Most of us have heard so many diet theories that weight control can begin to sound mysterious. Low carb. Low fat. Fasting. Cleanses. Special foods. Magic supplements. No eating after 7 p.m. Eat like a caveman. Eat like a movie star.

After a while, it is easy to feel that permanent weight control must be complicated.

I don’t believe it is.

The Basic Truth Is Simple

Body weight is controlled by calories in versus calories out. If we take in more calories than our body burns, we gain weight. If we take in fewer calories than our body burns, we lose weight. If the two are about equal, our weight stays about the same.

That may not be glamorous, but it is the foundation of permanent weight control.

This does not mean everyone’s body is exactly the same. Age, hormones, medications, sleep, muscle mass, stress, and medical conditions can all affect appetite and metabolism. But none of those things eliminate the basic rule. They may make weight control easier or harder, but they do not cancel calories.

Food vs Exercise

One reason many people struggle is that we overestimate the role of exercise and underestimate the role of food.

Exercise is wonderful. I believe in it strongly. Walking, strengthening the legs, keeping balance, improving circulation, maintaining muscle, and staying active are all important after 60. Exercise helps us feel better, move better, age better, and live better.

But exercise is usually not the controlling element in weight loss.

It is much easier to eat 300 extra calories than it is to burn 300 extra calories. A cookie, a muffin, a handful of nuts, a sweet coffee drink, or a second helping can add calories quickly. Burning those same calories may require a long walk or a serious workout.

That is why many people say, “I exercise every day, but I still can’t lose weight.”

They may be exercising, but they may also be eating enough extra calories to cancel the exercise.

This is not a criticism. It is simply how the body works.

What Permanent Weight Control Looks Like

Permanent weight control usually requires a permanent eating pattern, not a temporary diet. A diet is something people “go on” and then “go off.” That is why so many diets fail. The weight may come off for a while, but if the old eating habits return, the old weight usually returns too.

The better question is not, “What diet can I tolerate for six weeks?”

The better question is, “What way of eating can I live with permanently?”

For many people, the answer is not severe restriction. It is awareness, consistency, and modest changes repeated every day.

A person may begin by reducing portions slightly. Or by cutting down on sweets. Or by avoiding second helpings. Or by replacing high-calorie snacks with lower-calorie choices. Or by eating more slowly and stopping before feeling stuffed. Or by keeping tempting foods out of the house most of the time.

Small daily changes can become powerful because they are repeatable.

It Isn’t About Punishing Yourself

After 60, I believe it is especially important not to turn weight control into punishment. Food is one of life’s pleasures. A good meal, a favorite dessert, or a celebration with family should not become a source of guilt. The goal is not perfection. The goal is control.

Control means we decide what we eat instead of letting habit, emotion, boredom, or convenience decide for us.

It also helps to be honest about “little extras.” Many calories hide in foods we do not think about: butter, salad dressing, sauces, crackers, cheese, wine, candy, pastries, sweet drinks, and snacks eaten while watching television. None of these is evil. But they count.

The body counts calories whether we count them or not.

• If my weight is going up, I am probably taking in more calories than I am burning.
• If my weight is staying the same, I am probably eating about what my body burns.
• If I want my weight to go down, I need a modest, steady calorie deficit that I can maintain.

That is the heart of it.

Finally

Exercise should still be part of the plan. It helps preserve muscle, strength, independence, and confidence. But for most people, the kitchen has more control over body weight than the gym.

A wise plan after 60 is not to starve, punish, or exhaust ourselves. It is to create a way of eating that is enjoyable, reasonable, and slightly lower in calories than what caused the weight gain.

Permanent weight control is not magic. It is not a secret. It is not found in the newest diet trend.

It is the daily balance between what we take in and what we burn.

Once we accept that, we can stop chasing miracles and start making calm, sensible choices that work for the rest of our lives.

Over to You:

Where do you struggle with body weight? Do you diet often? How many different diets have you tried? Have you tried a balanced, controlled food intake that brings calories down?

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There’s a shift happening, and you may have noticed it. You may even be part of it. More and more women at this stage of life are choosing not to seek a romantic partner.

Some are even giving up the ones they have after years of toeing the line or just settling for ho-hum emotional fulfillment.

Women aren’t doing this because they’ve given up, there aren’t enough men out there, or they couldn’t find someone if they wanted to. They’re ditching the dating world and partner seeking because they’re simply not interested in it the way they once were.

