Question
I am 64 years old and retired, my husband who still works and I lead quite a healthy lifestyle; in the last five years we have given up smoking, alcohol, and recently tried to eat more healthily ~ but our downfalls are not giving up sugar and not enough exercise.
Although having recently acquired a puppy, I do now go out for an hourly walk each day and I’m trying to drink more water.
I have noticed is effecting my metabolism already although this maybe attributed to getting up earlier because of the sunlight.
I am 4 ft 11 and weigh exactly 10 stone (140 pounds, 63.5 kg) and ideally I would like to be 8~ 9 stone.
Do you have an outlined diet that would automatically consist of the calories I should be consuming to lose that stone? The fat is all around my waist and around the back. My waist is 36 inches while my bust is 36 c and my hips are 35 inches. I am definitely an apple shape
I know if I had a diet plan set out for me I would definitely stick to it ~ but please do not suggest I go to Weight Watchers as I find that too complicated to stick to with all those syncs etc to confuse me.
Do you have a diet sheet that I could stick to?
Terri.
Answer
Hi Terri
Unfortunately we do not have a diet sheet in the form that you are requesting. There are some basic diet plans on the site, as well as our own Low GI Diet plan (ebook).
While specific plans can work, if you do not wish to go to Weight Watchers because if the need to count everything, you may also find a strict diet plan hard to follow too.
What you should do is first start to log everything that you eat and drink. Keep it as a diary, detailing each meal and all snacks.
According to your height and weight your BMI is 28.3, which is just over halfway between being overweight and obese. Your goal should be to reduce your weight to around 123 pounds (8 3/4 stone).
This is 17 pounds weight loss, so if you take a steady approach of one pound a week you should be able to lose the weight in 17 weeks.
How much should you eat? An average woman needs 1,850 Calories a day. To lose one pound of fat a week you need to eat around 1,350 Calories.
Of course, the tricky part is determining what this looks like. However, really your main efforts need to be in making your diet healthier by reducing sugar and fat. Reduce all baked good (bread, cookies, pastries, cakes etc.) as well as desserts and takeaways. Bread will be the hardest change to make.
You do not have to give anything up, just eat less. Our healthy eating guide shows a plate with the proportions of food types to eat.
Most of your carbohydrates should come from fruits, vegetables and nuts. Most protein should come from lean meats, poultry, eggs, nuts and fish. If you follow a diet like this saturated fat intake will decrease.
Do it for your health
Following a diet such as this will reduce the risk of developing a variety of health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and dementia (if the research is all true).
In time you should be able to increase your activity levels – do aim to get fitter. Take longer walks with your dog; a young dog can walk for hours a day.
If your only food is a light breakfast, lunch and a light supper you will start to lose weight. It will take time though, so do not expect miracles overnight.
Because of your request I may put together a diet plan with calories etc. If you would like to share a few typical days of eating in the comments below please do so and we can review this together.
On getting up a glass of water ~ breakfast ( if I’m hungry) toast spread with flora, thinly spread marmalade or peanut butter, this would be around 11am.
During the day a sandwich of prawn cocktail and watercress or tuna mayo and sweet corn, or egg mayo. This will be around 2- 3 pm.
Then I would be preparing dinner around 6 pm as my husband comes home from work around 6.30 – 7p. I will cook liver & bacon with mash carrots, broccoli, peas and gravy made from oxo flour water from veg. Or maybe a pork chop with same veg etc, or if it’s warm we will have chicken salad – I have chilli sauce on my salad and I will vary my salads with salmon, prawns, or mackerel the salad consisting of salad leaves, watercress, tomatoes, cue, red, green or yellow peppers, garlic and raw onion.
Sometimes our meals are not eaten until about 7.30 and I know this is probably not good because after I’ve washed up we generally just watch the telly until about 10.30 and then go to bed.
If I’m honest sometimes I have not eaten all day if I’m out and about but if I am out either shopping, babysitting for my daughters or every Saturday I go to my father who is 85 and diabetic and bath and massage his feet to prevent any infections etc I do a bit of light housework for him as he lives on his own but during the week he looks after himself, I may then take a banana with me and have a cup of tea with him.
It’s so easy for me not to be consistent with my diet because I hate repetitive eating and I don’t feel that hungry most of the time and I know I need to eat little and often and so I do go to the drawer while I’m in the kitchen preparing dinner I will eat natural ginger, coconut, walnuts, or almonds if I’ve not eaten all day.
I drink more water with a slice of lemon than tea now but the water has to be warm as I can’t stand cold water or anything too cold, accept ice cream of course. So generally in the evenings my husband and I will have a small rice pudding or yogurt or an ice cream, we used to have chocolate over the weekends but we have cut that out now.
We are not big fruit eaters although this week when I went to my fathers I made up a dish of melon, strawberries, cherries, kiwi, and pineapple and ate that.
But I know that if a diet was set out for me I would have more faith in sticking to that than in myself doing it because I try lots of different things like green tea, cinnamon and cider vinegar etc etc but it. Never lasts more than a couple of days because I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing or not, sorry to go on on but I’m telling you the best I can about my lifestyle.
So I take Henry, my cavalier King Charles puppy who is now 10 months old on a long hour long walk but only if the weather is fine, if it’s raining or snowing then we tend to stay in on those days so I know I’m not really being consistent with that either, when we do go like last week when the weather was fine we went every day for 5 days on the run and I felt great in the sunshine and fresh air it’s uplifting.
I also need to tell you that I am on blood pressure medication and have been for the last 10 years and I was on anti depressants for the last 5 years mainly because my granddaughter was born with leukemia and eventually after loads of chemo etc had a bone marrow transplant and is now fine and my husband suffers from Chronns and has had 4 ops since I’ve known him, I found all this very stressful and suffered with anxiousness, but hooray I’ve come off them in the last month and I can honestly say I feel great and have learnt through cognitive therapy to relax and calm my self before I start getting anxious about something and it works.
So I’m ready now to concentrate on my self and try to get rid of this fat once and for all I would love to be the weight I should be; I know I will look better and thus feel better in myself. Regards Terri
Overall you diet looks pretty good, but then you did say that you have improved it. I would suggest that the biggest changes you need to make now, based on what you have written above, are:
1. Stop eating peanut butter. Very high calories.
2. If your sandwich is on chunky white bread replace with thinner wholemeal
3. Less gravy, without flour. Or no gravy.
4. Stop eating rice pudding and ice cream in the evening
5. Eat less liver & bacon and replace with leaner foods such as fish and chicken.
Also reduce the amount of mash you have. I suspect that if you are not eating much in the day you will overcompensate during the evening meal.
Give this a go for a couple of weeks, weigh yourself now and again each week. No need to weigh more than once a week. Small changes may be all that is required.