Weight help

[Livelovelife56]

Good morning I really hope everyone is doing as well as can be.

In September I had echocardiogram as per my son's consultant request.

In April I saw the consultant who advised that while he was not overly concerned I needed to make some serious changes. I have a aortic dilation of 4.8 ( having a doppler CT to confirm a more accurate measurements in July never heard of this before)

He said main concern was blood pressure to get this under control and need to lose weight. If in the event I needed surgery it would be better.

I saw cardiologist a few weeks later and also advised a lot more strongly I needed to lose weight

My problem is I don't know how. I've cut out a lot of foods but nothing is helping I wondered if anyone had any ideas .

Thank you

[Lowerfield_no_more]

I suggest you cut out all sugary foods and drink, like cake, biscuits, puddings, sweets, cola etc and also reduce or stop your alcohol consumption should you drink. Also stop 'snacking' especially crisps. Next slowly reduce your portion size to allow your body to get used to it. And go for a walk every day, which may mean setting aside up to half an hour to to this. If you don't or can't walk very far at the moment start with what you can do and slowly increase it, best done on the flat. Two miles max should be enough in the end. Also buy some scales if you don't have any, and weigh yourself every other day. Set yourself a target for weight loss and stick with it. That's what I did and was losing up to 1kg a week at the beginning although it did tail off in the end as expected . And the only down side to all of this is you might have to buy a complete new wardrobe, but you will certainly feel and look a lot better. Finally when you have lost your target weight pick up something that is about the same weight such as two 5kg bags of potatoes and walk around with that and realise what a strain that was putting on you and your body before you lost it. Hope it works for you.

[Livelovelife56 in reply to Lowerfield_no_more]

Thank you. That's really good advice. I'm just getting ready to do a walk now.

[Happyrosie]

also, the NHS, the BHF and Blood Pressure UK have some helpful guidelines and recipes.

The NHS EatWell plate is a handy visual guide to eating but, and it’s a big BUT, their guidelines on low fat food are not up to date. They say go for low-fat options. However, nowadays the food manufacturers are very skilled at making low-fat food and to make them taste of anything pleasant they add what’s called UPF’s. These are items you would not find in your kitchen, ultra-processed foods, and thus you wouldn’t want them in your body!

Also, look up “couch to 5k” on NHS website … might be too extreme for you but who knows?

[Bingo88]

Good morning Livelovelife56. I know the feeling about trying to loose weight and it's very difficult with health problems as well stopping you doing too many things. If you click on the 9 dots at the bottom left of your page you will see all the different sections of Healthunlocked and the 1 section is Healthy Eating. So I hope this helps you. Good luck. Brian

[Triglyceride]

Hi there, I’ve been restricting fats and calories in my diet for years and have really struggled to get my weight under 85kg. Recently I went on a course to help me control my type 2 diabetes and was told to restrict carbohydrates only. This graph shows my weight over the last 12 months. The last 3 months is when I started restricting carbs.

Weight graph showing weight loss

[Livelovelife56 in reply to Triglyceride]

That's really helpful thanks and well done keep it up 👍🏾

[JeremiahObadiah]

You might also find time restricted eating useful. As in a window of time outside of which you only have water or hot drinks without milk.

Sounds radical but if you work out when you could have your -for example 8 hour -food window and eat 2 sensible well balanced meals in that window you will probably adjust your eating routine without too much effort or hunger.

You could Google this method of weight loss to see if it could work for you .