When should you decided to stop losing weight?
DupreeTheTRex
Posts: 105 Member
For a little over a year I have made significant lifestyle changes which has allowed me to lose 91 lbs. My long term goal was to lose 100 lbs but I don’t think I’m mentally in a place where I can cut back more calories/exercise more in order to achieve that goal.
I’m 30 years old, 5 foot 11, 189 lbs. I went from size 48 pants and now fit comfortably in size 30. I’m very happy with my current weight (despite calculators saying I’m overweight) which has made me conflicted. Losing the extra 9lbs would be fantastic but I’m feeling mentally drained as it is; is it worth stressing myself out for the next few months?
It’s possible this is just added stress as a result of the holidays. As part of my lifestyle change, I tried to incorporate participation in family functions without worrying about the scale. I do this by making small modifications to portion sizes leading up to the event and (if needed) after they event to do my best ti stay on track. I find this is very manageable and I only really need to do this a few times a year.
The holidays this year have been particularly tough though. I hate wasting food so we’ve been trying our best to eat all the leftovers but the food is not very filling (or healthy) compared to my normal diet. It’s been a brutal 2 weeks and I haven’t gained any weight (or lost any). Aside from the “big” (my family is small) family functions, I’ve been doing my best to track my calories through estimations. Since I didn’t prepare a lot of the food I know my entries aren’t as accurate as they usually are. I’ve gotten through all of the leftovers thankfully and plan to return to normal eating habits this week so maybe I’ll start to see progress again as a result.
Nevertheless, if I’m happy with my current weight, should I really be stressing out about these last 9 lbs?
I’m 30 years old, 5 foot 11, 189 lbs. I went from size 48 pants and now fit comfortably in size 30. I’m very happy with my current weight (despite calculators saying I’m overweight) which has made me conflicted. Losing the extra 9lbs would be fantastic but I’m feeling mentally drained as it is; is it worth stressing myself out for the next few months?
It’s possible this is just added stress as a result of the holidays. As part of my lifestyle change, I tried to incorporate participation in family functions without worrying about the scale. I do this by making small modifications to portion sizes leading up to the event and (if needed) after they event to do my best ti stay on track. I find this is very manageable and I only really need to do this a few times a year.
The holidays this year have been particularly tough though. I hate wasting food so we’ve been trying our best to eat all the leftovers but the food is not very filling (or healthy) compared to my normal diet. It’s been a brutal 2 weeks and I haven’t gained any weight (or lost any). Aside from the “big” (my family is small) family functions, I’ve been doing my best to track my calories through estimations. Since I didn’t prepare a lot of the food I know my entries aren’t as accurate as they usually are. I’ve gotten through all of the leftovers thankfully and plan to return to normal eating habits this week so maybe I’ll start to see progress again as a result.
Nevertheless, if I’m happy with my current weight, should I really be stressing out about these last 9 lbs?
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Replies
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Dude I was around 375lbs in 2014, and got down to 235 in 2016 and felt fantastic. If you feel good you shouldn't stress about losing the extra 9 lbs.
However, you should keep your exercise going. I made the mistake (because of external factors) of letting go completely and gained it all back. So here I am in 2022 staring over.
Eat what you want and how much you want within reason and keep exercising. In 2016 when I was doing that I would never gain weight or fat until I stopped exercising.
Tldr: Don't sweat the 9 lbs but don't completely let loose.8 -
Why not revisit the idea of those nine pounds in six months, or twelve, and just practice maintenance and enjoy what you achieved?23
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Dude I was around 375lbs in 2014, and got down to 235 in 2016 and felt fantastic. If you feel good you shouldn't stress about losing the extra 9 lbs.
However, you should keep your exercise going. I made the mistake (because of external factors) of letting go completely and gained it all back. So here I am in 2022 staring over.
Eat what you want and how much you want within reason and keep exercising. In 2016 when I was doing that I would never gain weight or fat until I stopped exercising.
Tldr: Don't sweat the 9 lbs but don't completely let loose.
Well luckily most of my weight loss is attributed to diet only. I don’t like the gym so I’ve only been doing things I enjoy doing like going on long walks. But with asthma I don’t walk during the winter which I did last year as well.
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Why not revisit the idea of those nine pounds in six months, or twelve, and just practice maintenance and enjoy what you achieved?
That was my plan when I hit my long term goal but I’m very happy with the results I have now so maybe if I hit a wall I just keep eating at maintenance for a while then revisit if I want to later.
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Being happy, healthy and not stressed sounds good to me!
I would say switch to maintenance, it's a new skill to be learned and new habits to adopt and establish.
