How to: pick a goal weight

I find that I post this in threads a lot, and while I like seeing which arbitrary or carefully selected numbers people choose, I want to help people who can't say "before I got fat I liked how I looked at x weight" because I've been overweight my whole adult life and so have many others. So here is a somewhat easy way to work out what can be a good ballpark

1) calculate body fat %. If you don't have calipers, google the military circumference based method that guesses your body fat based on your measurements (all you need is a tape measure)
2) calculate lean mass: lean mass=current weight*(1-bodyfat%). I am 143 and approximately 23% body fat, so my lean mass is 143*(1-.23) which is 110 lb
3) pick a goal body fat percent. This is a somewhat arbitrary part, you can look at the healthy bf% charts and google things to get a good idea of what different percents look like. From what I've read, women tend to get abs at about 18%, so I'll shoot for that. Then I will assume I maintain my lean mass (by strength training and consuming 1g protein per lb of lean mass) and use the reverse of the above equation. If lean mass = bodyweight*(1-body fat %), then goal weight = lean mass/(1-goal bf%) in my case 110/(1-.18) = 134. If I picked 20%, it would be 137, so something I like about this is that at lean mass in the low hundreds or lower, there isn't that much change in goal weight based on body fat percent. Only 9 pounds make up a 5% body fat %!

I like this method because as you've seen, many ladies here are at weights or want to be at weights that I have too much lean mass for. And I don't want to lose my lady muscle just for a low number! Strong is the new skinny