I Can't Believe that I LOST Weight over 50 by Doing this One Thing! (Weight Loss Journey over 50)

 hey everybody it's Kathy and I'm here to tell you about my amazing weight loss results for July if you are new here I'm 55 years old and I have been a lifelong Dieter I've always been a little overweight and more so in the last couple of years so I have been on a 50 pound weight loss journey and I have covered my weight loss Journey on my channel you can go back and catch up if you want I had always been following Weight Watchers and I recently decided that I wanted to try something new not that I have anything against Weight Watchers because it is a tool in the weight loss toolbox and it does work if you work the program but it just wasn't doing it for me so earlier this year I took an online course it was I think eight weeks through my health care provider and we would meet there was a group of Us online for one and a half hours a week and this dietitian would teach us a new lesson every week so whenever that course finished I emailed her and long story short I am now meeting with her personally one-on-one about every six weeks and she's helping me to think of losing weight in a different way because I feel that I have so many things imprinted on my brain that I'm having a difficult time adjusting to the new way of losing weight because I'm used to counting calories I'm used to like counting points so she's trying to teach me to forget all about the diet culture and just follow a very simple and basic plan and we're going to get into that I was kind of leery I really didn't expect to lose any weight because I'm still trying to learn and you know I have slip UPS I'm not perfect and I'm not planning on being perfect because life happens but if I can follow this plan eighty percent of the time then I think that I will be successful I should be successful so I began my new way weight loss Journey on July 8th because I was away the first week of July and for the first month following this very simple new to me plan I lost weight and I was shocked and I'm so excited and amazed because I really wasn't expecting much and I lost weight by doing this one thing I quit dieting my dietitian has introduced me to a new way of thinking she said divide your dinner plate into three sections so half of the plate is vegetables a quarter of the plate is protein and the other quarter of the plate is good complex carbohydrates which our bodies still need now I'm not here to argue about all the different weight loss methods out there if you are doing something that works for you that is fine this is my plan and you know I'm sharing my results and my journey with those of you who are interested so just by not dieting by not counting points not counting calories she's kind of helping me to adjust to my way of thinking as an emotional eater I always have turned to food for Comfort because I needed to stay strong when I was dealing you know with my husband's 29-year battle with cancer so I had to find a way to not fall apart and my way of coping was using food I'm not a huge eater and I know like somebody that is thinner than me will hear that and say yeah right you have to eat a lot to be overweight you don't have to eat a lot you just have to eat the wrong things and that is what I've been doing like I could eat the same thing every day I don't really care about food where I go wrong is I eat really high calorie high fat high sugar products with very little nutritional value so I'm talking about simple sugars like candy um drive through food I just feel like sometimes I just need a fix to to soothe myself when I was going through all those very difficult times throughout my adult life you know it wasn't a healthy coping mechanism but it's one that worked for me and it's one that it's just how I managed to get through the difficult times and this I would say was a learned behavior when I was a child and I'm not blaming anybody body when you know better you do better when I was growing up in the 70s we were rewarded with here's a cookie or here's 25 cents go to the store and get you know 25 one cent candies I'm sure a lot of you can relate to those things if we were feeling down here's a cookie I have to try and unlearn all of that and I'm 55 years old and it's not something that I can easily just forget about and switch off because for most of my adult life I have always been on Weight Watchers but I really wasn't following it and I did lose weight with them before and like I said it does work if you work the program but I just found this year I really wanted to get serious and get healthy and I needed a fresh start and something new so it was really a gift the star is aligned whenever I was invited to participate in this nutrition class but then to get the chance to work one-on-one with a dietitian which I find very beneficial I've met with her I think two or three times and this last time we basically just went over every six weeks she'll set like a couple of goals and she doesn't want me to be perfect at all of them she just wants me to try and you know follow the um the plate way of eating whenever I'm you know preparing my meals so I always have in the back of my mind say I'm having a chicken stir-fry I had that the other night for supper I put lots of chicken in which is my protein and a