That decision can just be a holding pattern and doesn't commit you to any particular length of time.
You might even find that following a big loss (congrats!) there is some adaptive thermogenesis going on and you might find a spell maintaining reverses that. It did for me with a much smaller loss and after a couple of months I started losing slowly on what was my initial maintenance calorie level.
I spent the first couple of years after hitting my initial goal making small adjustments to fine tune my best weight downwards. Sometimes with a short cut, sometimes just with a glacially slow and painless drift.
Then a couple of years later I made a small adjustment upwards - your goal weight range is unlikely to be set for the rest of your life.7 -
I agree. There is nothing wrong with maintaining. When and if you are no longer pleased with where you are, you can start a deficit again. Maintaining is an important skill. Wishing you the best and congrats on your weight loss.2
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I focused on an ideal lifestyle, not an ideal weight. So I never switched from loss to maintenance. I ate in a way that would maintain a lean healthy weight and slowly became that lean, healthy weight. My weight loss just stopped on it's own at a BMI of around 19-20. I never felt restricted because I wasn't, I was eating in a sustainable way.2
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Take a "break" from trying to lose and practice maintenance. You are doing great! And, unless you have spent significant time as an adult at your goal weight (with your anticipated amount of muscle mass) and know what that looks and feels like on you, your goal number might be unrealistic anyway. Everyone is a bit different and naturally sit at different points on the BMI scales, which is why we have ranges and not absolute numbers.
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BMI being such a limited metric isn't the be-all-end-all in terms of assessing whether to continue losing (or gaining) weight since it doesn't consider body composition. Given that you're now in a 30" waist size, I imagine that 189lbs you're walking around with is far leaner and meaner than BMI would anticipate any average Joe to be. An alternative metric is simply to keep your waist size less than half your height, and at 30" you've certain exceeded that mark. TL;DR - don't sweat the 9 lbs or what BMI says, celebrate you're accomplishment and work on finding balance and happiness now that your goal is to maintain.6
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BMI being such a limited metric isn't the be-all-end-all in terms of assessing whether to continue losing (or gaining) weight since it doesn't consider body composition. Given that you're now in a 30" waist size, I imagine that 189lbs you're walking around with is far leaner and meaner than BMI would anticipate any average Joe to be. An alternative metric is simply to keep your waist size less than half your height, and at 30" you've certain exceeded that mark. TL;DR - don't sweat the 9 lbs or what BMI says, celebrate you're accomplishment and work on finding balance and happiness now that your goal is to maintain.
I was pretty much going to write the same.
My maintenance number is around 180 @ 5'10" which is about 6 Lbs over the high end of BMI. My Dr. isn't concerned about it at all because I'm not overly fat at that weight at around 15% BF. I am currently 200 Lbs and my Dr. is concerned about that because I'm very obviously overfat right now and carry most of it in my gut at this weight.3 -
Agree with the guys above.
Also, you know how you want to look, so we don't need to advise you on that.
From a health perspective, a bodyweight in the lower part of the "overweight" BMI zone, where you are now, is not a significant health risk, statistically speaking, especially for a male in decent health. (If you have pre-existing health conditions that could be aggravated by bodyweight, you should be discussing it with your doctor, not us.)
If you look fine to you, don't have major health risks, feel good, there shouldn't be any problem staying where you are.
I have to admit, I do find questions like this a little odd, though understandable. You've clearly been very successful at weight loss: You know how to lose weight. I know there can be a little "what's the right weight" anxiety, coming from an overweight/obese history.
But it's not like this weight is some kind of permanent non-negotiable commitment. You can switch to maintaining - which is good practice and maybe good metabolically besides - hang out there . . . and if you change your mind later, months down the road, you can lose some more weight, if you like. NBD.
Bask in your success - you've done great!1 -
Agree with the guys above.
Also, you know how you want to look, so we don't need to advise you on that.
From a health perspective, a bodyweight in the lower part of the "overweight" BMI zone, where you are now, is not a significant health risk, statistically speaking, especially for a male in decent health. (If you have pre-existing health conditions that could be aggravated by bodyweight, you should be discussing it with your doctor, not us.)
If you look fine to you, don't have major health risks, feel good, there shouldn't be any problem staying where you are.
I have to admit, I do find questions like this a little odd, though understandable. You've clearly been very successful at weight loss: You know how to lose weight. I know there can be a little "what's the right weight" anxiety, coming from an overweight/obese history.
But it's not like this weight is some kind of permanent non-negotiable commitment. You can switch to maintaining - which is good practice and maybe good metabolically besides - hang out there . . . and if you change your mind later, months down the road, you can lose some more weight, if you like. NBD.
