I’m single and retired, and except for writing my screenplay, what else do I have to do all day?
Oh, so you don’t have a full time job. That makes more sense.
Nope. I was able to do it for a few years when I was working part-time, but while I was working full-time, I had no time or interest in getting healthier. It just wasn’t a priority for me back then.
Nine miles of walking would take a typical person something like three hours. Do you at least have scenic places to walk through?
Most of the year, I live in West Central Montana, so there are plenty of trails I can hike there with my dog. One of my regular treks is in the Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge, just a few miles from my house. From mid-October to mid-March, I live with my daughter and grandson in Broken Arrow, OK. While not as scenic as Montana, there are plenty of places to hike around here, too. I sometimes walk around the neighborhood. Nine miles a day is easy compared to the 12 miles I was regularly covering while on my diet. That was brutal, but it burned a lot of calories.
Your environs helps too!
Returning to whether or not you are so unusual to be as compulsive of a tracker - I will stick with yeah on the intake side, but start counting considering fitness activities? Hoo boy. Tracking and planning compulsively is very common! So the difference maybe is just in where the obsessiveness gets directed?
Again kudos on your sticking with an approach that works well for you! Your fitness side is heavy on the low intensity long duration cardio and those two days of classes with balance and all over conditioning are great! How demanding is the strength work part of those classes?
If “not very” then the place to make your plan even better is taking the cite @Dr_Paprika provided under serious consideration. You don’t even need to know your maximum lift - but lifting heavy enough that you are near (not at) failure somewhere under 15 reps, full velocity possible up, slow controlled back down, in complete body coverage twice a week, really does add lots to maintaining or even increasing strength, power, and grip strength, increasing healthspan significantly. I suspect you’d quickly get hooked on those numbers too! 
I thought about doing that, but since I would be doing it on my own, I didn’t think the reward was worth the risk. I could see myself dropping a barbell, causing damage that would keep me from walking. However, I might be able to find someone at the gym who would be willing to spot me to make sure I didn’t hurt myself, and I could leverage their equipment instead of buying my own. I will be back there on Monday and will see what they have available. I don’t mind upping my weightlifting, as long as it doesn’t lead to injury or completely tire me out.
Weightlifting is much safer than most sports. In particular, gym machines are very safe and easy to use, but often too expensive for a home gym. If specifically concerned about bench pressing, this can be done very safely on a Smith machine. Avoiding injury is important, I agree.
If going to a gym is not appealing (and it is not everyone’s cup of tea), one can get a lot of mileage out of some simple devices: a pull-up bar (to which one might further attach bands or gymnastic rings), one kettlebell, an ab roller wheel. If more ambitious, some free weights, more dumbbells, an Olympic bar, a hex trap bar and a weightlifting bench.
I do sets several times a week for my shoulders and rotator cuff muscles. For these, I use a pair of ten pound dumbbells. Not every exercise requires heavy weights; ten pounds might even be heavier than desirable.
So I’m not trying to detract from the thread, but its important to discuss the sociological aspect of obesity.
Among peacocks, male peacocks like to grow large, bright plumages. These plumages serve no purpose other than to signal to females that ‘I am so healthy and so much excess calories that I can afford to waste them on these plumages’. They are a signifier of resources and health that female peacocks pick up on when choosing a mate.
One reason men are considered handsome is that testosterone suppresses the immune system. Also attractive faces signify health and a strong immune system. One theory on why a man’s face is attractive is the same reason (a handsome man’s face signifies testosterone, a strong immune system and health simultaneously), his face is saying ‘I’m so healthy and my immune system is so strong, that I can afford to be handicapped by testosterone, and I’m still strong and healthy’.
Obesity and weight loss serves the same purpose in society. hundreds of years ago, it was fashionable to be fat. The reason is that most people were destitute and worked all day in manual labor. Only the rich had the food and life of leisure to become fat.
Then starting in the early 20th century, poor people started getting fat too, and suddenly being thin became fashionable. Bein thin in modern society basically signifies ‘I have so much excess wealth, free time, mental energy and self discipline that I can afford to spend much of it on trying to be thin’. People who work 2 jobs, who are broke, who are raising kids, who are struggling with endless other problems don’t have the excess time, energy or effort to be thin.
Its basically the handicap principle.
The handicap principle further proposes that animals of greater biological fitness signal this through handicapping behaviour, or morphology that effectively lowers overall fitness. The central idea is that sexually selected traits function like conspicuous consumption, signalling the ability to afford to squander a resource. Receivers then know that the signal indicates quality, because inferior-quality signallers are unable to produce such wastefully extravagant signals.
Transitioning from fat to thin is a way to signify ‘I have excess time, energy, money, self discipline and resources and can afford to ‘squander’ them on losing weight and keeping it off’. That’s why people who lose weight with drugs like GLP-1 agonists or get bariatric surgery are derided as ‘taking the easy way out’ because they are seen as bypassing using their excess self discipline to lose weight. The drugs and surgery reduce the amount of time, effort, energy and self discipline needed to lose weight.
It would be like someone, instead of buying a $100,000 luxury car (signifying excess wealth that they can afford to squander) instead they buy a $15,000 car and put a luxury car body on it. Its seen as cheating.
But I guess my point is that, people have real problems and being slightly overweight like spice weasal is not ‘that’ bad for health. The health risks of obesity mostly come from visceral fat, and only a few pounds of visceral fat (or even a few ounces in places like the liver and pancreas) can be the difference between CVD and diabetes vs not having these conditions. The subcutaneous fat under our skin doesn’t cause as many health problems, esp if its just cosmetic.
