How I Lost 20kg in 4 Months at 55 Without Starving or Going to the Gym

In my mid-50s I lost about 20 kilos, or around 50 pounds, in four months. I did it by changing what I ate and doing a bit of gentle exercise. There were no gyms, no hours on a treadmill and no starving, just a stroll with the dog. In this video I explain exactly what I did.

I’ve got nothing to sell you: no course at the end of the video and no paid community. I’m not a doctor, nutritionist or dietitian either, just a bloke with a phone on a stick telling his story. But if you’re over 50 or 60 and struggling with extra weight, a bit of a beer belly, type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure, the changes I made addressed all of those things for me.

The medical that changed everything

A few years ago I had to take a medical for a job I was looking at, which I’d never done before. I was 54 or 55. It turned out I had fairly well advanced type 2 diabetes and very high blood pressure, and I was sitting at about 123 kilos. None of that was real good.

So I started getting into the low carb lifestyle, following some of the low carb advocates on YouTube like Gary Fettke. I leaned towards LCHF, which means low carb, high fat. If you’re not sure how that differs from keto, I’ve written up LCHF vs keto.

What I cut out and what I ate instead

I upped my protein and fat and got rid of almost all the starchy carbs: bread, pasta, rice, potatoes and other starchy veg. In their place I ate meat, fatty meat, greens and salad. I also cut out most fruit, because it’s loaded with sugar. The starchy stuff is what catches people out. It doesn’t taste sweet, but the starch is basically sugar, which is why I say avoid bread, rice and pasta.

I ditched the seed oils too, like vegetable oil and canola, because they’ve been shown to cause a lot of inflammation. Butter’s back, baby. I cook with butter, coconut oil, olive oil and beef dripping or tallow, all the things we were told were killing us in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Here’s more on why I avoid seed oils.

If you want the detail on which foods are in and out, watch what you can eat on a low carb diet, where I go through my traffic light guide section by section.

Why it worked for me

It probably takes somebody smarter than me to explain it properly, but it comes down to insulin and fat storage. Sugary carbs trigger your body to pack energy away as fat, like it’s summer and the fruit is out so it had better store some for winter. Fatty protein fuels you without that trigger.

The biggest benefit for me was that it resolved my type 2 diabetes. Most doctors, bless them, will put you on drugs to control your blood sugar. Very rarely do they say, why don’t you just stop eating the sugar? If you don’t eat it, you don’t have to control it. My blood glucose went from a typical 14.8 down to the high fours and low fives. When I turned up to see my doctor after three or four months, she asked what on earth I’d been doing and told me to keep doing it. She hadn’t seen an HbA1c come down that far in such a short time.

The weight came off too. I’ve written up the whole journey, with photos, in how I lost 44lbs and reversed my type 2 diabetes, and you can read what changed in the first few weeks in what happens when you stop eating sugar.

Exercise: just walk the dog

All I did in those four months, and still do to some extent, was walk the dog. I picked a spot about two kilometres from the house and walked there and back in the morning and again in the afternoon, which racked up close to 10 kilometres. If you’re not that mobile, just go to the end of the driveway and back, or around the block. You really don’t need five hours a day on a treadmill.

Being over 50, a little resistance training helps with mobility. Nothing gym-bro about it: just lift things, or hold something a bit heavy when you do squats. For walking, I’d aim for about 30 minutes. There’s a theory that three minutes at a gentle pace, then three minutes faster, then back again, three or four times a week, is all it takes to keep your fitness. That’s roughly what I do now. There’s more for people our age in going low carb over 50.

What about alcohol?

I’ve given up alcohol. If scotch drinking were an Olympic sport, I could have represented Australia, but I don’t miss it. Beer is quite high in carbs. Spirits are the better option if you do drink, but after a few shots your judgement slips, the bar snacks start looking good, and before you know it you’re at the kebab shop at two in the morning. It’s entirely down to you.

Don’t beat yourself up

I’ve still got a long way to go. Make it part of who you are, not a one-week or one-month effort. If you have a bad night or a piece of birthday cake at your grandkid’s party, don’t think you’ve failed. Just get back on the horse in the morning and go again. Before you make big changes to your diet or exercise, talk to your doctor and get your bloods checked so you can monitor it, because what you don’t measure, you can’t manage.

Grab the free Carb Guide, a colour-coded list you can stick on the fridge, or watch my story.