ton of vegetables and then we had rice on the side so I could actually physically see with my eyes how much rice was on my plate and I would say that it was like a quarter of the plate which is what I should be aiming for so with a stir fry it's a little difficult because the vegetables and the protein are all mixed in together so I gave myself a good heaping of stir fry it was just vegetables chicken a little olive oil some seasoning some garlic it was very healthy if you are thinking of say making soup or stew a little tip that helps me is I'll try and like separate the meat and as long as it's say the size of my palm to me that is a serving size of chicken or beef or meat whatever it is you're eating so I wasn't too concerned about the stir fry because it's a very healthy meal eating chicken did not get me to be 50 pounds overweight I really have to keep reminding myself that I don't have to count calories of course I can't have five plates of the stir fry but I think you can understand what I'm trying to say is take the focus off stressing about food because in some of my past instances where I've lost you know 10 20 pounds I'm still going to the drive-through and eating that food and making it work in the plan so I'm trying to unlearn all that bad behavior and she's saying I can still go to the drive-through but maybe just make a healthier choice like if you are having a bad day and you need like some comfort food and the drive-through does that for you instead of maybe getting a burger and fries maybe try a salad and yeah salad is still you know it has a lot of calories with the salad dressing but if you need that in that moment just it's fine it's okay you don't have to be perfect 100 of the time just can't eat like that every day so I have been finding this really really helpful in July since beginning after returning home from Alaska I've lost 5.8 pounds which to me is a gift because I really wasn't expecting to lose any because I still question myself when I'm eating this way it's almost like I feel guilty for eating that much food and I know that sounds really really stupid but whenever you know you've always thought about food and having to record what you ate I seem to be eating more food this healthy way than what I was eating before which does make sense right because this food is very healthy you can have more vegetables a little more protein it's also keeping me full and keeping me Fuller longer so that I don't get the munchies although I do struggle a little bit at night I never used to be like someone that would eat after dinner time but in the last well probably a couple of years going through the stress with my mom being ill and passing away I find at night when I'm watching TV I just mindlessly eat and I was eating you know like those were the original original caramels potato chips I never used to like potato chips that was my way I guess of unconsciously soothing myself so we went over a few strategies that I'm gonna share with you that I'm working on and I report back to her I think after Labor Day weekend so it'll be interesting to see how August goes I just want to go over a few of the things I wrote them down sorry about the glare on my glasses but I I can't see without them but I want to make sure that I tell you about these because I feel that they're very important and I do plan on doing a monthly update late and sharing all the information that I learned from The dietitian and you know posting it here to help you all if you're if case you're interested so we met last week and we really concentrated on me getting more protein because I was telling her what I'm eating and I don't get enough protein and that's part of the reason why I think it is that I maybe do get the munchies and make bad choices because I'm not feeling satiated she asked me what do you think of when you think of protein for me it's like chicken beef it could be pork eggs it's kind of all like protein that I would have learned about in the food guide when I was a kid but there are so many other options today some of which I was wasn't even aware that was a protein and some of them are vegetarian options which I like because I do like to you know go meatless once or twice a week if I can so we talked about sources of protein and she got me thinking about beans as a source of protein also nuts and I remember whenever I was you know counting calories counting points if I was to eat some nuts they took a lot of my points because I was almost being told nuts are bad for you don't eat them they can be bad for you if you eat the whole bag but if you just have like a quarter of a cup a day it's not going to put weight on you dairy products are a great source of protein like Greek yogurt nut Butters I'm not crazy like about peanut butter so I probably would skip that one but she suggested you know like almond butter or different types of nut butter the key is whenever you're say having a snack and she does recommend that I have a snack I could have one in the afternoon and one in the evening because then that's going to keep my blood sugars level it is important to have either a protein with fiber and you can get fiber by fruits vegetables whole grain popcorn without butter on it or have a healthy fat with fiber it's all is important to have fiber as part of the snack or your