How to know when I am ready to maintain

ingraha

Hi everybody. I am near my first set goal. I am five feet one inch and I did the frame measuring thing which I have no idea if its accurate, but it said my frame is big. Anyway I had set my first goal at 125 and then I planned to see how I feel. I made the mistake of talking to a couple of people about this. (when will I learn...) One response was I am obsessive and borderline anorexic to even be counting calories and I should stop losing right now. The other was for my height I should weigh 118 pounds. I have been working in my dye studio a lot, and I get very hungry and tired....but I am not sure how to measure how much I am burning doing the work I do, which is very physical. Fitbit helps a lot, I wear my tracker all the time....I am at a point where I feel lost. Do others have this dilemma when they are near goal? I am not sure what my ultimate goal should be. I read the forums a lot. There are a lot of people on here who know a lot.

Siansonea

Hmmm, people telling you you're "borderline anorexic", huh? I wonder, how thin are THEY? :huh:

It's been my experience that people who are themselves overweight don't want you to succeed with your weight loss. Why? Because suddenly, when the two of you are seen together, their own weight is much more noticeable. And besides, if you prove it can be done, the obvious elephant in the room is why aren't they doing it? :huh:

My yardstick for "when to stop" is to notice what people say, and who is saying it. If men are telling you that you're too thin, you're probably too thin. If women are telling you that you're too thin, you're either too thin, or you're markedly thinner than they are, or you're "too close for comfort". Women can be very competitive about this sort of thing, and I've certainly had other women make comments of this sort when I've been my thinnest. I am firmly convinced that some women think that the way to appear thin is to surround themselves with other women who are fatter.

Mr_Knight

125 at 5'1" doesn't sound particularly anorexic to me...? I had a girlfriend that height once and she barely topped triple digits - and since I was the one paying for dinners I can say with full confidence she wasn't anorexic!

SLLRunner

In my opinion, we can generalize all day about what others say and why they say it, but the bottom line is that it just doesn't matter.

What matters is how you feel and what your fitness goals are. 125 pounds at 5 feet one is not even close to anorexic. 118 pounds might be right for some people, but it's not necessarily right for you or anyone else. It sounds to me like you are on the right track.

I'm 5 ft 41/2 and someone once told me I would look great at 120 pounds. Well, I've lost 31 pounds and I am 2 pounds from my goal and I weigh more than 120 pounds. Believe me, 120 pounds would be way to thin for me, though someone else might find that this is their ideal weight. I choose to stick with what I think is best because I know my body.

Try not to listen to other people's negative comments and do follow your own path.

ingraha

Thank you. I, like so many others who post on here, would love a definitive answer; however, there is no such thing. My metabolism seems to change with the seasons. I am looking forward to finding the right place and then learning to replace fat with muscle to reduce the bmi while maintaining weight. Ah, challenges. You are all great.

lin7604

i am 5.2 ft and i had the same question when i was starting out. I have a med frame and i didn't know where i should keep goign to for goals. Everyone said i woudl know when i reached it, well they are right. You will know when you are happy once you get to that spot. For me that is maintaining at 115. i thought 120-125 was my answer but i had to lose body fat to get where i wanted to be. so that is what i have focused on and my weight dropped a bit in the process but my main goal was to drop body fat after....