Diet tips from Grandma

I never used to have a problem with my weight; I was one of those annoying people who could eat a whole family sized chocolate bar and never gain a pound. But the last twelve years have been a very different story. Owing to medications and changes ino lifestyle, I have found my weight to yo- yo dramatically, and consequently I have clothes in my wardrobe that vary from a size 8 to 16 ( that is a size  4 to  12 dress size American).

So now I am a woman on a mission to drop 29 pounds in the next two months.  I had a big push on this last year, and was doing well until I had an accident and dropped some exercise equipment on my foot and fractured a bone. A broken foot is not conducive to an active lifestyle or any form of exercise regime. Now I have found that I have gained well over 14 pounds since this time last year. This has got to stop! This is why I am putting this weight loss blog post online in the hope that the discipline of its upkeep will keep me motivated. 

I am a 46 year old recent grandmother. I really don’t want to reach 50 a complete blob. So in an effort to kick-start my latest weight loss attempt, I have been doing the following during the last two weeks:

Slim Fast – I used these years ago in my twenties when I found I had put on 4 pounds (if only that were my problem now). The formula seems to have changed. After a few days I have found these shakes way too sweet and abandoned the remaining ones in my fridge.
Atkins Shakes – I had great success with a low carb Atkins diet some years ago, so I thought these would be a great idea. The artificial sweetener in these has a really unpleasant smell and after taste. So these too have been abandoned.  

Having used both of the above I have found that I have lost 4 pounds in the last two weeks, so it is with regret that I am letting go of my shakes.
Therefore at present I am trying to stick to a low carb diet and attempting to add in walking as exercise .

I am trying to think back to a time when I could eat as I pleased and did not put on weight. What was I doing at the time and can I replicate it? Certainly I was more active. My walk to school and back was a mile in total each day, so hopefully adding walking to my day should help considerably. So today I have walked approximately 2 miles in about 40 minutes. Weather permitting I would like to try and do this three times a day, but I think that this may be a bit ambitious.