Success Stories of those over 65

[FGH]

Would love to hear the success stories from those folks over 65. What were the keys to your success?

[kib1]

Sorry I don’t quite qualify, I’m 61, I’d just like to do a shout-out to those who’ve gone before me and paved the way. It’s so inspiring to see what can be accomplished or turned around to bring people into healthier “golden years”. I am grateful to people who sounded the alarm in time for me to prevent the worst of metabolic disease (or at the very least delay it, at 61 and 10-ish years keto I have no outward signs of disease), and then shared their journeys.

[CFLBob]

I guess I qualify. I didn’t start at over 65 if that’s what you want the most, but I’m 70 and started in April of ‘15 when I was 61. I’m also not entirely sure I’d say I’m a success. I mean I’ve lost over 55 pounds, but never achieved my goal weight. I’ve been closer than I am now, not much closer, but have been around this weight for two years, I think. Call it 205 +/- 5 lbs. I’m 6’ tall but have a fatty paunch. Some of that is due to an umbilical hernia that keeps me from doing “core strengthening” exercises.

I had been low carb since the late '90s. Before that I had been following the dietary guidelines and continued to get fatter. My family has a diabetic gene. My mom had it and my brother does now. When I started looking for how to avoid diabetes in my early 40s, I went on the Zone diet. Lost a bit of weight - 20 or 30 lbs IIRC - but then started reliably gaining it back. One of the things Dr. Sears says in his books on the Zone, is you may need to tweak the diet from the 40-30-30 that he’s famous for to work better for you to maybe lower carbs, higher fat. I found cutting the carbs more helped. By 2015, I was ready to go fully keto.

I started with Dr. Westman’s rules about 20grams TOTAL carbs, not net, and dropped 30 pounds. Although it took a while for me to accept the fact, at my peak I weighed 265 - “empty” in the morning. Nowadays, I’m more like 35 grams total (I don’t eat many things with fiber, which is where the difference comes from). I had my gall bladder go bad in 2016, and that led to an unexpected weight loss.

The Zone was big on eating constantly - as in three meals and a snack or two. I kept with that for a while, at around the time Jason Fung started getting noticed and on lots of podcasts. I’m not sure when I did some fasting, but I’ve done alternate day fasts for about six months a couple of times. For the last few years, I’ve been doing Two Meals A Day, and have a pretty regular habit of doing one full fasting day a week. I’ll skip it if I’m sick or feeling really bad. I’ve also forgotten it was fasting day once or twice. Because my wife prefers it be the same day every week, it has become Thursday. That means I have my last food on Wednesday evening, maybe 8PM and don’t eat again until Friday at 11 or 12.

I think most of the folks here have tried many different diets. I know I did. The most successful diet I ever tried was Atkins back in the late 1970s when I was in my mid-20s. I should have learned from that, but the programming from the food pyramid and the anti-fat, and vegetarian groups all together have insane amounts of influence.

I’ve tracked blood sugar and ketostix but not much and not for years (in that order). Have never used the Keto Mojo or most devices. Keto has kept me from going diabetic. I had long talks with my brother, who pointed me to Atkins way back then, and he tried going closer to keto. He’s off his diabetic meds now.

That’s all I can think of. If you have questions let 'er rip.

[kib1]

The most successful diet I ever tried was Atkins back in the late 1970s when I was in my mid-20s. I should have learned from that, but the programming from the food pyramid and the anti-fat, and vegetarian groups all together have insane amounts of influence.

I think the biggest problem with Atkins is that it was literally structured around going back to eating carbohydrates. Get into ketosis for a few weeks, grit your teeth and hang in there, and then your reward is you can gradually reintroduce carbs. The most faithful people got screwed by following this protocol.

[clackley]

It is true that Atkins was designed to add in carbs as time went by. The key was to find a limit to the amount of carbs individually one could consume and continue to lose weight. Of course for those with extreme sensitivity, the result would be negative. Most people doing Atkins were extremely carb sensitive and ended up failing to reach the supposed carb limit.

[kib1]

I think it’s also a lot harder to do that vague “low to moderate carbs” forever, rather than simply limiting them in a fixed way. Endless fiddling, endless temptation, endless opportunities to say, “I’m sure this slab of chocolate lava cake falls within my carb limit, since I subbed carrots for french fries.”

[ebt]

That’s very true. It used to be I could never leave a store without a candy bar. Now I don’t even see them when I walk out. They are foreign things to be eaten by the unenlightened.