Why?

Weren’t we raised to believe the happiest life is a partnered one?

In many cases, yes, that’s what we’ve been told. This can make a woman who just doesn’t have a desire to have a man in her life feel very uncomfortable or as though there’s something wrong with her.

There isn’t.

But understanding the reasons for this trend can be useful for mental health and emotional grounding.

6 Reasons Women Are Happily Going Solo

Older women haven’t become strident, man-hating eccentrics. The reasons so many women are happily single are far more layered (and more empowering) than you’d think.

#1: Freedom Feels Better Than Expected

For many women, the golden years bring something they didn’t fully experience earlier in life – freedom.

By this point, many women have raised children (or are close to it), built careers and spent decades compromising, caregiving, and prioritizing others.

And suddenly, there’s space.

Space and freedom can be a new experience for many women who married and started families in their early 20s. Add to that the years of building, or possibly struggling to build, a life with comfort and stability.

Now there’s

• Room to make decisions without negotiation.
• Space to spend time exactly how they want.
• Opportunity to discover or rediscover who they are outside of roles like wife, mother, or partner.

That kind of independence can be deeply satisfying and, frankly, hard to give up.

When your life already feels full, peaceful, and self-directed, a relationship starts to feel optional – not essential.

#2: The Emotional Cost-Benefit Equation Changes

In your 20s or 30s, relationships can feel like a cornerstone of life. By the time you reach your 60s, many women start thinking about them differently.

It becomes less about feeling that you need someone and more about asking:

• Does this person actually add to my life?
• Is the emotional effort worth it?
• Am I willing to compromise, and if I am, how much?

And the tolerance for emotional labor drops.

Many women have already experienced unequal partnerships, poor communication and carrying the emotional weight of a relationship. So, when they consider dating they’re not just thinking about companionship. They’re weighing whether the potential stress outweighs the benefits.

#3: The Dating World Has Changed, and Not Necessarily for the Better

Let’s be honest – modern dating can feel exhausting at any age. But for older women (men too), it can feel especially unappealing.

Why?

Because there’s baggage. For both people. And because much of modern dating has gone online, it comes with concerns about scams, safety, and inappropriate behavior.

On top of that, finding someone with depth, honesty, and emotional maturity requires energy and effort that many women want to put into friends, hobbies, and health.

So, as the viral meme of the early 2000s goes, “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”

#4: Your Emotional Needs Are Being Met Elsewhere

Another major shift? Relationships are no longer the sole source of emotional fulfillment.

Women in their 60s have often built rich, meaningful lives that include deep friendships, strong family connections, community involvement and personal growth and hobbies.

In fact, many women report that their friendships at this stage are more emotionally supportive than the romantic relationships they’ve had in the past.

And when your emotional needs are already being met, the urgency to find a partner fades.

This doesn’t mean women don’t value love or companionship. It simply means they’re no longer relying on one person to meet all those needs.

#5: Healing and Self-Protection Take on Greater Importance

For some women, prioritizing things other than a romantic relationship is a form of healing. After divorce, loss, or difficult relationships, many women just want time to rebuild their sense of self, process past experiences, practice healthier boundaries, and feel unconditional enjoyment and autonomy.

And in doing this, they may realize they’re actually happier on their own.

There’s also an element of self-protection.

A woman in her third act may be carrying emotional strain or past relationship trauma. So, focusing on her own mental and emotional health becomes a healing effort, and perhaps a form of self-protection, as she considers whether to re-partner.

#6: They’re Not Anti-Relationships – They’re Pro Having Choices

This is perhaps the most important point, and we need to be clear about it.

I’m not suggesting that older women are rejecting love – just that they’re rejecting unnecessary, unhealthy, or unbalanced relationships.

There’s a big difference.

In fact, many women may be open to partnership – but only under very specific conditions.

The relationship:

• Must add genuine value to their lives.
• Must feel emotionally safe and balanced.
• Can’t disrupt the peace they’ve created.
• Can’t require compromise that takes away or infringes on ANY of their joy.

And if those conditions aren’t met? They’re perfectly content staying single.

Are Women Who Choose Single Life Missing Out?

In a word – no.

Of course, everyone is different, and some women may really crave the companionship that comes with a romantic relationship.

But the assumption that older women who are alone are missing out, sad, or lonely, simply doesn’t hold up anymore.

