Anyone else back at "what used to be normal"?

pkw58

I am at the lowest weight of my adult life 128 pounds at 54 years of age.. I am at my lowest percentage of body fat as well. Most of adult life i weighed between 135 and 150... High of 174 in 2011..

I like the new normal better... But i gotta say, still think my body is a us size 10 or 12. .... Vs 6 or 8.... And no, i dont recognize my silloutte in mirrors in stores or retaurants yet... And i am on my second year of maintenance!

55in13

I think you may be right. I was always fit all through my 20's and 30's. I was in the Navy until 42 so I had to stay somewhat lean to fit into the cockpit. But the pounds piled on in my 40's after I stopped flying and really piled on when I retired from the Navy. Now I'm back to the same weight I was when I graduated from the Naval Academy and it likes being here. I am actually trying to cut lower than that "ideal" weight and my body is fighting me all the way. It likes being at 185 lbs.

I am finding the same thing. Losing weight is hard, but the first 40 was a whole lot easier than the last 15 and the final 5 was like pulling teeth. The first 40 was weight that was only there maybe 7 years or so. The top of the last 15 is the range of 10 pounds or so I was in for decades before that with just occasional diets bringing me back to where I am now.

But in my case, the difficulty toward the end was largely on purpose; I wanted to ease into maintenance. Still, it came off slower than the estimates and calorie math says it should. I may have lowered my metabolic rate (10% below expected is not unusual if you went through prolonged high deficit) but I have plenty of energy and I am in better physical shape than I have been in a long time.

soniams

What a great question. You have raised an important issue that I had not thought about before.

Like many others have said, I don't have a memory of being a normal size. Even though I was not especially overweight during college and in my early 20's, I felt big because I had a poor body image. I always believed I was fat. I lost 60 pounds when I turned 30 and kept if off for about 10 years, but even then I did not feel normal. As I look back it's still not completely clear to me why. I suspect much of the reason has to do with not knowing myself. There were so many new experiences I had as a finally thin person during my 30's that in hindsight were probably pretty overwhelming. As a result I gained a lot of weight during my 40's and became morbidly obese. Being overweight felt normal to me, though less so as I approached age 50 and began to experience health effects due to my size. I am now at a healthy weight and while I am "normal" size, I am still learning to accept that this is who I am. What is different compared to my 30's (when I was last at this weight), is having a greater self confidence and having lost the weight by eating well (healthy and nutritious food) and establishing sustainable activity routines.

What resonates strongly with me in regard to this topic, is the need to view my current weight as the real me. Doing so will allow me maintain my health.

kevinjb1

I got all the way up to 228 at one point and I was lethargic, hormones were totally screwed up and all I wanted to do was sleep.

This was me exactly, and at 33 years old I knew this isn't who I wanted to be the rest of my (probably short) life. Now I'm down to around 190 and want to go 10-15 pounds more then pack on some muscle. I'd be happy at a lean and muscular 180-185.

My "normal" was a flabby 190 so I guess I'm sort of back to that although I do have a lot more muscle on me now than when I weight that before. I never liked my old normal so I want a "new normal" of having a lean body I can be proud of.

nxd10

New acceptable standards is a slippery slope. It was a big part of my weight gain. I used to yoyo between where I am now at the lowest up to about 15 pounds higher. Buying decent clothes with a little more room in them was a big mistake in retrospect. It made the extra pounds look normal. I justified it because I "really wasn't fat - it was just the tight clothes from the bottom of the range making me look fat". If you are going to allow your weight to fluctuate, yo should have clothes that fit for the full range, right? Wrong! Well, at least for me. It opened the door to accepting extra weight as normal as long as I had clothes that fit. Unfortunately, clothes come in several sizes...

The change in women's clothing size did that to me too. I had been a size 14 for my whole adult life. But a 14 in 1977 is NOT a 14 from 2013!

I can now get into an 8 - or smaller in a high end shop.

It does make it hard to shop at Goodwill though, because the clothes are from different eras in terms of sizing so the same number means different things.

