Thank you for inspiring me to develop goals that are not focused exclusively on the scale! I can't wait to make my own list.

I really like the 10% BMI goal. I'm 5 months out, and I'm still thinking in terms of numbers of pounds for weight loss, while percentage might be more realistic. Of course I'm not losing as quickly as I did in the beginning, but as I think about it, my BMI is quite a bit lower, so that makes sense. Thanks for a very obvious, but important, ah-ha moment.

I really like the 10% BMI goal. I'm 5 months out, and I'm still thinking in terms of numbers of pounds for weight loss, while percentage might be more realistic. Of course I'm not losing as quickly as I did in the beginning, but as I think about it, my BMI is quite a bit lower, so that makes sense. Thanks for a very obvious, but important, ah-ha moment.

Jennie - I knew the scale would be fickle on a day to day basis and I knew that having a more global view of the weightloss process would help me keep my focus on the big picture. I think this was my one relatively intellectual thought during my pain-med haze of the first week post-op! I'm not losing near as fast now either and I knew it was likely going to take me a full year to lose my weight, so the percentage has been a good tool for me. I'm not gonna lie - part of me hoped I would be one of those people who had lost it all within 6 months - but the reality is that it's going to take a year. Not sad about this though - I'm focused on enjoying the journey.

Thank you for inspiring me to develop goals that are not focused exclusively on the scale! I can't wait to make my own list.

Melody2 - You are welcome - I feel like I have now payed it forward as I got this inspiration from someone else on this site my first week after surgery. An interesting note about my goals - when I first wrote them down I thought they were achievable, but I had no idea how fast so many of them would happen or how realitively easy it would be to meet the goals. My strategy was to have realistic achievable goals to inspire me on the days when the scale mocked me - and it was a huge success in terms of keeping me looking at the big picture. But I honestly was surprised at how realitively easy they were to achieve - it's interesting how differently I think about this process almost 5 months out than I did 5 days out! I was so afraid it wouldn't work, or that I would be a "slow loser," but now I realize that it's going to work, that success or failure is up to me, and most importantly - for the first time in my life I have to ability to make weightloss a success.