One bowling ball down

Weigh in day, lost a bowling ball, 16 lbs. Reset a new goal through September 31 lbs. Clothes are fitting better. Each day I know where I am at.
The can and how is happening, but how will I do in the long run. It helps to know foods and drinks that I enjoy can still be enjoyed. Choosing amounts that are healthful the app helps me plan.
This is all new for me so will it work into new habits?
I plan to continue researching why this stuff is hard for us to achieve. Keep walking. 

It is early in the game but it is working

Hopefully one day I will be back at the
weight in this picture, by mid summer
I will be halfway there.

Todays ago I weighed in and I have lost 6 pounds. The app MyNetDiary is working. Most days I am below my calorie goal. The information feedback I'm helping me make decisions. That is almost 2% of my body weight. OK, I am still early with this idea. What I really like is the control it gives me to help me make decisions both what to eat and when to say no. Because of the app, I chose certain foods to be within the limits set. At Arby's, I chose a classic beef because the calorie count was 360, at Boston market I chose mash potatoes with no gravy and saved a few hundred calories.
At home, I am more likely to stay within one serving. The app told me to pick up more calories at breakfast. At night I know I can't do the night runs through the kitchen. It is rewarding knowing what I did on my eating that day I am losing weight without having to check the scales.
Another change I am working at is to be awake more in the daytime and sleep more at night. I want to experience more of the warmer part of the year up and around. More time to bike outdoors and sunshine. I think I will move as well. The more movement greater the weight loss.
can we lose weight healthily when we are older? That is what I want to find out.
Today I will strength train with bands, body exercises, dumbells, and TRX.  I can only imagine if I

lose weight I will look like a prune. I want to retain my muscle. Muscle is harder to develop as we age. Our ability to grow muscle is slower than when we were younger. With work, we can grow muscle at about 10 to 20% of what we used to. That is our new reality, but the good news is we can grow muscle. We knew we could slow down the decline, but new research suggests we can grow muscle if we work at it.
It is widely recommended that we strength train 2x's a week. Dr. Ken Cooper realized he had to change the % of exercise to more strength training over aerobics. This has influenced me to spend more time with resistance training. Feel good about it if you follow the recommended guidelines of twice a week. 150 minutes a week of walking, the exercise of all kinds is a very doable number for most of us. You and your doctor know what is right for you. Any kind of exercise can help our weight loss. Considering my weight I burned 200 calories in my 16 minutes of resistant training. If I factor in my 30 minutes of biking on recumbent which will add 285 cal. to my day. That is 46 minutes of exercise of the 150 I need for the week. My heart is purring.
My confidence in taking off the weight becomes a real thing. Keep walking

We all need encouragement

Punching into an app to track what I eat and reach a calorie count that will help me lose weight is so encouraging. Like me, you may be out there overweight and not making progress. Reading and viewing possible strategies that may help. As we age, exercise may even become more challenging to assist our weight loss.
I take two medicines that are known to slow metabolism and increase weight. I don't even want to go into the many bad habits I have.
But I want to encourage anyone who may read this, despite many setbacks I haven't given up. I deliberately have not written on weight loss because I put it on the back burner while I worked on other things, like how to get moving when walking became more difficult. For me, my recumbent bike and other means like shadow boxing, modifying aerobic exercises to fit my balance problems and actually using indoor walking to improve ba

I know you almost feel sorry for the little guy

lance. When you have Cerebral Palsy believe there are adjustments you have to make as you age.
This stuff is really a work in progress. Maybe it is really a work in progress for all of us. What I have learned is to stay at it ready to try what will work for you.
It is tougher to put good things into practice. Life is often two steps forward and one step back. For those who are heavy, we can fall off the wagon a few times. We can be knocked to the canvas and struggle to make it to the eight count only to have our weight like boxer poised to knock us out again. Man is it easy to give up.
In the last year, I have looked at why it is so hard to lose weight. Our fat cells have a vote as they secretly make known their demands to be healthy and big. A lot of food can be eaten with no thought given to it at all. Some of our favorite foods have a lot of calories. Portions that are helpful are hard to learn. How we eat and how much we eat are learned way before we ever thought about it. Our habits may even be irrational and crazy.
It is easy to give up.
We do have good information and strategies that can be used and be a light at the end of a long tunnel. At My Portion. com I got an idea of what it looks like to have a calorie count for a guy my size to lose weight.
At mynetdiary.com I really uncovered a practical how to. I can actually track the food and brands I eat. By looking at nutritional labels I can type in foods that match what I am eating. I can factor in exercise and movement to see what calories I am burning. The feedback and information help me to make choices that at the end of the day show me I am on my way to losing weight and today is good.  All of the days so far I have been below the target rate of calories and many days like today I am hundreds of calories below. Today I am 800+ calories below my 2200-2400 hundred count. Whatever the progress I will report how effective it is. My goal is 30 lbs by August 10th.
I will be still the fat man but moving down. Keep walking 

Can I lose 7 lbs? Baby steps pt. 2

“Baby steps” is my new plan to lose weight. Weight-loss is based on 7 pound increments in the BMI chart. About a 5 weeks ago, I topped the scales at my heaviest weight. I paused my thinking in reflecting on observations about myself and others. My new hypothesis “It is hard to lose weight”.

Is their research that supported this hypothesis? How many people are really that successful losing weight? As we age, we can lose weight because we become unhealthy. We pick up a serious disease and our bodies don't work right and the weight comes off. 

Losing weight that way is no good. 