Bask in your success - you've done great!
I had a lot of success with weight loss in the past but I’ve always struggled with maintaining the loss. I pretty much have made no changes to my diet since I started dieting except for monitoring and controlling my portion sizes. I haven’t changed my calories in since I started either so I’ve slowly been losing less over time.
I used my knowledge from previous attempts and instead opted to make the smallest changes possible hoping that I could still achieve a loss. All it really took was monitoring portion sizes and cutting out sugary drinks for low calorie alternatives. I knew I hated the gym so I found a simple physical activity I enjoyed doing. Might even start to play hockey again if I can get my hands on some equipment.
I guess when I started my journey I was aiming for 180lbs because it was a weight I was never really happy being at when I was younger but was a healthy weight for me. I had previously been 160lbs with significant work but thought that was too ambitious of a goal at the time. Fast forward to today’s and I’m happy at the weight I’m at now. It’s also odd to me, but I could never fit in size 30s even when I weighed 160lbs. So just the fact that I can fit comfortably into 30s makes me really happy.
I guess I’m just at a point where I don’t really know where to go from here and making no more changes feels like giving up. I guess I’m just having a bit of trouble internally with deciding what to do next.
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DupreeTheTRex wrote: »Agree with the guys above.
Also, you know how you want to look, so we don't need to advise you on that.
From a health perspective, a bodyweight in the lower part of the "overweight" BMI zone, where you are now, is not a significant health risk, statistically speaking, especially for a male in decent health. (If you have pre-existing health conditions that could be aggravated by bodyweight, you should be discussing it with your doctor, not us.)
If you look fine to you, don't have major health risks, feel good, there shouldn't be any problem staying where you are.
I have to admit, I do find questions like this a little odd, though understandable. You've clearly been very successful at weight loss: You know how to lose weight. I know there can be a little "what's the right weight" anxiety, coming from an overweight/obese history.
But it's not like this weight is some kind of permanent non-negotiable commitment. You can switch to maintaining - which is good practice and maybe good metabolically besides - hang out there . . . and if you change your mind later, months down the road, you can lose some more weight, if you like. NBD.
Bask in your success - you've done great!
I had a lot of success with weight loss in the past but I’ve always struggled with maintaining the loss. I pretty much have made no changes to my diet since I started dieting except for monitoring and controlling my portion sizes. I haven’t changed my calories in since I started either so I’ve slowly been losing less over time.
I used my knowledge from previous attempts and instead opted to make the smallest changes possible hoping that I could still achieve a loss. All it really took was monitoring portion sizes and cutting out sugary drinks for low calorie alternatives. I knew I hated the gym so I found a simple physical activity I enjoyed doing. Might even start to play hockey again if I can get my hands on some equipment.
I guess when I started my journey I was aiming for 180lbs because it was a weight I was never really happy being at when I was younger but was a healthy weight for me. I had previously been 160lbs with significant work but thought that was too ambitious of a goal at the time. Fast forward to today’s and I’m happy at the weight I’m at now. It’s also odd to me, but I could never fit in size 30s even when I weighed 160lbs. So just the fact that I can fit comfortably into 30s makes me really happy.
I guess I’m just at a point where I don’t really know where to go from here and making no more changes feels like giving up. I guess I’m just having a bit of trouble internally with deciding what to do next.
Maybe just consider it a temporary break, and an opportunity to test-drive maintaining your current weight for a while? If you've struggled with maintaining in the past, trying that out and working out any wrinkles could be really helpful, even if you decide not to stay at this weight forever. I would hope "figure out and practice the part that was a struggle in the past" wouldn't seem like giving up? (It seems like wily gamesmanship, to me.) Maybe give yourself a definite timeline (2 months or 3 months or 6 months or something, then re-evaluate) and some rules (max/min weight range, among others maybe), so it feels more like a goal or project and not a "stop"?
I can't speak for you, but for me - in year 6+ of maintenance now - I feel like managing my weight is a thing I do forever, lifelong. It's not any kind of giant burdensome project at this point (most of the time! 😉), but it definitely doesn't feel like I've stopped or given up, it's just that I'm trying to keep my weight in a certain range, rather than trying to make it continue to drop and drop (that wouldn't be healthy!).
