Discovering the Magic Required to Lose After 50

Now here’s a habit I could happily instill! 🙂

Happy Friday Thrivers,

If you haven’t read the Aunt Bea booklet, she’s a must. You’ll find her to your right in the box under my circle bio. She should land in your email, but sometimes she goes to spam. If you lost her, just say: Wendy@TheInspiredEater.com and I’ll shoot Aunt Bea right to you.

And away we go.

Pearl One

Back when I first began to lose weight in earnest I couldn’t have told you, “Not only do I want to lose weight, but I also want to stop wanting food.”

I couldn’t have told you such a thing even existed. Soothe-food like ice cream and chocolate cake would be my substance of choice into my 90s. End of story.

These days when something truly abysmal is happening in life, I don’t reach for food.

You might think, oh she’s making it up. Or, she was never that into food in the first place.

No and no. Food was my cocaine. Bored, celebrating, sad, didn’t matter, I turned to food.

So, now the question could be: how — when everyday life goes ka-blooey – do I avoid going Cookie Monster on the kitchen?

I know, you’re bored with this answer.

What I’ve done is to create a new response system to problems with the development of embedded habits, habits, and more habits. Once I instilled ironclad habits into my life, the scale began to drop.

Habits first, scale second.

To hone your habits, read or re-read Atomic Habits by James Clear. This jewel of a book came out in 2018 and is still on the best seller lists. The author talks “three layers of behavior change”, why bad habits are a breeze to create while good habits are a struggle, and why systems are far more important than goals.

To keep myself on track I re-read Clear’s book once a year-ish.

Habit creation compounded leads to the numbers going down on the scale, for sure, but also an eventual break with a substance we can’t do without that’s legal, cheap, and culture-approved.

But with the right mind-shifts and knowledge we can take down this substance one kickass habit at a time. ♥

Pearl Two

It takes bravery to attempt to lose weight after age 50. Think I’m being melodramatic? Well, consider this: when we climb back onto the smart eating path – having tried to lose/maintain many times before – we risk setting ourselves up for disappointment, irritation and boredom.

At our age it just seems easier to forgo the whole damn thing, and “make peace” with our body. Which I’m all for of course. Unless you can’t see your GP without her bringing up the weight situation (again). Or watch as you continually bump up in pant sizes. And don’t so much love looking in the mirror and seeing your Great Uncle Joe staring back at you.

See? It takes bravery at our age to climb back onto the horse and ride it night and day until we’ve peeled off the extra 40 lbs. we’ve accumulated over the last many decades. But even that doesn’t require as much bravery as planning the maintenance phase of losing 40 lbs.

In the past, losing a lot and then maintaining has been the bane of our existence.

Nobody had figured out the maintenance phase, until now. This is a new era for women, health and our bodies. We decide at what weight we feel most comfortable. We choose the best maintenance weight. We grew up loving Karen Carpenter. We know the tragedy of over-dieting. Princess Diana showed us the danger in bulimia. And Elizabeth Taylor was a model for why not to yo-yo diet.

No, those roads — paved with sadness — aren’t for us. We’re older and wiser and have zero interest in being lured into poor eating habits. Creating healthy bodies is our thing these days.

And it takes bravery to trek in this new era.

And that’s okay because we can do brave things. ♥

Pearl Three

In April we’re talking: “Let’s live differently!”

In a word I tend to fritter weekends. I have long Saturdays or Sundays, and later look back thinking, um, exactly what did I do, enjoy, or sink into?

I have some weekends when I don’t even read. I might bake or tidy here or there but I don’t go at projects with gusto unless forced like right before a trip or a big holiday like Christmas.

This coming weekend, I want to do it differently. I want to relax, of course, but I also want that cool feeling of crashing into bed with a good-tired feeling of having packed a lot into the day and feeling grateful for sleep.

How will I create a fun, relaxing, yet beautifully full weekend? Now that’s a good question. Definitely one for journal-writing which always produces an array of gems.

I hope you’ll journal-write about how to create a successful weekend with me. ♥

Pearl Four

Let’s talk food! When I was slowly working towards eliminating sugar in my evenings, I did not go from downing eight Oreos to never eating sugar. Nope. I never could have done that. Instead I went from a bowl of ice cream to allowing myself only what would fit into my small ceramic cup. (And in keeping with the spirit of the cup idea I did not cram as much as possible into it.)

At one point I went to a relatively healthy dessert of dark chocolate, a marshmallow or two, and a tablespoon or so of nuts.

I kept treading in that direction: smaller, healthier, smaller, healthier, until I finally challenged myself to give up evening sugar for 66 days and boom.

Good-bye sugar! (More details on how I did it here.) ♥

Pearl Five

You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ♥

I’d love to feature those of us with success stories. I hope you’ll write (Wendy@theInspiredEater.com) telling me about your success and not minding too much if I ask a question or two! 🙂

Go big this weekend, but in a kind, happy way that’ll see Monday-you wake up thinking, “huh. Very cool.”

♥, Wendy

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