What difference for quality of life does 17kg make? (37.4lbs)

spacetreemonkey

I am 5'10, female. My original goal weight was 60kg, now it is 77kg which is near the end of a healthy bmi.

What kind of differences will I experiance from having an extra 17kg of body weight?

I think if I weigh less I will be lighter on my feet and there will be less pressure on my knees, but if I weigh more I will feel stronger, be harder to kidnap (lol) and it won't be as concerning if I lose weight during illness because I will have a bigger buffer.

Is there anything else to consider?

zebasschick

will you be exercising? will part of that extra 17k be muscle?

spacetreemonkey

zebasschick wrote: »

will you be exercising? will part of that extra 17k be muscle?

Yes

sollyn23l2

How much difference will it make? Depends on the individual, but probably not much. Benefits past getting below 77 would be mostly visual, not health. I think it's smart to start with a 77 kg goal, then see how you feel and if you want to continue.

kshama2001

Depending on your body composition and frame size, that 17kg may or may not be excess weight for you. That's why BMI is expressed as a range, rather than a number.

For a woman of 5'10", a weight of 60 kg (132 #) has you towards the bottom of the BMI, while 77 kg (170 #) has you towards the top. I agree with the recommendation to achieve 77 kg, and then reevaluate.

https://bmicalculator.mes.fm/bmi-chart

history_grrrl

Not sure others can answer this question for you. As others have said, there’s no reason not to work toward a initial goal weight and then see how it feels. I’m doing something like this, because at my age (early 60s), I don’t think I need or want to get back to where I was 30 years ago - I suspect that would be too thin for me now - but maybe I’ll reassess once I meet my initial goal.

How much do you need to lose to get to 77 kg?

Corina1143

I agree. I'm small boned. At 5'10 and 140, I looked good in clothes, got compliments, took a nap every day, sat a lot. At 160, I wore a bigger size, had energy, felt strong, and was happy.

PAV8888

What's your starting point? Are you gaining from under the normal weight range or losing from above?

The whole range or even any part of it is not necessarily equally healthy for a particular individual.

What the range says is that the overwhelming majority of people who are this tall will be as healthy as possible for themselves at some spot... and this spot will probably be in this range.

But also these things are a continuum and even change with body composition, age, and prior health history!

spacetreemonkey

PAV8888 wrote: »

What's your starting point? Are you gaining from under the normal weight range or losing from above?

My starting point was 126kg, I am now 108kg, old goal weight was 60kg, now it's 77kg. I am 5'10. I'm losing from above the healthy weight range.

PAV8888

Sorry I've meandered and I won't have time to edit 🤯

I would worry about keeping to a sustainable process and incremental changes that slowly change life to a setup that promotes retaining your new lower weight.

I honest to goodness don't think that it is that important to setup a specific number: it's one of the things where close is good enough and also the number is likely to slightly change over time especially with body composition.

If it feels more comfortable you could make the higher goal a "no more" and the lower goal a "no less". BUT

More importantly

After this awesome level of success so far, why are these thoughts coming to mind and concerning you?

Have you ramped up your deficits or activity/exercise recently? Have you noticed slower loss for the same amount of effort? Are things getting boring? Are you enjoying the process more or less? What's going on?

Me thinks that you're in the part of the process where you may be recognizing that you can have success but where it is still feeling a bit overwhelming? (Of course I'm projecting my own experiences as you no doubt realize)

I would just concentrate on optimizing not the speed of weight loss but the process and the building blocks that you will use to maintain.

"Go to" foods and developing more options of good value for calories. Types and lengths of activity and fitting it into your life. Hobbies. Relationships. Friends and interactions. How to deal with exceptions to eating plans. Logging under different conditions and circumstances (more approximately or more tightly)

This is a time to experiment a bit while the deficit/need for deficit is there to make sure you continue to move in the correct direction

Your final weight doesn't have to be decided ahead of time. At some point things will slow down and you will have to balance continuing effort vs landing near where you would be at.

Depending on age and health history bmi's close to 25 +/- have been seen on some studies to lead to max longevity. Of course quality of life doesn't enter into that number, just length.

At this point sustainability of effort and setting up for the long haul of maintenance is probably a smart play. Tapering speed of loss than helps play for time is never terrible when low overweight or lower as it helps keep you at an overall lower weight longer helping you normalize at the lower weight while avoiding heading back up in the wrong direction!

Anyway.. how long have you been at this? Why the worry now about a final goal that ultimately can be revised more than once. Either of your goals sound fine to me from your current position. I would be more concerned about the process/method of getting there and making sure things are as sustainable as possible myself