Met first goal weight, go for stretch goal or stop?
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Anonymous
I lost 20 pounds (5'3 F mid 30s) and met my goal weight. I set a 2nd goal (another 8 pounds) which was a stretch for me, I haven't weighed that since I was married 10 years ago and it was hard for me to maintain. I want to stop and just be happy with how I look but I still feel overweight (and technically, I am). Did you stop at your goal weight or keep going? I might just be one of those people who are never happy with their bodies and always feels fat 
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Anonymous
| How hard was it for you to lose those 20 lbs? If it wasn't too difficult and you were still able to enjoy life then I think it is fine to keep going. If you had to give all the fun in life (treats, wine, whatever it is you like) then stop. Another option is to take a diet break, work on maintaining your current weight and then in a month or two go back into a fat loss phase to lose that other 8. Don't underestimate how important it is to be able to maintain your fat loss. |
Anonymous
What's a fat loss phase? |
Anonymous
Dieting/ in phase where you are trying to lose weight/fat. See you don't have to just keep dieting until you hit a goal weight. You can have phases where you are actively trying to lose weight and phases where you are actively trying to maintain. |
Anonymous
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Congrats! What a big accomplishment!
To me, it depends on how successful you've been in the past at maintaining your weight. Are you always either losing or gaining? That's sooo common. Or have you had years of maintaining your weight successfully? If you have a history of being able to maintain your weight, I'd keep going. If you think your stretch goal is too much, maybe find a middle ground? Perhaps the highest weight in your healthy weight range for your height, rather than 5 lbs below that? If you have never really successfully maintained your weight, I would take a pause, and learn to maintain while you've still got good motivation. Can you keep yourself at this weight for three months? Or six months? Then you can reevaluate, see if you want more. But honestly, the ability to maintain your new weight is WAY more important for your healthy than losing another 8 lbs. |
Anonymous
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There is nothing wrong with maintaining your current weight loss. I always struggle with maintenance because it feels like I don't have to be super diligent and then the weight can creep back. I hit my goal weight, lost 20 pounds, and am taking some time to simply maintain. I started weighing myself once a week, now once every 2 weeks. I had a period, Thanksgiving through Christmas, where I put back on 5 pounds. I knew part of it was the season and cookies and pie. I dropped that 5 pounds and am back on maintaining right now.
I want to work on eating healthy with moderation of snacks and the like. Once I am comfortable that I have done a better job with the maintenance, I will work on losing the next 5-10 pounds. I am at the top of the healthy category for my height and weight. I would like to get closer to the center of that category. I also know that if I go too quickly and don't give myself time to adjust to my new normal, I am likely to see my weight go back up. |
Anonymous
My stretch goal IS the highest weight in my healthy range. I'm not a yoyo dieter. I now weigh what I did before I had my babies (5 years ago). Before that I went up and down 5 pounds at a time but I maintained for years. I just want to be happy with my body. Maybe that is my problem. I look back at pictures of me at my smallest and I still thought I was fat then. I don't want to be in this position where I constantly feel like I need to lose weight, I just want to be happy. |
Anonymous
| You have momentum, i would keep it going |
Anonymous
My BMI is 26, I only have to lose 6 pounds to be sub 25 actually. I kind of want to just DO IT. I want to be a good role model for my daughters. Maybe I will maintain for a while because that is the hardest part... |
Anonymous
Being a good role model to your daughters is about so much more than weight, or pushing yourself to diet more. Being focused on a number or specific BMI (when we know there are a lot of flaws in that) I don't think is a goal to strive for in terms of being a good role model. I would instead focus on the other pieces you talked about - being happy with your body or even better thinking about it a lot less. That was a huge shift for me - not that I need my goal to be "wow i love my body!!! My body is amazing!!" all the time, but that I actually just don't need to spend so much brain energy on it. That was real success. When I got to the point that my body was my body and I feed it and move it and listen to it. To me, that is really role modeling something to your daughters. They will get plenty of messages and pressure elsewhere that they need to change their body to be a certain shape or size, they don't need to learn that from you. I would try to focus on listening to your body, stopping when you are full, thinking less about it's size/shape, and the specific number on the scale since you've gotten to a weight you feel good about and the previous weight was hard to maintain. Usually when a weight is hard to maintain our body will push us back from that on it's own, so it's just not really meant to be where you are and is not worth (or healthy) to continue that struggle. Try to also start challenging some of your ideas of health - help your daughters learn that health is about behaviors, not just the shape of your body. It's about enjoying food, but being able to listen when your body says to stop, it's about moving your body regularly. |
Anonymous
First of all, thank you so much for your thoughtful response. You are SO right. Being a role model is not focusing on the scale, but being confident and happy and eating well. I am going to try to focus on that. My waist to hip ratio is .7 and that's something to be grateful for. I will try to give myself a break and accept that I am maintaining and not dieting. it will feel good to not "be on a diet" like I have been since I gained weight with my first 4+ years ago. |
Anonymous
| Somebody clue me in with the waist to hip ratio. Never heard of this type of calculation. |
Anonymous
What type of exercise are you doing? I have been focusing on adding more strength this year. Last year I was working on losing weight. I focused on diet and ended up focused on cardio for my exercise. I love spin classes, they were easy for me to motivate myself to do so I was good about riding 45-60 minutes a day. It helped my health, my heart, and the weight loss. But I know that I need to do more strength work if I want to tone my muscles and look the way that I want to look. The weight is one important part but your look is going to come with exercise, mainly strength classes. I am still doing cardio 3 days a week, but I do 20-30 minutes of strength classes during those days. I do bike bootcamps 2-3 days a week which adds more strength and still has the cardio component which makes me most happy. The best part is that you are showing yourself, and your daughters, how to be healthy. Eat well and exercise. It is good to be strong and lift weights. It is good to care for yourself in the kitchen and the gym. |
Anonymous
Where you carry your fat matters. Having a larger waist compared to your hips is not ideal. |
Anonymous
Of course pp, glad it was helpful. I worked with a wonderful dietician who helped me shift my mindset a little on those things and it was incredibly helpful. One of the other things she used to say that I try to remind myself is that it is absolutely normal for our body to change over our lifetime, in fact it would be abnormal if it didn't. Having babies, growing older, our bodies are meant to change and shift. We don't necessarily want to teach our kids that our goal is for our body to be the same throughout the life course. We want to teach them how to care for it, in a kind way. I would try to let go of the pre-pregnancy number (I think that was it) if you can since the numbers can get us focused on the wrong things - often things that aren't even healthy like restricting too much. Anyway, there's also some interesting research I learned about on the impacts of weight talk and dieting in front of our kids and how it can often backfire. I had no idea and would have thought I was showing my kid how to be healthy, but it's just not supported in leading to healthy kids. Here is one article on it, might feel a little extreme but once you start reading about this stuff it's really fascinating and you realize how it really is everywhere: https://more-love.org/2020/08/18/parents-dont-talk-about-weight-and-dieting-with-your-kids/ |