this is more a response to what you said rather than the general focus of the post, but I just wanted to say that when I weighed 170ish and told my clinic's dietitian that I wanted to try to get down to 150 (which at 5'6" is within the normal BMI range), she told me that was a bit unrealistic because only about 10% of their patients make it to a normal BMI. The rest end up in the "overweight" or "stage 1 obese" (which is not very obese) categories. Research actually does back that up (I checked). I DID actually make it down to 150 - well actually down into the 130s. But at nine years out, I'm now slightly "overweight". But that's where they wanted and expected me to end up anyway, so I guess I'm OK with that (I'd still like to be around 150 +/- though - but it's hard to lose weight when you're pretty close to a normal BMI!