How low should I go?

I peaked at 314lbs and was athletic in College at 197lbs, but that was 30 years ago. Have sleep apnea and high blood pressure and getting that under control at 263lbs now. My goal weight at 51 years old is 234lbs. I have an athletic build and BMI doesn’t work too well for me at 5’11”.

Replies

  • apullum
    apullum Posts: 4,838 Member
    I'd just get into a deficit and not worry about where you want to wind up. You have plenty of time to figure that out and you can always change your target goal anytime. You don't have to know exactly what your goal weight is right now.
  • trailrunner64
    trailrunner64 Posts: 14 Member
    I think the right thing to do would be to talk with your primary care provider and with him/her develop a goal. You also should talk with him/her about your blood sugar, hemoglobin A1c, liver enzymes (fatty liver), triglycerides and HDL.

    Your college weight doesn't matter.
    You may want to search and find your IBW (ideal body weight) and use that as a goal

    #thisisnotmedicaladvise
  • MikePTY
    MikePTY Posts: 3,814 Member
    Work on hitting your first goal, and then go from there. I image at 5'11", even with a big frame you will probably want to be lower than 234, but only you will know that when you get there and you don't need to worry about it now. Congratulations on the progress you made so far.

    I'm 5'11" with a moderate build, and I've dropped from 235 to 210 and I'm still holding a lot of visible excess weight. I've set my goal at 185, which is technically still about 5 pounds above normal BMI. I will see how I feel then about pushing lower.
  • mpapa1856
    mpapa1856 Posts: 21 Member
    Got it goals are temporary and always open for reevaluating. Doc said around 205 when we talked about my long term goals for health
  • snickerscharlie
    snickerscharlie Posts: 8,578 Member
    edited March 2019
    Danp wrote: »
    I have experienced a sliding goal as I've lost weight. The more I've lost the more confident I grew about how much I can lose and should lose.

    I started at 160kg (~350lb) and at the time would have been more than happy to get to 130kg (286lb) which was the weight I was when I stopped weighing myself and the weight I'd been pretty much all my adult life.

    As my weight started to go down and I got close to that 130kg I started to develop a bit of self belief and thought I can go beyond 'just getting back to where I was'. So I reassessed my target and decided that I would shoot for 115kg (~250lb) as I thought that was a "realistic and achievable end goal".

    As I lost more and more weight and got down to about 120kg (~265lb) all of a sudden 115kg didn't seem like all that big of a goal. In fact 115kg started to sound like a pretty terrible goal to be aiming for so I decided that a much better and still realistic goal would be 95kg (110lb) as it would be the first time in my life I had been <100kg and there's no way I'd want to be lighter than that because I was convinced that beyond that amount I'd be "all skin and bones".

    Now I am 115kg and have come to the conclusion that I was just telling myself that 95kg was the lowest I could and wanted to go because I wanted to 'let myself off the hook'. I had self doubt about reaching a healthy height/weight and I couldn't fail at something I convinced myself I shouldn't go for. But that changed and now I'm 100% going to make it to my healthy weight (83kg or 183lb) and hopefully a bit beyond.

    So yeah, my goals went 130kg > 115kg > 95kg > 83kg. The more I lost the more I was confident that I could lose it all.

    ^^This!

    Along the way, I learned to trust the process *and* myself. Ended up choosing to lose an additional 15 lbs beyond my original weight goal.