It sounds like trying to frame this for yourself is the current challenge. I hope you can find a path: You've done so well to this point, and I'm betting you can keep up the goodness, once you wrap your mind around it.2 -
I took a 2 year maintenance break before continuing on. And had more to go than 9 pounds lol (but had lost 180 or so over a 2 year timeframe).
take a break. if you eat at your maintenance for your targeted weight, that will still put in a slight deficit.2 -
Please do not stress about the last 9 pounds.It may be that your body is at the weight it wants to be.I keep reading that if you eat healthy and exercise that your body will determine the weight it wants to be at.0
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Prettyeyes0214 wrote: »Please do not stress about the last 9 pounds.It may be that your body is at the weight it wants to be. I keep reading that if you eat healthy and exercise that your body will determine the weight it wants to be at.
Sigh. I wish!
Formerly obese, but healthy-eating and very-active me says: I don't think that's true.
I've been vegetarian for 47+ years, generally a healthy eater with plenty of veggies and fruits and whole grains and all that good stuff. I've been athletically active for around the last 20 years. I stayed fat to class 1 obese for at least a dozen of those 20 years.
From experience, it's 100% possible to eat too many calories worth of healthy food, and to eat back more than the few hundred daily exercise calories that a regular quite-vigorous exercise schedule burns. A pretty good exercise session amounts to not much more than a good peanut butter sandwich on lovely whole-grain bread.
I wish it were not so, but . . . I think it is.
P.S. I still think OP is fine staying at his current weight. I just think the "eat healthy and exercise and all will be well" idea is wishful thinking, sadly.4 -
Prettyeyes0214 wrote: »Please do not stress about the last 9 pounds.It may be that your body is at the weight it wants to be.I keep reading that if you eat healthy and exercise that your body will determine the weight it wants to be at.
So many people do this and regain all their weight---been here 8 years and have seen the posts. Better to beware and learn to properly maintain the weight lost.3 -
Prettyeyes0214 wrote: »Please do not stress about the last 9 pounds.It may be that your body is at the weight it wants to be.I keep reading that if you eat healthy and exercise that your body will determine the weight it wants to be at.
BAHAHAHAAAA
if thats the case my body was quite happy being anywhere from 250 and up
I am able to maintain my weight (at any given number) fairly easily *IF* i log my food or exercise regularly (3x a week or more). i dont have to do BOTH but I do have to do one or the other, at least for any extended maintenance period (more than a month).3 -
Same as all the rest of them! Just stay around your current weight for a while and see how it goes!0
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The thing that struck me was that “you stayed the same and didn’t lose any weight over the holidays”.
I reached a point of expecting to continue to lose weight. It had become habit, and I felt like I “needed” the validation of the scale continuing to go down.
It can be really easy to get into the go go go win win win mindset.
I dropped so low I lost muscle and looked awful, even though I was exercising regularly, including weight training.
I’ve since intentionally added back a few pounds. I’ve continued to lose size, though, in maintenance, at the higher weight, but the extra weight has enabled me to add back some muscle. I’m still not back to where I was with the weights at this time last year, but I feel and look better.
If you’re at the point you’re wondering, back off a bit, go into maintenance, let the dysmorphia catch up with the reality. Those pounds will still be there if you decide later to continue.
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We all set "goal weights". but it isn't a hard and fast number. If nine pounds of a number you selected last year is stressing you out.. change it to the weight you are now and celebrate what the heck you've accomplished!
You've lost weight by simply changing your behaviors ..cutting back on portions ..and you even navigated the holiday dinners and celebrations without gaining!
You are amazing! Give yourself credit.. hang where you are and do more later if you wish and when you truly feel like you want to that. Congrats.3 -
elisa123gal wrote: »We all set "goal weights". but it isn't a hard and fast number. If nine pounds of a number you selected last year is stressing you out.. change it to the weight you are now and celebrate what the heck you've accomplished!
You've lost weight by simply changing your behaviors ..cutting back on portions ..and you even navigated the holiday dinners and celebrations without gaining!
You are amazing! Give yourself credit.. hang where you are and do more later if you wish and when you truly feel like you want to that. Congrats.
Coming back to this post about a month later and I’m still hitting my target of 1lbs per week it seems. It’s weird because it doesn’t feel that way but when I logged my weight for the mo to sure enough I hit my target. I’ve actually been eating more as well aiming for maintenance because I’ve been stressing about losing the last 9 lbs.
At this point I’ve decided I’m not going to make any changes to what I’m doing now. If I stay within a range weight come Spring that is where I’ll stop and work on maintenance.
Can’t remember if I mentioned it or not but part of my weight loss journey involves me not shaving or cutting my hair. So my beard is down to my belly button nearly now and I know I have close it 8 inches on my hair (possibly enough to donate - at least I’m hoping. May let the hair grow out a little longer if I’m short a bit).
Thanks for all the kind comments (to you and everyone)
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