JeanneTops

I have been overweight (obese) all my life. I probably weigh less now than I did in high school. My problem is when I look in the mirror I have no reference to how I look now; but my brain has moved away from what all the obese picture show. I have a hard time remembering what 350 was like. So I have a hard time relating to either. I know I recently put about 10 lbs back on and am now working hard to take them back off. At 60 years old it tough to say that I don't know myself. I will work with the guy in the mirror and I will run in fear of the one in the pictures.

This is where I am as well. I've been on maintenance for two years at a weight I have never maintained for longer than six months and, at 61, weigh less than I did in high school. Now I've been weight training for six months and even "problem areas" are changing. I've worked very hard to stop seeing myself as fat. But, as you said, I have no frame of reference for thinking about how I look now.

It does feel odd, after all these years, to see a body in the mirror that I don't recognize as mine.

Jeanne

spectralmoon

I was 118 when I was 18 and about 120 at 20. I am 124 now, and I think I look better than I did back then. :drinker:

Majda1234

Yep, i was skinny my entire life. When i stopped training ballet and started being depressed and felt like my life i was a wreck i spent a year compulsevly overeating which made me gain about 15 kg in a year. When i realised what was going on, i started dieting. I got back at my original weight BUT as a result of my depression i ALWAYS turn to food, have been compulsevly overeating for a month. But now i at least reckognize the pattern and keep the doing the same thing and the weight eventually comes off.
So i think that is pretty much the case with evryone-not the bingeing but being at their optiml weight.

BinaryPulsar

When I was in my teens and twenties I weighed 98 pounds (I'm petite and small framed and very active as a dancer). After having children, and regaining my fitness I have been maintaining around 99 to 101.5. I only gained weight during my pregnancies and lost it quick and easy. I was back to my "normal" weight when my second baby was 7 months old (and had been there between pregnancies also). Over a year ago I gained 5-10 pounds, but lost it (on a slow cut) and been maintaining for over a year.

heatherloveslifting

Oh yes. My first loss was in 1994 and I stayed my current weight for nearly 10 years. I gained a ton when I got pregnant though. Actually I can maintain here pretty well, but I would *love to lose another 3-7 lbs.

MrsWibbly

I was around 110lbs at age 18 and hovered around 120-125lbs until I after I had my second child, aged 31. I have been fluctuating a lot more since then, reaching a high of 140lbs in Feb this year aged 44. Now at 45 I am 112lbs and maintaining it easily, having blown my original goal out of the water and lost 10lbs more than I expected to. Roll on the rest of my life! I've gone from a size 12 UK to a 6/8 UK and refilling my wardrobe has been quite expensive!

I remember being around 110lbs at 18 too! A combination of bad lifestyle, ill health and the side effects of the medication took me to 131lbs the day I got married in 2006. Then I gained more when I had my son. Then another bout of ill health and medication added more weight until I hit my recent high of 155. Now at 135lbs and still losing. I know I will be happier under 130 but I would really like to be under 120 again. Part of me thought maybe I was aiming too high with a goal of 112.5lbs (why 112.5lbs.... for me that's a BMI of 21!!) but now I really feel like that's achievable. I am looking to break into the 120's by late Oct (my husband's birthday!)

Thanks for the inspiration snallrunner

fitmusiclifeviola

I went past normal and discovered a better feeling than I had before. When I was in my early 20's I remember being in the 160s and thinking I was creeping up. I remember having gained ~ 20 lbs in the year I left college. Then over the next 10 I gained about 10 to 170. In the next 4, I gained about 10 more, and then put on another quick 5-7 lbs at which point I said enough, and now have lost 35 lbs to a goal weight that I hadn't been at since college. Except I think I'm a bit stronger now than I was then, but hard to compare without it being similar activity/better controlled comparison. Now I'm high 150s, and in at least a normal BMI. The changes were so incremental over the years, I can't say I really didn't relate with myself. However, seeing the scale get to be CLOSE to 200 made me flinch and get motivated to get rid of the belly I had developed. Seems I look ~ 5-10 years younger too.

RunningForeverMama

I'm about 10 pounds lower than what was normal for the majority of my adulthood (except for when I was even heavier than that).