When you are soo close to your goal!

nicole_eastwood_taurus
nicole_eastwood_taurus Posts: 4 Member
in Goal: Maintaining Weight
Hey, I’ve been using this app to reach my goal, I started at 58.3 on 8th October and I’m now 50.4 as of today.. my goal is 50! Would you say it’s so close it’s good enough considering weight fluctuates or is a goal a goal and you must reach it!

Replies

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,935 Member
    Your call.

    I'd point out that many people here think that maintenance is a range, not a single number; and that it's common to see a bit of scale jump when increasing calories to maintenance level (mainly because of water weight effects from the added carbs/sodium in the additional calories, plus slightly higher average digestive system contents).

    One consequence of those two things is that some people prefer to lose to the bottom of their maintenance weight range, for psychological reasons, anticipating that possible initial small scale jump.
  • Lolinloggen
    Lolinloggen Posts: 463 Member
    I was not content until I had seen my goal on the scale. I officially declared myself in maintenance once I had reach my goal and stayed within my goal range for a month.
    Now have been in maintenance for over a year (since 1 nov 2018) and my maintenance weight on average has been 55.8kg with a goal of 56.0
  • CarvedTones
    CarvedTones Posts: 2,340 Member
    I set my goal as an upper limit to avoid the kind of rationalizations I have made in the past. I would tell my self I was close enough and was going to stay within a few pounds of it anyway. Then I would never actually make it and "within a few pounds" would get rationalized to a bigger range. Then I would find myself out of the bigger range with enough of an effort required to get back to goal that I would put it off until after ____( the holidays, the end of the month, an upcoming vacation, etc). Before long, I was getting big again.

    Note that was all about what happened to me; YMMV...
  • SummerSkier
    SummerSkier Posts: 4,777 Member
    Ha! I was successful this time because I did not set my goal as low as I originally wanted. In the past I would also always get THAT close and then lose motivation - seemed like every nice loss ended in a series of binges which led to gaining, So this time I set my goal about 4-5 pounds higher and yes I DID reach it. Then I slowly started adding calories back at about 100/week at first. Tada! My body was still in loss mode so I ended up reaching and surpassing where I had wanted to be. I even ended up adding a little more quickly 200 cals/week to level off. Of course then I got injured and then the following month I got the flu so my data got very corrupted. Still it gave me a good idea of my TDEE and what my maintenance cals would hover around. They aren't going to stay the same so you just have to learn to monitor and adjust based on weight and cals. If you choose to quit logging or weighing then pick some other way to keep track so things don't sneak up on you.

    ANyway, my advice is to call it maintenance and slowly start adding some calories and see what happens!
  • nowine4me
    nowine4me Posts: 3,985 Member
    I hit my goal weight (121) for one day. That’s it. Literally. One. Then bounced right back up. I would say if your goal weight is something meaningful, like the middle of BMI or whatever, go for it. If it’s completely arbitrary and you already feel good, save the brain damage and stay where you are.
  • elisa123gal
    elisa123gal Posts: 4,286 Member
    If you've been dieting a long while and are tired of it.. you may want to just maintain and enjoy your success..nothing at all wrong with that.

    That's what I did for many months and liked it, I'm in the middle of my BMI.

    Recently, I struggle to not regain too much and find myself inching away from my lowest weight.

    After the holidays, I see want to set a lower goal weight to reach, so I get well below my initial threshold, as I want to get into a safer zone ..where five pounds more will not me look bigger. However.. I like doing it in steps like this..it is manageable.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
    I'm a goal driven person and that goal wasn't ticked off until I saw the number I aimed for on my scales - I then flipped straight to maintenance. But that's just one option which suited me.
    (I also immediately set new goals that weren't weight related - the job isn't done when you get to maintenance, the job just changes.....)

    One contrasting option you might consider is starting to walk up your calories slowly now, to give you a soft landing to your goal weight range. You don't have to diet hard all the way to goal. (If that's what you are doing.)

    Whichever way you manage your transition to maintenance, and what range you select, some fine tuning over an extended period of time may be required.

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