You can do it. I think we're in the same age range and I've managed to lose about 50 lbs over the last year and a half or so. Until I was in my 30s or so, I struggled to gain weight. That hasn't been a problem in a long time.ScrewyBrewer wrote:I love food and beer and my doctor's been telling me for a while now I need to lose some weight. I walk 2 miles at least three days a week and really try stay a little hungry in between meals most of the time. It took me 10 years to put on this extra weight and I feel like it'll take me 10 more to lose half of it especially now that I'm getting older. I won't give up the struggle or drinking beer but I will be doubling my efforts and stay committed to dropping 20 pounds or so this year.
At some point, I realized I had let it go too far. I was way overweight and was wearing pants with 34" "relaxed fit" waists (and wearing them around my hips). My actual waist was probably closer to 40".
I made a couple of changes. For one, I completely changed the way I ate. I used to base meals around a big piece or meat, then add pasta, rice, potatoes and maybe a small helping of vegetables. And lots of cheese on everything (and I never bought the low fat cheese).
Now, I base my meals on vegetables and try to make sure I get the 5-7 servings per day they say we should get (or is it 5-9?). I was eating a lot of canned vegetables because they were convenient, until I looked at the labels and saw how much salt they had in them. A neighbor told me about a food coop that sells fruits and vegetables (pay $17.50 and get two laundry baskets full of fruits and vegetables; no idea what you're getting until you pick them up). There are so many that I ended up splitting baskets with neighbors.
I'll often make omelets, usually with at least one egg white (but whole eggs aren't bad in moderation). I've also upped my fruit intake and I drink a lot of skim milk (usually after it's fermented into either yogurt or kefir, because I hate skim milk). I don't eat much meat any more (although I try to eat "oily" fish like salmon and sardines a few times a week). It's not that I won't eat meat. It's just that with all the fruits and vegetables, there's not a lot of room for meat. I'll still eat rice (brown) and occasionally potatoes, but rarely eat pasta. And when I take my daughter out to dinner, I'll sometimes opt for an unhealthy menu option because they make them look SO GOOD.
I also started exercising more. I started with pushups and I think I started at a really small number, like 3 per day. I knew that 3 wasn't going to do me much good, but I also knew that if I started with 10 and got sore, I'd quit, so I started with 3, went to 5 in a week, then 7, then 10, etc. After a while, I increased faster. I finally got to 120 a day (in 3 sets of 40). I traveled for a few weeks and got out of shape, so had to scale back, but I did 105 this morning and plan to be back to 120 tomorrow.
I also started walking more (but have gotten away from that since it has been hot lately). I was a competitive swimmer from a young age through high school (never very good), so I bought a membership to a rec center with a pool and started swimming. I decided to take the same approach to swimming that I took to the pushups. I was going to swim 100 yards, rest a bit, swim another 100 yards, rest a bit, then maybe swim another 100 yards.
Somewhere after the 50 yard mark, I realized it was going to be a struggle to finish 75, but I did. Then I rested (probably longer than I swam), did another 75 yards and was done. For a long time, I was spending more time resting than swimming, but at one point, I was swimming for 3500 yards nonstop. I've scaled back a bit and when I travel, I can't always find a place to swim (which makes it tough when I get back home).
In case you're wondering, beer, with all its calories, is still on my menu.
I read something once where somebody wrote that losing weight is simple. You just have to consume fewer calories than you burn. They then added that just because it is simple, that didn't mean that it's easy. It isn't easy, but it is simple.
When I had lost some of my weight (enough that I was feeling good about making changes, but was still overweight), somebody marveled that at my age, I started exercising and changing my diet. They asked me if it was hard at my age to do that. I thought about it and said that it wasn't easy, but that it would get harder and more necessary the longer I waited.
If I can do it, you can do it. Good luck!
they would see that we aren't a bunch of fat, lazy, beer guzzling fast food junkies and are in fact a real class act. 
