Goal Weight

smms0714
smms0714 Posts: 68 Member
in Getting Started
How did you pick your goal weight?

Replies

  • Panini911
    Panini911 Posts: 2,325 Member
    edited April 2019
    my first step was getting into a healthy BMI weight.

    The second two times i lost weight my aim was the lowest i had been (from my first loss of 100lbs - i had otherwiwse always been obese).

    this time around i hit both above goals and...just kept lowering by 5lbs. my current goal which i am about to hit is to get to the mid-range of my BMI (i think that's a BMI of like 21.7?) then i'll stay there away, maybe recomp. i've been dieting a year which i know is not recmmended to do without diet breaks so it's past time i take a break.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    I never had a particular weight in mind. I wanted a relatively flat stomach and no love handles...I had no idea what weight I would be at to achieve that. Also, weight isn't just fat...it's also muscle and other things and I personally didn't want to burn muscle just to arrive at some arbitrary number on the scale.
  • echmain3
    echmain3 Posts: 231 Member
    I looked at a bunch of charts that show the ideal weight for age, height, and sex.

    Those were all over the place so I calculated my own average and a reasonable range above and below that.

    For me, the result is 157-162 pounds.
  • ADeCapua
    ADeCapua Posts: 35 Member
    I weighed 155 in high school at one point, in a medium size shirt, but still had a little lower tummy fat. So, I chose 130 as a goal weight. However, when I finally get down to 150, I will assess then.
  • Pickle107
    Pickle107 Posts: 153 Member
    Healthy BMI first (140 lbs- just about there), then a mid-healthy BMI (120 lbs) that I'm hoping will get me back down to a UK size 10 which is my slimmest as an adult and I'd be very happy with. Lastly, I have a 'dream goal' based on the photos from mybodygallery.com of 110 lbs. That's purely for aesthetics and how I'd look in my underwear. Not exactly a necessity...
  • luaP852350
    luaP852350 Posts: 131 Member
    I never had a weight issue in my mind but had noticed that my clothes where getting "snug" I started weighing myself in 2012 an stuck the results on my fridge door I lived on junk food for years at my max i was 76.3kgs and min 72.7kgs I decided to try an lose weight by eating cereal twice a day...... 🙄 and crap food for lunch 🤒 fast forward 7 1/2 yrs an I was 81kgs I'm eating much better these days an occasional light exercise so set a target of 75kgs which I'm not far off so another few kgs shouldn't be unreasonable good luck to everyone on here 💪🎯🏆
  • rosiorama
    rosiorama Posts: 300 Member
    I’ve always worn mediums in most clothes. When I started having to buy things in a larger size, I decided it was time to lose. I’m at a size now where my mediums fit well, but in the meantime I’ve started weight lifting, so now I’m toying with the idea of losing another 5-ish pounds so maybe I can see more muscle definition. I always thought being at a lower weight would be unsustainable calorie-wise, but I think I just need to learn to maintain and stop my yo-yo tendencies.

    If I go by BMI, my weight is just at the line of overweight for my height, but I’m starting to see ab definition - so BMI is not a useful gauge. Scale weight is becoming less meaningful and I’m starting to go by how I look and feel.

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,222 Member
    Just guessed based on a weight I'd like 40 years earlier (really), and added a few pounds because "people say you shouldn't be as thin when older". People were wrong. When I got near that provisional goal, I adjusted goal downward again.

    One thing to be aware of, if you're new on MFP: The goal weight you put in your MFP profile during setup has literally no effect on the calorie goal it will give you. None.

    MFP just uses the goal weight for some motivational messages along the way, to create an optional "ticker" for your profile page showing progress, and some other stuff like that.

