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[Sumerladi]

I’m 50 yrs old and overweight!! I used to be an avid gym goer up until April this year but have since lost motivation. i’ve Started smoking again & now I’m at a loss at where to start to get motivated again... any got advice they can offer?

[Hidden]

Hi summerladi, Now firstly good for you for joining us and being open and you must like some healthy foods and this is what we should focus on is the good parts of our diets/lifestyle and gradually move away from our bad habits and by your post being an overweight smoker is not making you happy, au contraire it is making you unhappy. So what have you to lose...weight 😊

What you have to realise is it takes time to change our lifestyles and just as importantly to lose weight. Putting on weight is like borrowing money in that its easier to pile on debt than to pay it off. And there's an irony here in that the more we think about dieting and losing weight the more we think about food and we can make ourselves think that we are hungry.

So my advice is you've taken the first step and if you are resolute you can achieve your goal and the more that you enjoy your dietary regime the better and once the results start to show there's no turning back and now you've taken the first step to me it's more about you changing your relationship with food/smoking so its a lifestyle change and not a crash diet. Its a new regime and for this to be successful you have to enjoy it to permanently benefit from it.

You can do lots of things to help yourself like starting the day with fruit and here's a link:

livelovefruit.com/eating-fr...

And you've joined a healthy eating site so there is going to be lots of healthy eating tips/recipes on here and here's another HU site that may interest you:

healthunlocked.com/nhsweigh...

And don't beat yourself for your shortcomings as this is counterproductive so take it one step/meal/day at a time and then reap the benefits...And good luck as you can achieve your goal. 🍇 😊

Ps have you looked under the sofa for your motivation as thats where I look first when I lose something...

[BadHare]

Turning 50 is a big milestone, & a time to decide whether you want to be a good example or a terrible warning. Without going in to detail, I've several just turned 50 friends who have had diagnoses of cancer & type 2 diabetes this autumn, & I'm aware of these as issues for friend's of friends who have reached that age. One who had to nurse her smoking diabetic dad through an extremely drawn out & unpleasant death. The good news is that we can do a lot to help ourselves to reduce or prevent unecessary ill health.

Stopping smoking is hard, I'm an ex smoker, so understand the need for a nicotine fix, despite having given up for over 30 years, A friend recently told me what her hubby's packet a day habit costs, which works out at over £3,000 a year. To me, that's the equivalent of being able to buy a daily supply of every super food I can think of, or a month's long haul luxury holiday every year. What could you spend your fag money on that would do you good & make you feel better?

At 50 a lot of c**p things are happening to our bodies, especially women. We loose oestrogen faster which can worsen bone loss (worse again for smokers). Our thyroid hormone levels drop, so we put on weight we can't shift, & become fatigued so that everything seems to get harder. Doctors don't always help with women's age related issues, but some are good. I started taking HRT at 50, which is b****y marvellous, though a higher risk factor for smokers, which could be another incentive to stop.

Despite being vegetarian for years, & being cranky about eating a natural diet, my weight was an issue if I ate more than 1,000 calories a day, & this made it difficult to get enough nutrients. I now eat almost double that, but count nutrients in what I eat rather than calories. I take iron & B12 supplements that I need, & magnesium for bone health. To the contrary of what misleading health & food industry have hyped for years, I'm 20lbs lighter for having a high fat, low starch diet, the high fat coming from unprocessed nuts & seeds. I also altered how as well as what I eat, & tried something I thought I'd never be able to stick with for more than a week, which is keeping to restrictive eating times. I don't usually start eating until late morning, & stop early evening, Some people prefer to do this on separate days, so do a 5:2 diet with 500 calories for two non-consecutive days each week. There are more benefits than weight loss, as it seems to help my trauma related arthritis & joint pain. It can also reduce type 2 diabetes, & an assortment of other ailments

One of the best thing I've done to help myself is to start drinking a probiotic called kefir every day. It's about as much effort to make as a pot of tea or coffee. There's increasing evidence that having good bacteria in our guts can improve the digestion & absoption of nutrients, which improves both physical & mental wellbeing. For good gut health it's important to have a high fibre diet & avoiding processed foods, especially bad fats like margarine, & artificial sweeteners that promote the growth of toxic bacteria in the gut.

The same things won't work for everyone, but no harm in trying a few experiments to see how you feel. Please ask if you want more information or don't understand something.

Mel

Here's a few links to the things I've mentioned, plus there's several past posts. Zest did a synopsis of a television programme that was on a few weeks ago that I'll add first:

healthunlocked.com/healthye...

chriskresser.com/kefir-the-...

bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01lxyzc

bbc.co.uk/programmes/articl...

huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/...

chriskresser.com/when-shoul...

verywell.com/does-intermitt...

nutrition.org.uk/nutritions...

theguardian.com/lifeandstyl...

[Bong1968 in reply to BadHare]

You have motivated me! Thank you! The dreaded 50 is just over 6 months away...

[BadHare in reply to Bong1968]

Lucky you! I'm well past!

[Zest]

Welcome Sumerladi - hope that you get your Mojo back and enjoy the week ahead. Hope to see you around and about in the forum.

Good luck with everything.

Zest

[cj20uk]

Hi Sumerladi and welcome to the site. You've made that first step by realising you want to make a change and asking for help, which is a good start. It might be worth looking back at the reasons for stopping going to the gym and starting smoking to see if there is anything else that you need to sort out in your life and get help if needed alongside making more healthy lifestyle changes. It would also be worth looking at what helped you stop smoking last time and try it again.

As you used to go regularly to the gym, that would be a good start. You could go back and ask the instructor for a new programme to get you started again. This will give you something to work on and if you book in a review for a few weeks later, it will give you some motivation to keep going. They might also be able to help you with dietary advice. Good Luck!