Weight loss back on track (I think/hope)

At the start of 2011 I was 30 pounds over my ideal weight of 130 lbs, 25 pounds over my acceptable weight of 135. I am 5' 6.5" and small-boned without much muscle mass. (As a jogger, the lower weight is preferred.) And I was trending up. So I joined Weight Watchers. To lose weight you simply have to eat less and exercise. But that's much harder to do than to explain. A few years ago I tried Nutri-Systems, but their diet is not particularly healthy, and I was not able to stick with it. I tried simple calorie counting but lacked the strength of will. A long time ago I tried Overeater's Anonymous, but their twelve-point program, with its reliance on belief in a "higher power" had no meaning for me.

I've been an exercise addict for decades, so that part was not a problem. But overeating has always been my downfall.

Weight Watchers has no required foods and no prohibited foods. But every food as a point value and you are limited to a certain number of points per day. They offer some foods for sale, but there is no requirement to buy them. They're just for convenience, as they are labeled with their points value. Points are skewed to encourage healthy eating: healthy foods have fewer points than their calorie content alone would indicate, and unhealthy foods have more. Meetings are run by trained leaders who provide tips and ideas ranging from recipes to ways to deal with social eating situations to dealing with emotional issues around eating. You can ask questions, and there is group support.

I joined in February, and by mid-July, when I went off for my six weeks of summer hiking, I had lost 15 pounds. I never try to lose weight on vacation, because I do active vacations. As a rule, I don't gain weight on vacation.

After my summer hiking, I only had a couple of weeks at home before going off to swim with dolphins on Bimini, and I failed to stay on the program during those two weeks because it just seemed pointless for such a short period. (That was an excuse, and a poor one, but just comes down to the difficulty of geting back on the program.) By the time I got home again, and recovered from travel, and got back on the program, I had gained about 3 pounds from my July weight.

October and November I've been in a kind of holding pattern. I've been on the program, but always going a few points over my limit, and not losing any weight.

But now I believe I'm back on track. I figured out a couple of things I was doing differently, and which I've restored to how I was doing them during those first 5 months, and I seem to be losing weight again. My weight loss on this program is slow, but slow is healthier. People who lose weight too fast almost invariably put it back on. I think I'm back on track to reach my goal (135 lbs) before next summer's hiking season. Last summer, 15 pounds lighter than the summer before, I could feel the difference, and the guides and owners at my favorite hiking lodge commented on how much faster I was moving. Another ten pounds lighter than this year, and I expect next year to be even better.

With Weight Watchers, if you reach your goal and maintain it, you get "lifetime" membership, and meetings and weigh-ins are free, as long as you keep your weight down. My declared goal is 137 lbs, which allows two lbs for clothing. If I can make it by spring and hold it for half a year, I may try to get down to 130 for the following summer. But I'd be happy if I could get down to 135 and keep it there. I am uncharacteristically optimistic. I believe I can do this.

Time for exercise. For me that's the easy part...

 

I actually don't feel that I get "enough" exercise. But I know how much I can do. If I try to do more, I bonk. When I was in my 40's, I jogged, at about a 9:30 pace, for 3 miles 5 days a week, and 6 miles once a week, with a day off. That was on good weeks. But was my "normal" routine. Now I jog 35 minutes at a 13:20 pace, or I ride the exercise bike 45 minutes. I exercise 2 or 3 days in a row, and then take a day off. This averages to around 5 days a week. The past couple of weeks I've been able to stay on the bike for an hour, though today I was more tired and decided to stop at 45 minutes. I've learned what is too much.

I didn't start this thread to get sympathy. I started it as a way of putting myself on the spot. It will now be very embarrassing to admit that I quit and didn't make my goal.

Health-wise I'm extremely fortunate. When I was 30 I could not run 200 meters. Now I can run 2 1/2 miles, and I hope to be able to get back to 3 miles when I reach my weight goal.

Adding muscle mass is problematic because my shoulders are in such bad shape that I've been unable to lift weights. I've done it off and on, most recently with a personal trainer to help me work around the joint problems, but it always ends up hurting. I have a Bowflex machine, though, and I intend to start using it again, gently. My legs are strong, but my upper body is weak.

 

No bashing, but I disagree. "Believing" you will accomplish something may be helpful, but it's far from an assurance of success. Likewise, an attitude of sincere effort is by no means predictive of failure.

One of my most successful endeavors was learning Spanish. I was never good at languages. I approached the Spanish teacher and said "I don't know if I can do this, but I want to try." Eight years later, after one year in that teacher's class, a semester with another teacher, and six years in Mexico and Spain, I was working as a translator in a legal aid office and the lawyer who supervised me said I was the best translator they had ever had in the decade she'd been working there. My verbal skills were not as good as my written skills, but I could converse fluently on pretty much any subject of interest to me.

And, in my case, get hit by a car and spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair if I survive. I never learned to ride a bike as a child, and it never became second nature to me. I was okay on the deserted tertiary highways of rural North Dakota, but in city traffic, or even a crowded bike trail, forget it!

Up to a point. If this was open ended anybody could run a thousand miles. I think it's unreasonable to expect to run as many miles per week at 63 as I ran at 40. There is a limit to what you can do. The trick is to work up to that limit without imagining you are superhuman. There's a point of diminishing returns, where injury and exhaustion become greater than benefit.

It's possible. I'm closer to my goal than you are to yours. And the only food in my house is what I bring in; the only food on my table is what I put there.

At WW meetings I hear the struggles of people who must deal with the temptations of food that other people want to have around. Most members are women, and nearly all must cook for husbands food that's more fattening than they'd choose to have around. It's easier for them when a couple both join and go on the program together.

 

I rode outside in North Dakota for several years, and loved it. There were hardly any cars on my road. Maybe ten cars an hour on average. And the road was so straight that I had plenty of time to be ready. Then I developed a really bad inflammation in my IT band, which was so painful, it put a stop to my riding. By the time my knee was okay again, I had lost what little balance I had, and I would have had to teach myself to ride all over again. And even when I was riding, it took me a full minute to organize in my mind what I had to do to stop and get off without falling over. Starting only took me about a half a minute to organize. That was always easier than stopping.

 

That stuff is pure quackery. However, if the placebo effect helps you, then more power to you. Diet drugs that actually work (e.g. amphetamines) do so by raising your metabolism, with a host of very nasty side effects. Then when you stop taking them, your metabolism falls, and the weight comes back on. If you don't stop taking amphetamine-class drugs, you'll end up psychotic. There are drugs that have similar but less pronounced effects, which cause you to lose weight slower, with less pronounced side effects, but similar.

From WebMD:

The bottom line is that there are two classes of diet drugs: The ones that will kill you, and the ones that don't do anything. You are better off with the latter. The only disadvantage to them is that you are wasting your money.

You should definitely try out exercise bikes before buying one. AVOID stationary bikes that use a caliper-style brake on a wheel for resistance. The resistance is too uneven. Good ones use a fan, or a water-wheel, or magnets, or something of the sort for resistance. Some have levers for an upper-body workout. That's a matter of preference. The important thing is that the resistance be smooth.