    You can make a wild guess now, and reset it later, if you decide you've changed your mind. (The only effect on goal calories might be that every time you go through set-up, MFP may re-examine your calorie goal and adjust it based on your then-current weight, since a smaller body burns fewer calories than a larger one. The goal weight itself still has no effect.)
  • MrsBradyBunch
    MrsBradyBunch Posts: 182 Member
    edited April 2019
    I don't even know my goal weight yet. I don't even know the "right" weight for me, since like the poster above, I've always been bigger than average. So I'm just setting small step-by-step goals, and making new ones as I accomplish them. Now I'm being prepped for RNY surgery. Before they operate, they want me to lose 5% of my referral weight which was 250, so 237 is the first goal, and I'm closing in on that. For MFP purposes, I put in 200 as my goal, but beyond that, I don't know. It would be nice to be something besides "obese" for a change.
  • Nerys52
    Nerys52 Posts: 86 Member
    Goal weight is a strange thing. Is my opinion that looking back at high school years and looking at my weight back then is not a realistic goal for me.I wish I had stayed at 64 kg and not pay attention to stupid people calling me fat.
    Started dieting failed, gained it back and then some more. Tried again same story. Got to 71 kg, 75 then 77 etc.
    In the 1970s I was the then size 14 I saved 2 dresses from back then and with vanity sizing now way smaller.
    I am not allowed exercise due to severe heart failure so is only less food I can do.
    I am looking to reduce first 5% then towards 10% of my weight now.
    Recently with severe flu and no food 2 weeks I lost 7 kg but is mostly water weight. I have ascites from the CHF & PH.
    The goal weight I put in gives error so had to make it much lower to be able for it to register.
  • epogatshnik
    epogatshnik Posts: 7 Member
    Originally I had it set at what weight I wanted to see for myself in high school (145 pounds). Then I thought that probably was no longer "realistic" for me, and I have it set to 175. I truly feel I'll be happier with myself at that weight. I'll still be considered "over weight," but 175 is nearly 100 pounds away for me.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,093 Member
    I picked a goal weight that was 10% below my starting weight (SW), because I repeatedly heard (from my doctor as well other credible sources) that just losing 5% to 10% of your weight could improve your health markers significantly, which was my goal, as blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol numbers were all edging to the point that I knew I was soon going to need to go on medications.

    Tracking calories in and out was so much easier with MFP than anything I had every tried before that when I reached that 10%-off SW goal (which was still above a healthy weight on the BMI charts) that I kept going. I slacked off into more of a maintenance mode once I hit a point where I physically felt good and my health markers agreed, and I kept it off for about four and a half years, but then it started to inch back up, so recently I've put myself back into a weight loss mode because I'm determined not to go above that initial 10%-off SW goal.
  • Danp
    Danp Posts: 1,561 Member
    edited April 2019
    When I first started losing weight I set an ultimate goal of being less than 100kg for the first time in my adult life.

    To get there was a constant sliding scale of milestones:
    - First I wanted to get back to 160kg. My scales go up to 160kg (~350lb) and stopped giving me a number and started just showing 'err'. It took a little over a week so I estimate my actual starting weight was probably closer to 165kg (~360)
    - Then I wanted to get back to 140kg (~308lb). The weight I was when I stopped weighing myself.
    - Then I wanted to get back to 135kg (~297lb). This was my previous 'starting weight' the one time I've successfully lost weight previously. This was my 'back to the starting line' weight
    - Then I wanted to get to 125kg (~275lb). This was the weight limit for the bicycle I wanted to buy
    - Now I'm 114kg (~250lb) and my next milestone (and original goal weight) is 99.9kg (~220lb)

    The thing is once I got to the 125kg mark (having lost 35kg) the original goal of <100kg seemed like a cop-out. The goal weight that 160kg me saw as the best possible outcome, 125kg me saw as a job half done and would be seriously disappointed if that's all he achieved. So I reevaluated, looked up my BMI and saw that the top of my 'healthy' range was 83kg (~182lb).

    I'll not lie, that number scared me. So much so that I convinced myself that it just wasn't appropriate for me and changed my ultimate goal 90-95kg (~198 - 209lb) range. I would tell myself things like "Oh BMI is just a population average" and "I'd be sickly thin at that 83kg, it wouldn't be healthy" and "It's not accurate! Some athletes are overweight based on BMI" and a million other reason designed to save my pride and give me an convenient excuses to not try and get to this scary goal,

    Recently, however, I got real with myself. I decided to stop looking for excuses and trying to let myself off the hook for not getting to a healthy weight. So I revised my ultimate goal to 80kg (~176lb) for 2 reasons.
    1. It's within my healthy weight range (which absolutely does apply to me now that I've stopped looking for excuses to fail)
    2. It's half my original weight and I love the idea of having literally halved myself =)

    So yeah.
    Goals
    100kg - 90kg - 80kg

    Milestones
    160kg - 140kg - 135kg - 125kg - 100kg - 80kg

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