How did you decide upon your goal weight?

I am experiencing this exact thing at the moment. Started just under 90Kg at the start of the year. Initially set a goal of 70 kg, as I was under the impression I was "bigger boned" and would need to be at the higher end of healthy bmi to look good/not sickly. Quickly realized I really was "just fat" and not big boned, thus changed my goal to 65kg. When I reached 70kg I could see that 65kg would still not be aesthetically where I want to be, so changed my goal weight to 60kg (a bmi of around 21.5).

I have now reached that 60kg goal (whoop!) but still have some problem areas I want to change. Have thus decided to do body recomposition and just let my final weight fall where it wants to fall. I'll be happy with it in the 56-62kg range (approximately 20-22 bmi). But will let my fitness levels and the mirror dictate my final goal rather than a nr on the scale.


Ps. Most probably there will be many friends/acquintances saying that you should stop losing weight/stop dieting/start gaining again even before you reach your initial goal. Ignore them! If you are in a healthy weight range, and still have some parts of your body you want to improve, go for it! As long as you do it in a healthy way there are no issues. People are just not used to seeing you thin/healthy/fit and feel the need to comment either out of misplaced worry or jealousy...

by being in my BMI healthy & to lose the 50lbs i gained over the last 15yrs

I had a goal of a certain size. I didn't really care what the weight was. When I got down to my goal size and then within 3 weeks went down one more size I started maintenance. My BMI is in the healthy range and so is my weight.

I chose my ultimate goal of 120 lbs to be the mid point of "Ideal Weight: 115-126 lbs" from one of the TDEE calculators I was using - https://tdeecalculator.net/ .

For me, I'm trying to lose, not only for my health, but because I race paddleboards, and the lighter I am, the faster I can be. My biggest competitor this year is a lady who is an inch taller than me but only 105 lbs, but I don't want to go that low because I want some more muscle since I plan to move up to longer races.

When I joined the site, I thought my initial goal of 130 (from ~150) was going to be a lot since all my friends were telling me that I didn't need to lose (but I felt like crap all the time). However, when I looked around here, girls my height were saying they wanted to be 100 - 115...which frankly, I think is a bit too low at my age (over 50). So I eventually embraced dropping to 120 lbs; however, I suspect that will be my upper bound, and I might settle into around 115-117 lbs, with muscle and a range for the typical fluctuations.

As I'm hovering just over 130 right now, I do know that I need to for sure drop about 10 more pounds because my body isn't where I want it to be yet. But I'm also doing some more weight training now, and we'll see how the body recomp goes and what I actually end up at. I know I was around 115-120 lbs when I left the Army about 25 years ago, so I know I can have muscle and still be 10 pounds lighter than I am now.

I based my goal weight at the highest Lean Body Mass I could have naturally at 15% body fat. which is around a 25 on the FFMI measurement. So eventually between 185-195lbs.

This is the lowest I've been since the late 1980s. I've gone from a 44 inch waist (257 lb) to under 36 (185 lb), and when I can wear 34 inch pants I'm done. I suspect this will be another 10-15 lbs (around 170). So I'm gauging more by current and past clothing size than actual poundage.

170 will BTW be right in the "normal" range for my height/age/frame.

I picked the very middle of my "Normal" BMI range - which for a 6'3" person is around 180lb. I overshot it by like 5lb and I look a little on the thin side, but it's fine. Everyone's just used to seeing me fat.

I took my healthy BMI and allowed for a 15 pound overage based on the fact that I am a large build person with a good deal of muscle mass....yeah, that's about all the science I used.