I think snacking is my biggest problem. Most of the time I eat way more than I realize. I know sugar is probably my biggest source of extra Calories and I think if I made a serious effort to cut out sugar it would be huge for me. I don't drink alcohol anymore and I really don't have much dairy and I only drink soda when I eat fast food, which is probably way to often. I drink mostly water and black coffee so the empty calories have to be coming from the food I eat. I'm going to stop getting "seconds" and see what that does for a week. Then maybe I'll try cutting out sugar from my snacks... I'll post updates. Right now I'm sitting at 217 and 5'-11" Id like to be down to between 190 and 195 before October. It's plenty of time to loose the weight but I want to go about it in a sensible way so I don't gain it all back.
You're right about the sugar, and anything made out of wheat turns into sugar very quickly after you eat it. This gets stored as fat on our bodies, and fuels the craving for more, more , more. The resulting spike in our blood sugar levels is addictive. I cut out wheat & sugar when I found out that I'm allergic to both ( about thirty years ago ) and EVERYTHING about my health improved - including my sleep. I now get all my carbs from high-fiber fruits and green vegetables, and eat a lot of protein. Starches are out, I don't miss them at all. The book
PROTEIN POWER, by Drs. Michael & Mary Eades, was a God-send for me. I've been living by their dietary program for decades.
Another book I highly recommend is
BODY BY SCIENCE, by Dr. Doug McGuff. It's about his high-intensity weight training program, and it even builds muscle mass on older people. I've been doing it for years, too, and it's amazing. He's also not a fan of traditional cardio, and stresses that the heart is best strengthened indirectly by building
skeletal muscle mass, which creates a higher demand on the heart - even while the body is resting. This is consistent with what I learned when I was working as a cardiology technician years ago, and I do
much better hunting in rough terrain since I got on this program than when I was doing traditional cardio training. I have quit running, and my knees & hips feel
much better. I function a lot better at high elevations, too. The workout doesn't take long, but it is grueling. You will learn to love it, as I have. ( Hint - the guy who chimed in about squats and dead-lifts has nailed the concept, and he's probably an animal to try to keep up with on a hunt.)
Lastly, I'd like to say this : you probably have pretty good muscle mass now, from carrying around the extra weight of the body fat. Once you lose the fat, you'll see what you've got there. Building that muscle mass further makes the fat go away even quicker, and the low-to-moderate carb diet burns it off at a rate that can be pretty alarming. You will feel like an animal when you are running your body on your stored body fat, since it is a
much more potent fuel than carbs are. This makes the workouts go well, and this diet and the workouts work hand in hand. The blood sugar roller-coaster settles right down, and the groggy, lethargic feeling and grouchiness that often accompanies the lows of these swings will disappear.
I can't say enough about how these two things have improved my life, and if you search YouTube for the authors of these books, you can see if it appeals to you. ( There's a lot of stuff there about the workout program, with the doctor demonstrating most of it.) Good luck, and I hope you draw that tag.