What’s actually happening is that this is a generation of women who know themselves better than ever, value their time and energy, and refuse to settle for less than they deserve.

Yes, many women still actively seek love, and many find it. But a growing number of women are realizing something equally powerful.

That a full, meaningful, joyful life doesn’t require a partner.

And that’s not sad or lonely. That’s a choice and for many, a satisfying and empowered one at that.

Questions for You:

Are you alone and happy about it? If you’ve ditched the dating world and are feeling satisfied and happy, share your story and join the conversation.

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There’s a particular kind of freedom that arrives, if you’re lucky, in the last chapters of a life. Not the freedom of open roads and infinite possibility – that’s a young person’s freedom, showy and exhausting. This is quieter: the freedom of no longer caring what people think, because you’ve run out of time to perform for them.

The Character of Mable

Sally Hepworth’s Mad Mabel introduces us to Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick, 81, grumpy, solitary, fiercely private, and armed at all times with a sharp remark and a hot cup of tea. She has lived on Kenny Lane in Melbourne for 60 years, keeping herself to herself with a discipline that looks, from the outside, like pure misanthropy. But Elsie’s self-containment isn’t actually coldness. When you’ve been the most reviled girl in Australia – Mad Mabel Waller, youngest convicted murderer in the country’s history – self-sufficiency isn’t a personality quirk, it is survival.

This Book Is a Mystery and a Handbook

The book’s genius is in its structure: past and present alternating, the 15-year-old Mabel and the 81-year-old Elsie in constant silent conversation. And what that structure quietly insists is that growing older is not, as our culture tends to frame it, a story of loss and diminishment. It’s a story of distillation. Of finding out what you actually are, once everything you performed for others has finally been stripped away.

We learn a lot about Elsie through Persephone, the relentless seven-year-old from across the road, who arrives with absolutely no sense that Elsie’s walls are meant to keep people out. And through the podcasters who want her story.

What’s striking is how the novel uses these intrusions not to diminish Elsie but to reveal what she has, over a lifetime of loneliness and survival, quietly become: someone who understands, with a clarity that only comes with age, what deserves her energy and what does not. She has no patience for performance, for social niceties that serve no one, for the comfortable cruelties of gossip. She has watched neighbors and seen what their respectability conceals. She has paid the price of being misunderstood and she has, somewhere along the way, made a kind of peace with it.

The Heart of the Book

The relationship between Elsie and Persephone is the emotional heart of the book, and it works because Hepworth resists making it sentimental. It’s not that children and the elderly naturally bond because they’re both outside the main current of productive adult life. It’s that Persephone, in her seven-year-old directness, sees Elsie without the filter of public narrative. She doesn’t know about Mad Mabel. She only knows the woman across the road, and she likes her. For someone who has been defined by a label her entire adult life, this is quietly devastating.

There is something bracing in how unsentimental Elsie is about her own age. She’s 81; she’s not performing for posterity. She has no interest in being rehabilitated in the public eye. What she wants – in the end, in the quiet – is smaller and more essential than that: to be left alone, yes, but also, it turns out, not entirely alone. To matter to someone. To have done, somewhere along the way, something that wasn’t just surviving.

I Really Enjoyed Mad Mabel

Mabel is feisty and strong, but compassionate with a soft center. I was reminded of The Tuesday Murder Club at some points in the book, but with a bit more grunt. And in the vein of The Tuesday Murder Club, Mad Mabel joins a growing shelf of fiction that refuses to treat old women as auxiliary characters in younger people’s stories.

Elsie is the story. Her history, her interiority, her grudging and hard-won capacity for love – these are what the novel is made of. And if there’s a thesis buried in all the sharp remarks and twisty plot mechanics, it’s this: the things that matter reveal themselves slowly, and often only once you’ve stopped running from them.

At 81, Mabel is done running. And what she finds, standing still, is more than she expected.

If you are interested in articles about staying vibrant and embracing change as you age, you can find more on my Website or my Substack Page. Or check out my other articles and book reviews on Sixty and Me. I love hearing from people, so please let me know your thoughts about this book or any other subject that came up as you read this review.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Have you read Mad Mabel? Have you read any other books by Sally Hepworth? What were your thoughts about the book? How did your opinion of Mabel change as you read the book? Did anything surprise you in the book? Have you read any of The Thursday Murder Club series? I’d love to hear if you saw any similarities between Mad Mabel and The Thursday Murder Club.

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