meal because fiber fills you up you'll eat less healthy fats that she wrote down for me were like nuts seeds again nut butter and avocado like not a whole avocado she has a third of an avocado and it's funny because I always thought avocados were healthy but I always felt guilty eating them because again whenever you're counting points calories it can take up a lot of points and when I'm thinking about this like it just seems really I don't know dumb for lack of a better word that I would feel guilty about eating a half of an avocado but yet I'm okay to go and have a burger and fries that's kind of Twisted thinking so this is you know what is up here in my 55 year old brain so I'm really trying to erase all of my bad habits all of my bad thoughts about dieting about food and and really Embrace this new way of thinking because obviously I did it for not even a full month like three weeks and I lost 5.8 pounds so I am excited now I still am not exercising I did really well the first I would say 10 days of July very active when we were on our cruise I always am when I'm on vacation I never put weight on when I'm on vacation because I'm very active but we came home and it was like 30 40 Celsius plus humidity we had like 10 days straight where it was over a hundred Fahrenheit there's no way I'm going outside to exercise and it's really hard for me to get motivated to work indoors so that is something that I still struggle with and I have to work on so I just have to find a way to like kick myself in the butt and get walking 15 minutes three times a week start with that she said do not put so much pressure on myself you know if I don't do it because I have a habit of being very a very difficult on myself I'm very very hard on myself I have to kind of get away from that and also learn to you know treat myself with compassion and with Grace because nobody's perfect so why am I holding myself up to this high standard that everything I do has to be perfect because life isn't perfect life is perfectly imperfect so I'll make a little slide and I'll put it on the screen and if you want to take a screenshot of what she wrote up for me for snacks to have the protein or healthy fat with the fiber it's key to have it with fiber and you know I have been trying this usually I will have an orange in the evening I'm trying to you know if I'm gonna snack at least have something healthy I would have the orange by itself but I still felt like maybe an hour later I could you know have something else with it so what I've tried is I've had an orange with maybe 10 almonds or or I will have um almonds and a cheese stick because a cheese stick would be the protein right the almonds are the protein so when I have the almonds with the orange the oranges the fiber the almonds are the protein it really does help to quash the munchies and I'm trying I put this on my fridge it's there and then whenever I go to the Basin when we watch TV at night you know I'll look at this and say okay well what snack can I make because she said it's okay to have a snack like in the evening and the other thing was that I told her you know I get up I have my thyroid pills and I have to wait about an hour an hour and a half before I can eat so then it's like maybe nine nine thirty depending when I get up we like to have like our main meal at noon but she said try not to do that maybe just try and have smaller meals throughout the day like try and eat every two to three hours and by each she doesn't mean like a hamburger five times a day she means you know like your breakfast as maybe a smaller lunch and a smaller dinner but then you can have your snacks so I'm trying to incorporate that in as well because yes like I can have my main meal at lunch and then I'm not hungry at five or six o'clock but then what I was Finding was I got the munchies at eight so I guess what happens is your blood sugar goes all over the place and that's um whenever I want to start to binge and another thing we just touched on this week and she kind of planted the seed in my head like for an emotional eater what is it that the food is giving to you so I've been thinking about that and you know my whole life whenever I felt stressed or anxious or scared I always you know would just mindlessly eat instead of just feeling the feeling that I was feeling if that makes sense so I guess I really have to dive deep into myself and say well what's wrong with this feeling whatever it is you're feeling like you don't have to make it out to be this big dramatic thing like the other night my mom was she it had been four months since she passed away and I have not yet grieved my mother you know for the longest time well from when she passed to when we went to Alaska I just buried myself in work I've been working like 50 60 hours a week on my YouTube channel and I didn't have time to feel anything and then something happened when I was away on my Alaska cruise I actually could feel my father's presence with me the whole time my dad's been dead now for six years and before leaving for Alaska anytime I thought of my mother I thought of the last miserable 10 days of her life and that is not how I want to remember her and it's not how she would want to be remembered I didn't think of my mother when I was in Alaska I just felt my dad's presence the whole time and since