Observation heavy people usually remain heavy. Skinny people as they age lose muscle and gain fat. As we move along in life we share different yet common problems. Muscle loss happens and fat is too easy to put on as we age. When we were younger we may have pushed physical fitness to maintain are vim and vigor. The older we get that still may be a motivation but for most it evolves into health and feeling good.

Do a science medical search as to why we remain over weight. There is real evidence to the reality of weight-loss being difficult. Here is few new things I learned:

• We know fat cells die. About 10% of our fat cells die each year. Unfortunately our body replaces those fat cells.
  
• Fat cells communicate to the brain at an unconscious level with the loud message “feed me!” A fat cell wants to be big and healthy. Fat cell’s resistance to our efforts to shrink the fat cells is more significant than we have paid attention to.
• According researchers from Australia, Brown & Meerman in a report titled When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go? When we breathe our lungs are the primary excreteory organ for a fat. With each breath we lose a little fat. Now don't hyper ventilate! Fat loss happens by breathing. “If you lose 20 pounds, just over 80 percent of that is going to be exhaled by the lungs, and the remainder will be excreted via urine, feces, sweating, and tears (happy ones, we hope)”. Where Does Fat Go When We Lose It? 2017. The best way to increase our breathing is to move. 
• The primary loss of fat is the actual fat cell shrinking.
• Obesity is a chronic condition. Most people will continue with a weight problem. It is extremely difficult to get to a healthy BMI. To make matters worse it is extremely hard to stay there. We have to develop a lifestyle a gradual weight loss. It is quite possible that we will never reach an ideal BMI weight. But our gradual moving that way is very healthy for us. 

I will make this first personal, how will I lose weight? 

1. I plan to continue researching weight-loos difficulties as well as good ideas that may get me going the right direction. 
2. My goals will be based on one 6-7 pound goal at a time. This is based on intervals in the BMI chart for my weight and height. I believe I've been working on this problem for about five weeks. I have already lost my first 7 pounds. I am actually one pound ahead for my next goal. Hoorah! I am only going to focus on baby steps. On step at a time.
3. Throughout the day small meals, cutting carbohydrates and protein portions five is fine and nine divine in fruits and vegetables. Lots of water
4. Enjoy what I eat and life just cut back.
5. Move an exercise throughout the day, simple moving breaks and workouts that include aerobics, strength, flexibility and balance. I have had success here that encourages me in step #2. The motivation here is about aging and excreting that fat out of my body. Keep walking 

How do fat cells think? Losing weight is hard

Are you discouraged about losing weight? Too many failures to count? Consider the following

As we get older we tend to add weight. You may be thinking, “No **** Sherlock.” Since I have taken up the walking with the fat man blog, I have lost weight 60 lbs. and have regained the weight and have added 10 lbs. to boot. I have found weight-gain happens after weight-loss. After repeated failure, not just by me but by most people I know, drive me back to ask Why?  

My experience and observations have only underscored how difficult it is to lose weight. In the articles below, looking at the research behind them I have found some interesting facts:

• The odds are against you if you are obese to lose weight for healthy BMI
• If you lose your weight by dieting and even exercise the odds are against you to keep the weight off once you have reached a goal. You are more likely to put the weight back on.
• Fat cells basically send messages to feed them and keep them healthy. It is stressful to lose weight in our body always fight stress.
• Fat cells send chemicals that lower the metabolism (How do fat cells think?) 
• Most of our strategies lose weight don't work. Dr. Leibel said, that losing weight “is not a neutral event,” and that it is no accident that more than 90 percent of people who lose a lot of weight gain it back. “You are putting your body into a circumstance it will resist,” NYT 2011
• It is harder today to lose weight then if you were the same age you are today than 30 years ago. If someone was 65 years old 30 years ago and weighed 290 lbs. would have an easier time losing weight then someone today all things being equal. WP 2015

Having a hard time losing weight? Of course you are! These
little buggers are always sending out singles - more!

Take a minute to think about what you observed. You have seen people lose weight by surgeries to shrink the stomach and liposuction only to put the weight back on. I eat less than I used to, but my metabolism is slower. I am not alone in this experience as it turns out. The bottom line is, “It is hard to lose weight.” All of the numbers are stacked against us. 

Is this just looking for reasons to enable failure? I think that is a fair question. The reality I see the failed efforts by well intentioned people. I am one of them and it bugs the **** out me. That motivated me to look at science and reality to begin to build a more successful outcome. 

It would be easy to give up and say the hell with it. But the truth is our efforts actually to be healthcare better then not doing nothing at all. An overweight person eating the right food and exercising is less likely to die from being overweight almost as a person who has and healthy BMI and exercise habits.

Exercise helps fat to send the right messages to our brain for better metabolism and weight control. While 10% of our fat cells die every year our bodies replace them and if we follow a heart healthy diet and exercise the cells replaced will be thinner. Those thin fat cells want to become fatter. This will be never easy. Our strategies have to include what fat cells are telling us. 

Two things I know will help:

Eat a heart healthy diet.

Get 150 minutes of exercise a week.

Getting fat cells thinner may be a real pain in the butt. Keep walking

Do you know someone struggling to lose weight? Share this blog with them, it may help them understand why it is so hard. There is a lot more to it than "will power." 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/10/01/its-gotten-harder-to-lose-weight-and-not-for-the-reasons-you-think/?utm_term=.d81cd62a27f4

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/health/biological-changes-thwart-weight-loss-efforts-study-finds.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/well/move/how-exercise-can-make-for-healthier-fat.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fwell&action=click&contentCollection=well&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/well/move/to-maintain-muscle-and-lose-fat-as-you-age-add-weights.html?action=click&contentCollection=Well&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/are-fat-cells-forever/?action=click&contentCollection=Well&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article