Can You Lose Weight After 60?

I’m trying Weight Watchers again for the 39th (give or take) time

So, can you lose weight after 60?

Growing up, I was thin as a rail. I even remember buying some kind of pills from a drug store guaranteeing to help you gain weight.

Imagine!

I was always hungry. I would get up in the mornings and cook myself a big breakfast and by lunch my stomach was growling so loud my classmates could hear it. Once my teacher commented that someone must be hungry. After her comment, as we used to say, I “like to died of embarrassment.”

I would keep bite-sized candy bars in my purse and sneak them between classes. My little nephew caught on to this and I would catch him digging into my purse when he thought I wasn’t looking.

Those were the days!

By the time I hit 30, those days were over. The weight was coming on. At first, I didn’t worry about it because at 5'10", I thought I could carry it. But this didn’t last.

My family history didn’t help me at all. Everyone on my mother’s side of the family is obese. I have 24 cousins and only one of them is a regular weight and she has had serious health issues.

Because of my family history, I should have worried about this weight gain, especially after my brother weighed in at 400 pounds at his death at the age of 56. Yes, he died of illnesses related to his weight. I did worry about it, but I thought by exercising, it would be ok.

After I retired, I held my retirement weight for the first year and then the weight started creeping on. I’ve come to realize that I’m a stress eater. We had trouble with our teenage children. We became parents late in life, so while the rest of our friends and family our age was getting to hang and do fun things with grandchildren, my husband and I were dealing with the stress of raising a child in this day and age of free-for-all drugs, sex, and alcohol abuse.

Boredom and stress brought on the snacking. I was physically active before COVID. I attended a butt-busting exercise class three times a week, did Tai Chi, and went to the gym. I was the biggest person there. Once all of these classes were canceled, I continued on my own for a short time but eventually stopped.

It seemed like every day I gained another pound or two.

I looked into different methods of weight loss. Once, several of my friends and I went to a local doctor to get weight loss pills. He has quite a racket. You meet him once in a group setting and from then on, you buy his little pill. I lost weight on what I later discovered were good ole amphetamines. And I turned into a raving B. No one wanted to be around me. That doctor was later arrested but he is still in practice.

I did lose weight once using the intermittent eating plan. However, because of this, I stopped pooping! Who knew how upsetting the lack of a bodily function could be! It has taken me a couple of years to get my stomach back to what is “normal” for me and meanwhile I gained that weight back.

It seems like every day I turn on the news or watch Newsbreak and read stories of people fat shaming others on planes and just in general. I read a book series not long ago where one of the women characters weighed 200 pounds. She was painted in a very negative light and the author emphasized how the chair “groaned” whenever the character sat down.

So, it seems now I can experience fat shaming even when I read a book!

Bummer!

I will say that I’ve never been fat-shamed to my face except twice. Once, my very nasty mother-in-law asked me what I was going to do about my weight. She went on to tell me what dress size I should be. It was a dress size that I couldn’t fit into even when I weighed 130 pounds. She said she knew “what was best!”

I did the right thing and just got up and left but it caused issues between my husband and I because he didn’t tell her to shut the hell up. It took a while for me to forgive him.

The second time I was opening fat-shamed was a couple of years ago when I attended a high school reunion dinner. One tiny former cheerleader whispered loudly, “who is that?”

Seems like she still has a lot of “cheerleader attitude” left in her even after almost 50 years. I haven’t been back to a dinner since.

So, all of this brings us up to this time in my life. This has been one of the most stressful years of my life. I would rate my stress level at a 10. I don’t need to worry about my weight along with everything else.

Even though I swore I would not spend any more money on losing weight, Weight Watchers offered me a plan that was only ten dollars a month. I decided that I was worth ten dollars.

So last month I joined. I didn’t really do anything for a week or two but then I started working with the plan. So far, I’ve lost seven pounds. While I wish it was a lot more, it’s a start.

I’m not promoting Weight Watchers. I still don’t know if it will work for me. My friend lost weight on Noom. A former co-worker posted on Facebook that he lost thirty pounds in a month by eating only raw veggies and fresh fruit. He ate almonds for protein. His diet sounds awful to me, but it worked for him.

Meanwhile, this time I’m really paying attention to what I’m eating. On Weight Watchers you can eat anything you want but in small quantities. That seems to be working for me.

My gym was closed for renovations, but it has recently re-opened. I plan to go back next week. I don’t think I’m ready to return to my butt-busting exercise classes but hopefully some day in the future I will be able to.

I recently bought a pool heater for my pool. This year, I swam every day for five months. I’m not sure if I can swim any more this year due to the weather but I’m looking forward to swimming earlier when spring gets here.

Hopefully by sharing my journey I can keep up my self-motivation. I also hope that someone else might be encouraged to get on the better diet/exercise journey as well.

I used to care about how I looked and worried about things like how big my boobs were or weren’t or how I wish I had a different shoe size. Now I only care about how I feel.

Wish me luck. I need it.