A lot of really good stories and advice.
Here is what my wife and I have done:
The key is nutrition and portion control on guilty pleasures- and happiness.
Stress will pack on more lbs than food will- so feel good about yourself while your doing whatever you do.
We start our mornings with a cup of warm water and fresh lemon and honey to kick the metabolism into gear. Then have to have my cup of morning coffee. We use splenda now, instead of sugar (took about a week to get used too-but now cant stand the taste of cane sugar in my coffee)
We make cold oats buy mixing oatmeal, almond milk, splenda to taste, and add a little crushed unsweetened pineapple. (any fruit is fine) This is during the work week. Weekends we do have regular eggs and toast, but include avocado mixed with chopped tomatoes. To me-the key is avocado in EVeRY meal. (makes you feel full-and lasts longer)
Lunches consist of salads and tuna, or what was leftover from dinner. We purchased some ceramic lunch containers from
amazon and only fill it to 3/4 full. (YES- it has avocado in it...lol)
Dinner is a small salad with boiled egg, romaine, red onion, Kalamata olives, cucumber an tomatoes. We make home made dressing of olive oil, red wine and unpasteurized apple cider vinegar.
We do not use our dinner plates- We use the bread and butter plate for whatever we made that evening IE- boneless chicken thighs, sausage and peppers etc.
I cook a lot with turmeric, we've started doing more plant based like beans, rice (I only use Jasmine or Basmati rice-Asian country staples) Sweet and golden yellow potatoes. AND- avocado! Please remember to SEASON your food when you cook it.
That little bread and butter plate can have on it- a little rice and beans, small wedge of sweet potatoes, topped with avocado/tomatoes and pineapple with a sprig of cilantro and lime.
We make our own desserts-cakes too, but we cut a small piece to finish out the day.
Recently, we got rid of the stair-climber, 2 treadmills, and bicycles. We purchased a weight and squat bench through Walmart, and 300 lbs of weights. At Amazon, they had a group of exercise and weight training 18X40 laminated exercise posters which included yoga, streching, other fun stuff to do.
So far I have dropped 8 lbs, my wife 6 lbs. (2 weeks) We do 30 minutes of low weights Monday-Friday and relax on the weekend. AND its fun- we doo have a TV in the room so we always have something on when we work out.
We keep the house cold (temp wise) you burn more calories, if its a placebo-so be it- it appears to make us think its true.
I am 56 and my wife is 53.
Edited to say- with going more towards plant based (we didn't completely cut out meat protein) we have had a pretty big boast of energy lasting longer in the day. I have cut out milk an replaced it with almond milk- but I don't like the taste so I add a little cocoa and splenda to taste.