Trying to figure out my goal

I have been doing well recently and made the best progress I've made in my battle with weight. My exercise is primarily weight training so trying to lose weight and gain muscle which I know is tough.
I tried poking around on the net and could not find an answer but I'm trying to figure what my goal should be. I'm 5'6" to 5'7" and currently 192. Based on the scale (I know not super accurate) i'm 31% body fat. I was 206 and 34% about 7 months ago. Ideally I'd like to get to a body fat percentage in the teens. Anyway to predict what my goal weight should be?
My main goal is health and not the scale or the numbers but having a goal just gives me something to target.
Replies
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your goal weight should be a weight that you are comfortable with and can maintain with a lifestyle that isn't too limiting. This will usually be around 15%.
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You could set a goal to lose 10lbs for now. Then set another 10lbs goal, etc. Cutting your goal into many smaller goals might be some motivation for some people instead of starting from the beginning with a bigger chunk.
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I can understand wanting to have a goal weight in mind, so I'm just saying this to make sure you're aware:
In MFP, the goal weight you give it has zero effect on the calorie goal it gives you. All goal weight does is tell you when to stop losing. When you get there, or close to there, you'll know and can make the decision more easily. That's true as long as you don't have a seriously distorted body image. If you are concerned about distortion, discuss your weight with your doctor once you're close to what you think is a good weight for you. (Friends and families tend to be unreliable in these questions, IME.)
I can also understand that many people have aspirations about body fat percent. I'd encourage you to think more in terms of how you want to feel and look. That's not because it's wrong to have BF% aspirations, but because most of us have no accurate way to measure BF%, as you obviously realize. The more accurate ways are expensive, and the common ones are pretty inaccurate for anything other than establishing a trend line over many individual estimates. Even when establishing a trend, there will be some outliers to ignore.
Also, if you're trying to improve composition, your lifting program and nutrition are vital, as you undoubtedly know. The slower you lose fat, the more likely muscle retention will be reasonable, and the better chance of muscle gain. Way too many people here think they've gained muscle in a deficit because their BF% went down quite significantly.
Therefore, in addition, for more insight, I'd suggest converting the percents to pounds. If we take your estimates as precise, you were 34% BF at 206, and are now 31% at 192, so that would imply going from (rounded numbers) 70 pounds fat/136 pounds lean to 59.5 pounds fat/132.5 pounds lean.
Lean mass is more than just muscle, of course. We want to lose some lean mass when we lose weight: I'll bet I'd look like an engorged tick if I still had the blood volume I needed when obese, for example. A super generic rule of thumb is that a reasonable average weight loss effort might be around 75% fat, 25% lean loss.
You've lost 10.5 pounds of fat, 3.5 pounds lean. That would be a ratio of 75% fat, 25% lean, so a decent outcome in those terms IMO.
Again, that's assuming all the estimates are accurate, but also assuming my arithmetic is correct (the latter of which can be a tenuous assumption 😆). I showed my work above so you can check my arithmetic. But I think from that example, you can see why I'm saying that looking at it in pounds, not just percents, can provide a clearer mental picture of what's actually happening.
By the way, some of the same logic can be applied to estimating a goal weight, as long as you realize there's a whale of a lot of estimation involved.
Example: You're at 31% body fat at 192. Let's say you want to be 18% body fat.
As a ridiculously approximate estimate, we could assume that all of your loss will be fat. You have about 132.5 pounds of lean mass now. To have 18% BF, the question is "what body weight is 132.5 pounds 82% of?", since 18% BF implies 82% lean. The formula will be 132.5 divided by 0.82, which is 162.6 (with some rounding in there again). If you keep all your current lean mass, and want 18% BF, your goal weight would be roughly 162.6.
Of course, your continuing loss won't be entirely fat, there'll be some lean mass loss. The actual goal weight for 18% BF would probably be somewhat lower - likely not lots - but you can figure that out more readily as you go along and see your trend lines.
Alternatively, if you want to estimate it now, one option would be to assume the same 75/25 split of fat to lean loss and get a closer goal weight estimate. I don't love math enough to figure that out for you: Not being Zany Math Woman, I'd probably have to do a spreadsheet or at least think really hard, and I'm too lazy. Apologies!
You've been doing great - wishing you continuing excellent results!
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