So as pointed out by Dr P the machines are very safe to use. And yes there are others in gyms thrilled to help someone starting out. Definitely err on the lighter side as well until you are comfortable that your form is fine.
BUT while I did say “weights” it really does not have to be weights to get to where it is near failure somewhere under 15 reps sufficient to build strength and power. Pull ups and dips (possibly modified at first for many to make it doable) are quite a decent balanced upper body routine, with push ups for good measure. Body weight squats or box step up step downs (the downs slow and controlled) with something to hold onto for balance if needed, often plenty demanding to hit the range that builds strength and power in the lower body.
When I started a walking routine 20 years ago, I lost 25 pounds and kept off until about 2 years ago. I didn’t gain it all back but enough that I didn’t like how I looked. During the time of my weight loss, I also gave up eating in between meals and after supper. I’ve stuck with those habits and still walk as much as I did 20 years ago. I think age has had a lot to do with it. I’ll be 65 in July. So, I decided to give up a meal. I always eat breakfast. I was never really hungry at lunchtime. Eating lunch was kind of a habit. Oh, it’s noon, I guess I’ll eat and watch something on Netflix. So I quit eating lunch. I don’t miss it at all. If I have to go out to eat lunch for some reason or other, I skip supper. Restaurant meals are always bigger than what I would normally eat, so I’m not hungry at suppertime. I lost 15 lbs in four months, about a pound a week. I feel a lot better. I guess it’s a form of fasting. On a regular day, I eat supper around 5:00 and then don’t eat anything until around 8-9:30 the next morning. So around 16 hours in between meals. I do weigh myself every day. I’ll see a pound more or a pound less on occasion. I’m afraid if I don’t keep an eye on it, the pounds will sneak back.
Congratulations! It looks like after a minor setback, you have again taken control of your weight management. Since I’m 71, I can tell you age will definitely have an impact. As we get older, our metabolism naturally slows down, so maintaining high activity, such as the cardio you currently do, can become more of a challenge each year. Also, remember that after you lose weight, your body needs less energy, so your maintenance calories will be lower, which I assume you have already adjusted for. You’re losing a pound a week, which is a good amount. Working out ensures you are losing mostly fat and not muscle. Cutting back on snacks helps reduce your calories in, while daily walking should help with calories out, keeping your energy balance negative. How much walking are you currently doing in steps or miles? Are you monitoring your calorie intake? Do you track carbs, protein, or fiber intake? Regardless, keep up the good work. It sounds like you have matters well in hand at this point.
Although personally, one of the things I’ve been enjoying about my long slow weight loss journey over the past four years is that consuming less food actually saves me not-insignificant money.
Less dining out, less alcohol consumption, and simply getting through only about two-thirds of the food volume I used to consume: I’m definitely laying out at least $100 less per month on comestibles than I used to in the dear dead days of just eating whatever I liked.
But I know what you mean about the overall socioeconomic pattern of unhealthy food and lifestyle patterns generally being cheaper than healthy ones. I was lucky in that I could afford “elite” lifestyle patterns of fresh farmers’ market produce, lots of walking, etc., even back when I was overconsuming.
I found it didn’t cost much more to prepare my own healthy meals than to eat out regularly. Watching my daughter feed my 12-year-old grandson, I’ve noticed the cost of fast food has risen sharply over the last few years, and many nice restaurants are now simply beyond my price range, except on rare occasions. If you have the time to shop around, you can often find fresh veggies and lean meats on sale at one store or another, which helps keep costs down. But even if it were to cost 25% more to eat healthy than unhealthy, it’s still worth it to me. Keeping my doctors happy with my test results is well worth the price of eating healthy.
I find it costs much less money to cook for myself than to eat out. But it’s more work.
Absolutely true, but you can do things to make it easier. For example, I will cook a protein-rich dish that lasts me 4 or 5 days. I do the same thing with veggies. I batch-cook a bunch of them and eat them over several days. I plan my week out, so I know what I need at the store and rarely have to run back for something I forgot. It’s taken a long time to become efficient at doing this, but it’s not that hard if you have the time to plan meals out in advance.
Yeah, this is where being a non-car-owner really skews my experiences. Going out to eat can take me just as much time as whipping up something at home and cleaning up after it. If I were hopping in the car to get everywhere, it would math out differently.
(I guess there’s always the home delivery option, but I didn’t grow up with that so it still seems weird to me.)
If I were really going to commit to eating only outside food I think I could finagle the schedule so I’d stop for meals on the way to and from other places, never shop for groceries, etc., and then I’d be in the black for net time expenditure, compared to my current habits. Hideously in the red for net money expenditure, of course.
Or the variant where when I have time to cook I make multiple servings and freeze about half of them, and when I don’t have time to cook I pull a random serving out of the freezer. “Hey, I forgot there was any of this bolognese sauce left, what a treat!”
Yes, I do that too. It depends on the protein and how much I have of it to start with. I routinely freeze food I know will spoil before I have a chance to eat it.
Here’s a tangentially related question: Is anybody here who has worked out a successful weight/health improvement plan paying it forward by volunteering as a “health buddy” in some form or other with someone else who’s trying to do the same?
Do you make time to go walking with a slower neighbor who finds it helpful to have that external prompt to incentivize? Do you make occasional meals for the overworked-mom coworker who bemoans how much fast food she eats to save time? Anything like that?
I’ve been greatly helped in my very incremental return to running, and my likewise incremental increase in bicycling and yoga, by friends and colleagues who are way more advanced than I am but have kindly taken some time to share those activities on my (current) level, and partner up in my improvement. Those folks have earned their crowns in heaven, as my grandma used to say!