Setting your goal weight

[TennJenn 9]

What is a good way to set a goal weight? I don't want to set an unrealistic goal, but I don't want to set my goal weight too high either. Anyone have a good way to set a goal?

[Tiffykins 673]

I discussed it with my surgeon. My ideal weight is 129-145 for my frame size. We set my initial goal weight at 150. My surgeon suspects that I may lose more, but he said that 150 was realistic and would be a good starting point.

[burnsun 27]

I set my first goal (with the band at 165) Just under the bmi of 25 cause of my frame I hide weight well and would have a lot of weight due to extra skin......however as I approached that number I decided I wanted to go to 150.

When all was said in done I hung out most of the time (with the band) at 153 - 160. Which is a little below the BMI of 25 for my 68 1/2 inch frame.

I was afraid to get much lower Cause I was a size 8-10 on the bottom and a small on top and my breasts were gone!

[Jachut 487]

Oh, go ahead and set an unrealistic one! I did. Why have WLS only to set goals that are easy to reach, lol.

I said to the nutritionist before I was banded that I wanted to be (I'm converting from metric here) 150lb. I was about 250 at the time. She scoffed at me, skinny young thing that she was. She said that people who have lapbands only lose 50% to 70% of their excess weight.

Yep. Ok. So I let her write 170lb on her little sheet. Never gave it a second thought.

I got to 150lb without a problem. As I always knew I would. I have a BMI of 21. Why the heck would I settle for still being OVERWEIGHT?????

I wasnt very overweight for very much of my life. I always hovered around a BMI of about 24, 25 and i felt pudgy and chubby at that. I was 170lb or so for about 15 years. I always always tried to lose weight, I always had a tendency to gain it and it was no surprise that I really did become overweight after I started having babies. I always could have predicted it. So I knew that I wasnt aiming for a BMI of 25 again and on the way down, the weight loss that made the MOST difference to my body and how I looked and felt about myself was going from 25 to 21.

Depends a lot on your body type - I'm very tall, and meant to be thin. I dont have a lot of muscle, I'm in good shape but I'm not meant to be muscled and curvy. So thin for me is good, in fact I could afford to lose more, I'd be fine with a BMI under 20. My boobs are gone, but that can be fixed, and for me having boobs meant I also had a big bum.

Edited June 30, 2009 by Jachut

[WASaBubbleButt 41]

What is a good way to set a goal weight? I don't want to set an unrealistic goal, but I don't want to set my goal weight too high either. Anyone have a good way to set a goal?

I didn't really know what weight would be ideal for me so my original goal was a BMI of 24.9, the top end of normal BMI. I just went from there.

Here is a BMI calculator:

Calculate your BMI - Standard BMI Calculator

And a BMR calculator as well:

BMR Calculator

On the above link if you look in the lower right hand side it gives more things to calculate. ;o)

[Elisabethsew 50]

Weight goal charts are made up by insurance companies. MD's use a simple formula for woman which is 100 pounds for 5 feet and 5-8 pounds per inch over 5' depending on frame. I put 135 as a goal just for the heck of it. I take it 10 pounds at a time and figure when I look in the mirror and like what I see, THAT will be my goal weight.

[MacMadame 81]

This comes up a lot. So I saved one my posts about it. (Yes, I'm lazy.) Here it is:

I honestly don't care what I end up weighing. I care about how I look, what size I wear, and what percentage my body fat is. My first goal was just to get to a normal BMI and then worked on my body fat until it got on the low side of normal. Now I just want to look "cut" and/or "buff."

At one of my support group meetings, the topic was "Goal" and we talked about setting a goal and also about maintenance. For setting a goal, I thought we were given some really helpful guidelines.

Using BMI:

A healthy BMI is considered to be anything between 18.5 and 24.9. However, that's a big range and where you should fall in it will depend on a lot of factors.

Met Life says the "optimal" BMI is 21.4. That's optimal in terms of insurance -- longevity vs. healthiness and other factors. If you just take longevity into account, 22-24 is the range with the best longevity.

Using Body Fat %:

Acceptable range for women is 17-34% But the lower 20s are the healthiest.

Other considerations:

What can you maintain? It's better to have a higher goal and maintain it than to be bouncing all over the place, starving yourself one week and bingeing the next because you can't maintain your goal.

Then again, don't sell yourself short ... WLS is different from dieting and people often get much lower than they ever thought they could.

Is there a size you used to be that you would like to be again? A weight you remember feeling great at?

How much work are you willing to do long-term? How often do you want to eat treats, how much do you want to exercise? It may be less in the long-run than during the weight loss phase and you may find that you'd rather be a bit heavier and not have to work so hard. Or you may turn into an athlete and be able to get down much lower than you ever dreamed of. And everything in between.

Bounce Back:

A lot of people end up 10 lb. over their lowest weight. So maybe you want to adjust your goal downward to account for that.

Plastic Surgery:

PS say that they usually end up removing 10-30 lb. of excess skin and fat cells when they do PS on WLS patients. So you may want to make your goal higher so you aren't beating yourself up trying to get down to a weight that you can't get to because you've got 10 lb. of excess skin hanging off you.

When you take all these things into consideration, it should give you a ball park figure that seems good to you that you can set as a goal.

Oh and here are some calculators that might help you:

Calculator

Body Mass Index

Happy Weight Calculator: Calculators: Self.com

They all use different formulas, some more scientific than others.

[TennJenn 9]

Thanks, MacMadame! Very informative post. :thumbup:

[BobBayCityMI 111]

If I were to make it to the "proper" weight according to the tables, it would be around 190, which would require the removal of a limb, most likely a leg. In high school in top shape and thin I was 220. I am shooting for 245 now, which would make me a SKINNY dude (for me!).