I lost two stone at 63 - and it wasn’t even that hard

"For a few years I’d been in a state of inertia, sustained by a nurtured collective belief of my generation: 'Once you get to 55 it’s impossible for a woman to lose weight.'" File photo / Fuu J, Unsplash

OPINION:

I’m 63 years old and I’ve got a gap between my thighs. I send things I buy online back to get a smaller size. I tuck my jumpers into my jeans. But please don’t hate me as some smug Thinifer. I’ve worked for this.

Six months ago, when I lay down to sleep, my stomach lay down next to me, like some unwanted pet. And my favourite belt, which I’ve worn practically every day for 20 years, was on the very last hole - and tight there. Now it’s comfortable on the first hole.

That belt was one of the things that made me finally decide, last July, that it was time to do something about my ever-burgeoning girth. It was the day I realised that if I put on one more pound, that belt, dear old friend, would no longer fit me.

I was also looking at the prospect of two weeks lying by a pool with friends in Greece and then my niece’s wedding, which had been postponed twice by Covid. I wanted to do her proud - and wear a fabulous dress. Jabba the Maggie would not be doing either of those things with any enjoyment.

So how had I let myself get into this supersized state? For a few years I’d been in a state of inertia, sustained by a nurtured collective belief of my generation: “Once you get to 55 it’s impossible for a woman to lose weight.” I am living proof that this is a dangerous, group-enabling fallacy - a very handy excuse to not even try. So, I’d already taken that as my pass to give up on the idea of ever slimming down - and then came lockdown. Mooching about for months in stretchy trackpants, with macaroni cheese a fundamental tool for stress management, I didn’t deny myself anything edible. Also, working on a novel in those strange times seemed to require a constant passage of chocolate buttons from hand to mouth.

Dr Michael Mosley. Photo / Greg Bowker

By late 2021 I was the biggest I’d ever been and my left hip was giving me serious gyp. Sometimes it was hard to walk. So, in November that year I started going to the gym to do the resistance training which has so many health benefits for the ageing personage. Just doing that helped me lose a bit of weight, but more importantly, I began to feel much better about myself; more connected with my physical being, which I had somehow separated from my general consciousness.

The other change I made at that time was to start intermittent fasting, increasing the overnight food-free gap in stages, until I was comfortable to finish eating by 8pm each day and then hold off on breakfast until 10am the next morning, creating a 14-hour break from nosh. I found it surprisingly easy to do and very soon there were days when I would genuinely forget to eat anything until 2pm. That was weird for someone who had always consumed a hearty oat-y breakfast, on rising, followed by an 11am hunger pang they could set Big Ben by.

Combining the weight training with the overnight fast, a few more pounds trickled off, but I was still overweight. It was time to get serious. I turned to Dr Michael Mosley, very deservedly the nation’s favourite weight-loss uncle. A medical man you can trust, with diet plans based firmly on scientific research. No fads. I like his TV shows and particularly appreciate the way he continues to refine his dietary advice as new advances are made in understanding what makes us put weight on - and how to lose it again.

His latest plan, Fast 800 Keto, combines the quick weight-loss first stage of his earlier programmes, through very restricted calories - plus the overnight fasting thing I was already doing - with a tightly controlled intake of carbohydrates. This last factor triggers the fat-burning metabolic state of ketosis, as per “keto” diets, and the triple-action approach seems to be the magic bullet.

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I’ve been a bit of a yo-yo dieter most of my adult life, romping from Scarsdale to heinous Atkins, via F-Plan - but nothing has worked for me like this system. I’ve never stuck to a diet for six months before, working through the different stages. I’ve never found a diet so easy to stick to and which fits so easily into normal life. Eating out, family meals, dinner parties, holidays and celebrations can all be incorporated with just a few limitations - that you don’t need to go on about. No ringing ahead to tell your hostess that you Don’t Eat Carbs - just don’t eat them. No one notices. And if it’s a lasagne, enjoy it - the one portion - and get back on your diet bike the next day.

But while I quickly found it easy to figure out how to make decent meals within the 800-calorie count, it was much harder to figure the carbohydrate factor - which is so essential to the ketosis system. The brilliant solution for me came in the form of a phone app called Nutracheck (other apps are available, that’s just the one I picked). This enables you to find out very simply the calorie, carb and protein content of any food - covering raw ingredients, well-known generic dishes, branded products and even specific supermarket-ready meals. All you have to do is weigh the food and tap it in, then up pop the values, added into your daily total, making it a breeze to see where you are at any point, to stay within 800 calories, no more than 50g of carbohydrate and at least 50g of protein.

I still can’t get over how easy it is to do and it enabled me, even during the first strict phase, to eat the same meals as the rest of the family. There was none of that tiresome double-dinner thing I’ve experienced on previous weight-loss excursions, just a bit of portion-control weighing. I would, for example, make my regular spag bol sauce (366 calories and 6.7 carbs for a medium serve, according to the app), then serve it with pasta to my husband and daughter, and on a bed of shredded, boiled and buttered Savoy cabbage for me.

I could even factor in my lazy-Friday guilty pleasure of M&S Southern-fried chicken, without busting the diet, and I enjoyed the process of working out how to get the greatest possible satisfaction out of my daily calorie and carb allowances. What I didn’t waste mental energy on was what I wasn’t eating. It is a bald fact that, on this regime (as most diets...) you have to give up pasta, bread, potatoes, rice, pastry, cereals and absolutely anything containing sugar - a prospect that causes many people to protest: “What’s the point of living like that?”

‘It was really quite astonishing’

The revelation for me was that after just a few days I really didn’t find it a trial. Protein is so much more satiating than carbohydrates you don’t get those niggling little hungers that used to draw me repeatedly to the bread bin, or the chocolate buttons.

But the thing that really made it easy for to me live without baked potatoes and porridge - two high-carb things I particularly adore - was the speed the weight fell off. It was really quite astonishing. In the first couple of weeks, I lost nearly half a stone. Suddenly my cheekbones had come back and my belt was two holes looser.

Of course, the rate of loss slowed down - and fat took much longer to come off my waist and belly - but six months on from starting the diet, I’m two stone (12.7 kilograms) lighter. Back to the weight I was five years ago and comfortable in all my favourite jeans, which have been languishing unworn in a bottom drawer.

Getting dressed is no longer a trial and there are also some unexpected changes. The strange cloak of invisibility that envelops women once they hit 60 has oddly lifted. Not male sexual attention (although I have to admit that has also noticeably increased from chaps my age, with no encouragement from me), but a palpable change in day-to-day transactions, with people friendlier and more willing to engage. More smiles. It’s very odd - and a bit unsettling that bodyweight alone can have such an impact - but it does all make life that little bit more pleasant.

But most tellingly, of all the benefits of weighing less, the pain in my left hip is now completely gone. Resistance training helped - but not permanently carrying around the equivalent of two large sacks of potatoes has completely sorted it. Which is a stark reminder of the fundamental reality of being overweight. It’s not purely an aesthetic value, fashionable, or some kind of higher moral state to be slim. Being fat is bad for every aspect of our health - and in turn an additional strain on our precariously creaking NHS.

So while shopping for clothes is fun again and it’s nice to be greeted warmly by shopkeepers and bartenders, the best thing about being two stone lighter - at 63 years old - is knowing I’m laying down a solid foundation for my future health. And that is why I want to stop strangers on the street to say: if I can do it, anyone can. Lose weight now, ask me how.

• Maggie Alderson is an author, fashion journalist and editor