Dieting At 80 Still Sucks

Yes, even old people worry about their weight.

So, the news from the field is: pumping iron isn’t enough.

Yes, I love the way I feel after my sets. I’ve discovered rowing, and I can tell I’m improving. I don’t ache in every moving part after a workout. I can lift heavier weights. I’m still raising eyebrows as the oldest person at my 24 Hour Fitness gym, but they can suck canal water if they complain I mess up their demographics as a meeting place to look good in thigh-hugging bike shorts. So all is good at the gym.

But I have to get real about my mid-section and my constant jonesing on sugar.

I’m within normal height and weight but at the upper range, and I sling way too much fat around because I sit at the computer all day in close proximity to my snack drawer.

So I bit the bullet because I needed to take some drastic action. I signed up at a popular weight loss program to help me get back on track.

News flash after four days of serious self-denial: Dieting sucks as much at 80 as it did at 30.

I have eating issues. What woman doesn’t in this society? I get away with mine because I don’t have major weight issues as well unless I’m obsessing about not getting into my stretchy old lady jeans. But I’ve decided that while I can’t do anything about being 80, I have some control over looking 80. I’m talking about that pouchy stuff around my middle and my back that wasn’t there two years ago. When I was still old but looked better, or at least slimmer.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of articles by writers opposed to people going on diets, writers dealing with weight and eating issues, people who would no doubt slam me for paying money to a weight loss scam. And that’s pretty much what these places are. I get it.

If these programs really worked, I would have kept off the weight I lost the last time I joined this program, fifteen years ago, when I had inched over the limit. I lost 25 pounds that time. Why am I back forking over more money?

But I’m not here to be lectured on the wrong ways I’m going about taking off some extra pounds. I’m here to say I needed to jump-start my eating habits, particularly to leave the snacks alone.

I knew what I wanted when I plunked down my thirty bucks at the meeting last week. I wasn’t expecting magic. I got a month’s worth of digital access to an eating plan that will probably help me get rid of the relatively few pounds I want to lose.

Four days in and I’ve lost three pounds.

Now, if I said that to my daughter, she’d roll her eyes and say, “Mom, that’s water weight.”

As if I’d made it to 80-years-old and hadn’t figured out a thing about basic physics.

Of course, it’s water weight. But news flash, bunky. Water has weight. And I’ve shed three pounds worth.

The reason that’s significant is that my body has protested the release of every ounce.

My goal is to rid myself of fat cells, and that will come. When I don’t eat snacks between meals, I don’t have trouble maintaining my weight or losing it when necessary. My problem is I’m a snack addict. And I mean that in every sense of the word.

At this point, my body is craving those snacks or the calories that come from them. I don’t understand that metabolically, but I sure feel it. I’m tired, a bit dizzy, which, as someone already balance-challenged is not a good thing. And I’m beginning to crave the foods I’m not eating. Not that I’m not “allowed“ to, but that’s for another article, with a slightly bitchier tone.

This program is nutritionally sound. But that doesn’t make it fun.

You may have figured out which one I’m using. I know I’m eating lots of protein and vegetables and carbs, just not the sugary and fatty stuff I love. I chose it because two of my peeps have recently had success and promised it was “easy.” As in, they didn’t get hungry or feel deprived.

While I didn’t see it, they must have been swinging a pendulum in front of my eyes and hypnotized me while they said that, because I fell under the spell of easy dieting and lugged my extra poundage to the next meeting and forked over my hard-won Medium earnings and signed up.

Cue the three-pound weight loss. Cue even louder the part that dieting still sucks.

When I first began my yo-yo relationship with my weight, I’d see old women lugging their matronly selves along and assume there would come a point in my life when my size and shape no longer mattered. I’ve sad news for my young self, and anyone else living under that rock: Once a vain bunny, always a vain bunny.

I’ve sad news for my young self, and anyone else living under that rock: Once a vain bunny, always a vain bunny.

I care about my size and shape, though for different reasons. I’m no longer trimming my waistline to attract a mate, but to ward off heart attacks that seek out people with fat around one’s middle. I have a strong competitive streak, fed by an equal portion of vanity. I just don’t want to look like the dowdy old ladies that fuel the false stereotypes of aging that I hate.

It doesn’t matter to me that I’ll never rock a bikini again. But the extra poundage I’m carrying around isn’t due to my age but the result of my eating habits. And that’s what I’m still trying to change. After all these years as Simon and Garfunkle used to sing.

Today’s rant is me coming to grips with the fact that I still hate depriving myself of any food I enjoy, and that’s why dieting sucks for me.

I’ll get over the constant fatigue and nodding off for hours as my body gets used to shedding water and fat. This morning I’m not quite as dizzy and a bit peppier.

However, the day they say I have to stop feeling sorry for myself because I can’t have a second piece of toast without screwing up my point count for the day is the day I go out and buy a donut!!! And I don’t even like donuts.

Did I mention I’m also a bit rebellious? Sometimes I think I have too many crosses to bear for these fragile, old shoulders.

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