I've been home I have had a few instances where I have thought of my mother but the first thing that I thought about were the better memories I haven't thought about her when she was dying and that tells me I have yet to grieve my mother maybe I can't right now like maybe it's just too raw with everything else going on in my life but I know that there will come a time when I will be able to feel those feelings so I'm trying to be mindful of that and not using not wanting to feel the pain by eating if that makes sense I find this is so beneficial meeting one-on-one with this dietitian because sometimes you know it's not really about the food it's about the feeling and as an emotional eater you know that is something that I'm gonna have to deal with for the rest of my life because there's always going to be something going wrong there's always going to be stress but I promised myself when I turn 55 in June that I was going to be the healthiest version of me because that is what my parents would want and I am a thousand percent thankful that I've gotten this far without any you know major health conditions other than being hypothyroid which I've been dealing with for 29 years and migraines which I can deal with so I really um kind of think of myself now as the way I think of my body is Kathy your car is 55 years old you know uh you wouldn't keep a car for 55 years old because it would start to rust it would start to fall apart if I don't take care of myself and lose the weight and you know get healthier then I'm going to start falling apart and I don't want that so whenever I'm feeling like oh I want that bag it Werther's or whatever I just try and you know think of the analogy of the car it's like well do I want my muffler falling off no so then maybe have an apple instead of the werthers like what is it about the werthers that soothes me nothing because whenever I'm very very anxious I'll just keep shoveling them in my mouth and I'm not really I'm not getting satisfied from eating them and I remember a few weeks ago you know we got take out and I'm eating and it's like this is garbage like I don't even enjoy eating it so why am I eating it these are the thoughts that are going through my mind the things that I'm working through and I just wanted to share them with you because I don't think that I can be alone feeling this way and you know this is a safe place where we can all come together share our stories support each other and you know I'm being very open and honest and vulnerable here with you in the hopes that you will see yourself and me and that we can support one another and you know get healthy together that's why I share these videos because it's not easy to share these types of things because it is very deeply personal I just want to tell you a few more things before I'm on my way some things that we're going to try and work at in August she gave me a few websites where I can go and find a few recipes to try out and maybe I can prepare some meals ahead of time and have them in the freezer to help like with meal prep because that's something that you know I know I should be doing but I don't and I don't feel like I have to do it because I work from home but I really should be because whenever it's like 12 o'clock and I'm hungry you know if I have food in the fridge then I'm going to make a healthier choice rather than going to the drive-through and I also want to find some healthy protein Rich smoothies that I can make for my dinner at night because sometimes I really am not that hungry but I still have to find a way to get more protein in and we meet again in September so these are my goals so for August I'm going to work on getting more protein I'm going to try out some new recipes and I'll link a few of the websites in the first pin comments so you can add access to them as well I wrote I did pretty good exercising the beginning of July but quit because it was too hot and now that the humidity is over I'm looking forward to going for a stroll around the block and getting back to walking because I used to love to walk it helps to clear my head it helps me to sleep and it's a great form of cardio so I'm just going to leave you with this question what is one change that you're going to make this month to help you be successful and lose weight in August and you know maybe you don't even have to lose weight think about it like we have to get away from the numbers on the scale I guess they're important but I think before we can focus on the scale we have to focus on what's going on inside here and here and I really do find that this new way of thinking about food and I guess it's just meeting with her having somebody to put a bug in my ear and get me thinking I can find a shift like I'm shifting away and if I have another great August I'm going to be blown away like if I lose weight because I still feel like how is it possible to lose weight by eating you know it it just it sounds so Twisted but I guess you know 35 years of dieting does that to somebody so I'm wishing you a fabulous month and I will check back with you at the end of August and in the meantime be sure to go check out any of my other videos I just put up my Alaska cruise video it's kind of like a little Vlog we recap every day and I show you what I wore so good luck to you and I'll see you soon bye