meals. I also didn't have to do anything complicated or calorie count.

This may not work for you and I am sure you will find what does, but just remember when you are finding it hard to stay on track you have decided your health is your priority and if that is really true you really will pick the healthy option and say no to rubbish food or those extra bits you don't need.

16:8 intermittent fasting. It really works & isn’t too hard.

@Quitelikeit i track my daily weight into an app called Libra. I’ve screenshot it below. As you can see it really does fluctuate e.g today I was up 1lb! A lot of days I’m the same.

@GOODCAT How much weight have you lost and over what period?

@Cookiedough123 gosh that is brilliant my loss is so slow

my starting weight was 12st and I’m only at 11st 6 (that was today)

I am praying that by the end of December I’m 11st!

I do drink 2ltrs of water a day

Thank you! It was quite good first few months then over summer it stalled and I got upset one day about 4 weeks ago and changed it around and lost half a stone in 3 weeks. This week is going to be a write off though as 3 meals out and a great British bake off in the office meant I've had 5 pieces of cake today 🙈. Best thing is to draw a line and not drag it out though. You can and will do it trust me!!

Hi op! I am a similar age and weight but a little taller than you. I have lost the first stone but need to lose two more.

I very much identify with your post because I also have a dh who works long hours, who eats late, and who eats lots of things he shouldn’t, and I am also the one at home doing the cooking. I struggled with all of this for a very long time and somehow was drawn in to my dh’s way of eating.

I would strongly urge you to put yourself first for once and be “selfish”. (It isn’t really selfishness because your dh will benefit when you have lost the weight and feel healthier.) For once meal plan around your own needs and eat when YOU want to eat. It won’t harm your dh if you cook yourself a chicken casserole or a vegetable curry (for example) and you eat it at 6 pm and he reheats and eats his later.

The reason I say this is that losing weight is hard at our age. It takes a lot of focus and consistency. And you can’t have that effort diluted by your dh’s needs, socialising or entertaining. You have to be on it all of the time.

On the subject of socialising: try and do some things that are not centred around food eg going out for a walk, visiting a local attraction, book club etc.

I agree btw with the pp who says take it a stone at a time. Personally I aim to lose 0.5 kg a week consuming 1300-1500 calories a day (slow weight loss basically)

I have lost my 7 kg or first stone and the way I did this was:

** meal planning and good preparation (do not rely on will power it does not work). Choose 7 breakfasts, 7 lunches, 7 dinners per season and cook them on rotation with 2 pre-prepped snacks per day
** invest in a soup machine and a crock pot to make life easier
** every meal contains protein and veg
** drink one coffee a day and one glass of alcohol per week on a Friday or Saturday night,
** give up sugar in drinks, eat no cakes, biscuits or sweets, or chocolate, or anything that is highly processed, have only one square of very dark chocolate occasionally
** drink a glass of water before lunch and dinner and start the day with a fresh ginger, lemon and honey shot
** walk 7,000 steps 6 days a week without fail
** x3 very low level basic exercise videos per week on Mon, Wed and Fri
** go to bed early and get 8 hrs sleep (your resolve is weaker when tired)
** have a couple of tablespoon of organic apple cider vinegar when you have a sugar craving
**personally I have given up eating lunch and have dinner at 5 pm and then don’t eat anything between 7 pm and 10 am in the morning which is a 15 hour gap.
** have strategies in place to distract you when you know you will want to snack (eg danger period in the evening) for example do something to occupy your hands like knitting or sewing or drawing or painting.

Good luck!

You can’t really get better advice that what @VineRipened has offered you.

You want radical change but extreme diets don’t work. What works in long term habit change where you change your life forever not just for the purposes of weight loss.

You experiment and see what works, find meals and snacks that fill you up, movement that brings you joy.

You accept that you will longer and in better health if you invoice your lifestyle and that’s the most important thing, even over weight-loss. You might accept that losing 1 stone and keeping it off would be the best goal now. Think about the other 2 stone next year. You might decide upgrading your diet and moving more is the best choice now and not losing weight.

You’ve already got 10 different reconditions of gimmicky diets that won’t be sustainable. But temporary extreme changes only work for so long.

Change isn’t instant. But you can start now.

Keto is the only diet that ever worked for me. I enjoyed the food although it can be hard to stick to when eating out but the weight dropped off me very quickly.

Thank you @Commencethedancing. My DH is very supportive and i often cook things and leave a plate for him to heat up.We have also agreed if he os flying back ate he will sort out what food he needs.

I did laugh at your idea to joining a book club as it won't be about food. I am in a book club and it is mostly about wine, snacks and gossip! They are all my lovely friends though and if someone isn't drinking or snacking it is not an issue.

👍😀👍

Yes you are right. @VineRipened makes good sense. I am on holiday right now but i am putting together a plan for my return home.

This is also how I do it, 1 stone at a time so it doesn't seem so overwhelming. You could also look at making some simple changes first, so for example I ditched the sugar in my tea, then I ditched fizzy drinks, then I stopped buying share bags of crisps and eating them in one go!

Some great things to buy to increase your veg are the Birdseye steam bags - broccoli/peas/green beans

Sainsburys do bags of rice/peas/sweetcorn too

gosh you can tell I don’t like standing over a steamer 🤣

but with these things to me they taste lovely and I can basically have whatever main thing I want with them

@GG1986

When I first started this journey I couldn’t believe the calories in some of the processed food stuff - they literally aren’t worth the calories (well most days 😆)

@GG1986 I don't take sugar or milk in tea or coffee and i don't drink fizzy drinks so I am ahead of the game already (trying to be positive!). I just need to work on the crisps, biscuits and chocolate!

Look up a programme on face book call feel llook be with Shelly Booth. Totally what you I need for long term health and to deal with insulin resistance. 💯 recommend I think you can do a short term programme but next 6 week one will be January 2024. PM me for website

Carbs are my enemy so I had to cut them out. I love carbs though, and have a big appetite. Trial and error - I found that Cauliflower Rice fills me up so that's what I have, with protein on the side ie chicken, or tinned fish, with veg. I cba to make the 'rice' so I buy pouches in Aldi, 2 minutes in the microwave. & they're big enough to be filling. Season as you like. No bread, potatoes, pasta. & I don't miss them. Stir fries are good too.

Aside from that I use Resistance Bands and dumbbells at home, I follow short YouTube routines. Chair yoga too. I put a favourite jacket on today and it fitted; my aim had been to get back into it. I don't weigh myself or calorie count. Just watch what I eat, and move more. If I'm eating out (I make sure I dont too often) I don’t worry too much, I enjoy my meal then next day I'm back to my usual. I still have to focus on not snacking but Im better at that these days as my meals are filling. I try to have healthy snacks

It's so much harder losing weight in your 50s, in my 40s I lost weight easily. You can do it OP, and think how much better your hip will feel when you're carrying less weight.

I've lost almost 4 stone on Ozempic over 7 months.

Our private Gp does it with bloods and apps for over 30 bmi. I'm type 1 so can't do it with them but they aren't like the clinics online that look Dodge. Think boots do it too called wegovy