I Tried 5 Popular Ways To Lose Weight After 45 - I Wish I’d Skipped Straight To #1

5 Keto

I lasted 19 days.

Day 3 of keto. This was the easy part.

I resisted trying keto for years.

Then it felt like EVERYONE suddenly knew someone who’d lost weight doing it.

My sister’s friend had done brilliantly with it.

Someone at work was doing it.

I kept seeing women talking about it online.

Eventually I thought:

“Fine. I’ll try it.”

And the annoying thing is…

At first, I actually thought it was going to work.

I saw the number on the scales move during that first week and immediately got excited.

Then reality kicked in.

No toast in the morning.

No pasta.

No creamy mash with my ribs.

And suddenly I’m standing in Walmart reading the back of everything I pick up to see how many carbs are in it.

By day 19, I’d had enough.

I know women who absolutely LOVE keto.

I’m just not one of them.

Because all I could think was:

“Am I seriously supposed to eat like this forever?”

No chance.

4 WeightWatchers

Better than keto. But I got so sick of counting points.

My favourite food. That’s what I loved about this one. But I didn't lose much weight. 

My mom was actually the one who convinced me to try WeightWatchers.

She’d done it years ago and kept saying:

“At least you can still eat normal food.”

And she was right.

Compared with keto, this felt MUCH easier.

Nothing was completely banned.

I could have bread.

I could have dessert.

I could go for dinner with my husband without staring at the menu wondering whether there was anything I was allowed to eat.

I just had to stay within my points.

For a while, I actually did pretty well with it.

But eventually I got fed up with every decision about food becoming a maths problem.

I’d fancy something…

Check how many points it was…

Check how many points I had left…

Then decide whether it was “worth it.”

Some days I’d deliberately save points because I knew I’d want something sweet that evening.

It started feeling like food was on my mind even MORE than before.

And eventually I stopped tracking everything.

You can probably guess what happened after that.

3 16:8 Intermittent Fasting

This sounded ridiculously easy. Until 11am.

7:32am. Still more than 4 hours until I was “allowed” to eat.

When my friend first explained intermittent fasting to me, I genuinely thought:

“Is that it?”

Don’t eat for 16 hours.

Eat during an 8-hour window.

No counting points.

No checking carbs.

No special meals.

Perfect.

I decided I’d stop eating at 8pm and then have my first meal at midday the following day.

And honestly, the first few days weren’t terrible.

Then I discovered something about myself:

I REALLY like breakfast.

By 10:30am I’d be hungry.

By 11:30am I’d be checking the clock.

By 11:58am I’d basically be standing in the kitchen waiting for midday 😂

I stuck with it for 2 weeks.

And yes, I lost around 4 lbs.

So I’m definitely not saying it was useless.

I just hated spending half my morning waiting until I was “allowed” to eat.

Eventually…

Breakfast won.

2 Noom

This was the closest I’d come to finding something I could actually stick with.

Most evenings ended like this for a while.

I’d seen Noom advertised like 900 million times before I finally downloaded it.

What interested me was that it wasn’t just another list of things I couldn’t eat.

It was supposed to help you understand why you eat the way you do.

And this one actually taught me quite a lot.

I started noticing things I’d been doing for YEARS without thinking about them.

Like opening the fridge whenever I walked into the kitchen.

Wanting something sweet almost immediately after dinner.

Eating something because I was bored rather than because I was actually hungry.

There were so many little things I’d never noticed.

And for a while, I thought:

“Maybe THIS is what I’ve been missing.”

Except there was still one problem.

Knowing why I wanted the chocolate… didn’t make me stop wanting the chocolate.

I could literally catch myself doing it.

I’d be standing in the kitchen thinking:

“You’re not actually hungry.”

And then five minutes later…

I’m eating it anyway.

It still felt like I was constantly negotiating with myself.

Don’t have it.

You’ve done well today.

Okay, just one.

I’ll be better tomorrow.

And then, around this exact time…

Something happened at my Wednesday book club.

1 The One I Wish I’d Found Years Ago

This is where things got interesting.

My Wednesday book club. It all started here.

There’s a woman called Linda who goes to the same book club as me every Wednesday.

I’d known her for 3 years.

And one week, I remember looking at her and thinking:

She looks different.

I didn’t say anything.

Then the following Wednesday…

I noticed it again.

Eventually curiosity got the better of me.

I just asked:

“Linda… have you lost weight?”

She laughed.

“YES!”

So obviously my next question was:

“What have you been doing?”

And that’s when she told me.

I remember staring at her for a second.

Because I’d actually heard about it before.

I’d just never paid much attention to it.

And I definitely didn’t think it was something women like Linda and me were actually doing.

So I started firing questions at her.

How long have you been doing it?

How did you find out about it?

What is it actually like?

And… how much have you lost?

When she told me she'd lost 40 lbs in 3 months, I honestly thought she was exaggerating.

She wasn’t.

So I went home and started looking into it myself.

And the more I read…

The more curious I got.

There were women around my age talking about it.

Women who sounded exactly like me.

Women who’d done keto.

WeightWatchers.

Fasting.

Every app under the sun.

And they kept talking about this one completely different approach.

Eventually I decided:

“Fine. I’m going to try it for myself.”

I started on April 27th 2026.

And I took a photo beforehand.

The same photo you saw at the beginning of this page.

I decided I’d give myself 90 days.

No obsessively taking photos every morning.

No convincing myself something was happening after three days.

I’d take another photo at the end and compare them properly.

So that’s exactly what I did.

And 90 days later…

I put the two photos next to each other.

I actually called Linda.

Because I couldn’t believe how different I looked.

And the weirdest part?

What happened during those 90 days wasn’t what I expected at all.

There was one particular change I noticed pretty early on that made me think:

“Ohhh… NOW I understand why women are talking about this.”

And once that happened, the whole experience started making a lot more sense.

So rather than spoil it here…

I’ve put my original photo, my 90-day photo and exactly what I did on the next page.

You can see the difference for yourself.