Fighting to Stay Slim After Sixty

I am the squirt of three generations of the family... shortest one of the bunch. But I have my grandmother's basic body type. She was a slim, Gibson-Girl type in the early 1900s, but by the time I remember her she had thickened into a matronly woman of 70. I have real hopes of staying slim, but it won't happen without some effort, despite the fact that I'm pretty active.

This winter, due to a low amount of snow and a pulled muscle, I got outside much less than usual and shot up 10 pounds without really stuffing my face. Yikes!

I'm presenting here the method I use to get the weight back off. It's not fast... I can manage about a pound a week, but it's a plan that I can live with.

It has two parts: eat less, exercise more. Not exactly news, is it?

At my size, I can only eat about 1600 calories a day and stay the same. That's a bummer right there... that's not very much food! I have to cut that back to under 1400 and exercise regularly to lose anything. This "diet" does not eliminate all treats, or all of my favorite things, or I wouldn't be able to keep it up regularly. This is probably the only way you can find a "diet" that you can sustain, as well.

For what it's worth, here is my daily plan, in general terms.

Breakfast: 1 c plain yogurt with fruit and a few grapenuts sprinkled on- 150 calories

Lunch: 1 peanut butter sandwich (I can't bear to face life without peanut butter, and it's my main source of protein), crunchy pb on "rough" whole grain bread of some kind- about 400 calories depending on the bread.
All the fresh veggies I want. We keep a tub of cut up items in the fridge. No dips- two tablespoons will add twice the calories of the vegs. I usually figure that I eat about 50 calories worth.
A treat.- this might be some chocolate or cookies. This is my one dessert of the day. I try to buy cookies that I like, but that also aren't my favorites, so I'm not tempted to eat too many more than the ration- about 300 calories

Supper: Some soup or veggie-based main dish. It is helpful that I like veggies a LOT. Sometimes I'll add some meat, usually not. I do tend to make a batch of soup, or a casserole and then eat it for several days. This entre will vary a lot in calories, but usually a 1.5 c serving is in the 200-400 calorie range
A piece of some kind of bread- this might be a quick bread that I made, a roll, half a bagel, or something else from the store. I try to keep it around 100 calories, but if the soup was really low-cal, I let myself have a bit more.

Snack: around 8 pm I have another bowl of the yogurt, same as breakfast, but with dried fruits and some oatmeal on top- 150 calories

You will notice that there are NOT things like potato chips, ice cream, or fried foods there. Nope... I only miss the ice cream in the summer, and once in a while I do let myself splurge. It's not worth the effort if you can't have a real treat once in a while.

This puts the daily calorie count at 1200-1500 calories.

Then I need to exercise. I walk. I love to walk, and I have a built in walking regimen called a dog! Every morning we take a "stretch break" from desk work and go out for just about ½ mile at 11 am. If I forget, she comes and pokes her wet nose in my armpit! That works well.

In the afternoon, about 4:30 we go out again. I try to do a mile at a minimum. If I have time to go to a trail near my home we may do more- sometimes as much as 6 miles, but often 2-4 miles. In the winter I showshoe or cross-country ski. The number of calories burned by walking can vary greatly depending on how fast you walk and the type of terrain, but just for purposes of tracking it easily I figure about 100 calories extra burned for every hour doing the activity.

So this can bring the daily calorie total down to 1100-1400 calories. I can survive on this without being ravenous or jealous of everyone eating around me, and also lose weight slowly.

AARP has suggested that women walk 50 miles a month. This isn't really so hard. That's less than 1.5 miles a day- very do-able. WebMD says that women over 50 have to exercise about an hour a day just to avoid weight gain. Good Grief!

So I track all this in a spreadsheet, with a graph of my progress. You don't have to do that, of course, but I'm still in grade school at heart. I like to have gold stars and colored lines to show me that I'm being good and making progress toward my goal. If the lines start to move upwards I know that I should do something about it. I may say, "I don't care, I'll lose it later," but I can't claim that I didn't realize I was overeating that week! For women, there is going to be daily fluctuation- very frustrating to shoot up 0.4 pound when you only had 1000 calories the day before! But you have to look for overall trends, not the day to day variations.

The only "trick" here is to find a basic menu plan that works for you. You have to find things you are willing to eat on a regular basis that fulfill your nutritional needs, and satisfy the emotional needs that food also gets so associated with. And, you must add some kind of exercise to the mix. What are you waiting for?