Adjust my Diet for my Age

A friend my age was talking about how she gained 30 pounds really fast and she’s pretty sure she’s been eating less than normal. She’s not dieting or exercising, but I think it shows how easy & fast it is to put on the pounds after 40. I’ve been doing OK, but not great lately

One of my students said I looked like i lost a lot of weight. Actually it isn’t that much weight, so could it just appear that way bcs of certain clothes I wear? It was nice to hear anyway . And I finally got on the scale today and I was just under 142. I’m not thrilled with that, but I feel encouraged that I can reach my goal of getting back under 140 pretty soon. Especially since I’m feeling better now so I can get back to exercising. fortunately, even while I wasn’t “exercising” I still do a bit of walking around campus during the day.
And the great thing is I still feel fine about the way I’m eating. I’m looking forward to eating certain things again, but OK that it’s not for right now. But I’m thinking about what special things I’ll eat on my birthday and how I can keep that a balanced treat and not a “going crazy with food” day. (or week!)

My family has really been supporting me. My son said I looked really skinny when he saw me in my bathing suit today. His choice of words isn’t very accurate (5 foot 1 and over 140 pounds is not skinny in most peoples’ books) but it encouraged me. And my daughter said “good job” staying on your diet…stuff like that.
And I’m still struggling with calling it a “diet” since I’m trying to adjust my eating in general, but other people understand that better.

While I was in the States I ate whatever I wanted for a month. Now I’ve been back to low sugar, low carb, light eating for almost a month. But I think it will take more than a month to take off what I gained in July. I only regretted it one day this month :)
It’s been hard sometimes, but mostly OK. Today at school they had french fries which smelled really good. (my son told me they didn’t taste that good, tho) I really felt totally right about not eating them. Some of the other teachers who bring salads and stuff like me were eating the fries today. That’s fine, we all have our times when we need a treat. I just need to remember I had treats for a month!

It’s going OK, but not great. Much room for improvement. I did make it that day just fine. And I didn’t eat after dinner those nights. Yesterday after eating a small lunch I packed, I went to the caf bcs they were supposed to have salad, but it was corn instead. There wasn’t much there…I ended up getting oreos. I need to plan more healthy choices for myself.
Last night we went out to dinner to an Asian place and I got Lobster in garlic sauce with vegetables. I also tried some of my husband’s Tempenyaki dish. They were both delicious. And we had a tiny bit of ice cream at home. Hey, you gotta have dates sometimes.

I’m hungry :[
Some days I can skip breakfast with no problem, but today I’m hungry…don’t know if I’ll make…I will
I can eat lunch early.

My husband’s Granddad who lived to be 93 or so probably had it right. He and his wife (2nd wife that he married in his 70s) started eating only 2 meals a day because they realized that they were in a time in their lives when they didn’t need three. Now, they ate ice cream every night so that was probably like another meal. But, they were active too. Granddad would go golfing every morning.
They ate breakfast and one meal in between lunch and dinner. That doesn’t work for me, but I think something like it is the right thing to do because now that I’m in my 40s I’m accumulating more weight than I used to, in spite of my occaisional diets and exercise sprees. I seem to do best with cutting out breakfast, so that’s what i’m trying for now. We’ll see how it works.