Six Pounds Lost in Three Days

I used to think I ate rather healthy.

Every night I ate salad with dinner. Dinner was 90% home cooked meals – not pre-packaged junk meals with ready-made sauces or frozen main courses, or canned ‘anything’.

So at 45 I started wondering where the weight was coming from. My lifestyle hadn’t changed, my work-style hadn’t changed, my eating habits hadn’t changed.

Certain that something must be terribly wrong with me, I headed into the doctor’s office wanting a complete battery of tests. I had a good idea it was a thyroid condition or some dreaded ‘fat’ disease.

Now if you’re a boomer-generation woman you probably already know what’s wrong with me. I was getting older. The doctor told me that every year (past 45, I think he said) a woman’s metabolism slows. If we keep eating, living, working, exercising at the same level as we’d done the previous year we won’t be able to maintain our current weight. Nope. We’ll gain ten pounds a year, every year!

Diet? Pretty sure I didn’t have time for all that.

More exercise? Argh! Okay, I could take more walks…buy myself a fancy little pedometer and some cute sneakers to make it more fun…

But would that be enough?

What about messing around with my metabolism a little? What if I could make my metabolism think I was young again and burn more fat and calories without attaching it to my ass first?

After purchasing 3 books and hitting about 10 websites on the topic of womens’ metabolism I gave in. It was apparent I was going to have to do some exercise, some dietary changes and apply some of what I’d learned about metabolisms, in order to see my toes again.

The worst of it all was that I thought I could lose weight as hap-hazardly as I’d done in the past. You know a little walking, a few less potato chips and a lot more water. For a year I pretended not to notice that it wasn’t really working.

When your metabolism changes, so must your attitude about diet, exercise and overall health. When I finally got my head around that, I started losing weight. How much weight? As the title says: 6 pounds in 3 days.

Stay tuned. Over coming posts I’m going to tell you what changed, how easy it was, whose advice makes the most sense and is the easiest to follow and, of course, what I’ve been eating (you may be surprised!).