I am a long way from maintenance, unfortunately but wonder if you can help me with a small question.

How do you set a target when you have not been satisfactorily slim for a long time. I guess you adjust either up or down, when you are nearer the goal? I wonder whether I will not see myself as successful until I have hit my 140 target which may be too low and thus hard to maintain. Of course it may be too high, who knows.

I often check the profiles of posters, to see how weight matches height. The range is vast, which is understandable, given the different shapes we all are. However, I do not really know what shape I should be. I hope it will be clearer when I am nearer...

Any wise thoughts????

I think you've answered your own question!

I had 150 as my goal and adjusted it down to 140. But, what I'm really going by is how I look. I rarely weigh myself.

Some people use body fat % which is a more accurate picture of your body composition or a target piece of clothing.

It's whatever you feel comfortable with. If you don't become obsessed with seeing the scales move down, you'll have more success with maintanence because you will have established really good LC dietary habits.

Karen

Hi Lucy. At first, I think my goal weight was unrealistically low. While low-fat dieting, I was quite a bit lighter than this. The problem was that I was most likely deficient in protein for a very long time and had no muscle tone. Now I get plenty of protein, and even though the number on the scale is a lot higher than it was back then, I'm really not much larger. About a size or two.

So try to keep listening to your body, and pay more attention to how you feel and how your clothes fit than the number on the scale. Best of luck.

First off, just because it has happened and I heard about it today..I was very sad and shocked to hear about the Shuttle disaster. A national symbol, but personal tragedies for the families and friends.


Thank you for the wise words. It will be interesting when I get nearer. I like the idea of using clothes not scales.

I started at 191. Out of college was 134 and real thin. I remember when I was 160 I couldn't stand the thought of being 160 it was horrible. Did little or nothing to change my ways and found myself as high as 195. So for my target I thought well how about 5 lbs under that horrid 160 or 155? That is how it happened. Then when I lost 18 lbs to 173 - sure I was excited - then lost 23 to 168 and stalled. For a while 155 looked real intimidating. Here I thought 155 was realistic but now it seemed so far away. But perserverance got me to 155. Now if I go up a couple lbs I get to close to the dreaded 160. So I have been thinking of a new target of 148 - still higher than my college weight but further away from 160.

I remember being 120 after I got out of college and I remembered it was a good weight for me. The pounds crept on. Next thing I knew, I was 132. Then I got pregnant. So I started my LCing journey at 145.5. I am almost nine months into this and have been stuck at a 20-21 lb. loss so far. But I am guilty of not exercising (the only exercise I've been getting is running around after a toddler). I am going to start adding some exercise into my daily routine. I have been told that I will gain at first, but my last 4.5 lbs. should come off.

I never weighed myself when I was thin, I thought scales caused nothing but misery and had little to do with one's health or fitness. So I had no idea what I weighed when I was slim before, and I pretty much picked a goal at random: 130. As I was losing I adjusted down twice, to 125 and then 120. I thought about going for 115, but I decided it would be more sensible to stop thinking about the scale (I still believe they do more harm than good), exercise more, and aim for a size 6 as my ultimate goal. That's where I am now. --Sarah

ps: hi y'all, I'm still 1 pound away but can I join this forum anyway?

I just adjusted my goal weight up. Before having kids, I was comfortable at 120. That just seemed to be my natural weight, so I chose that as my target weight at first.

But these days my goal is more for health than weight... and since I am exercising (way more than I ever did at 120!!) I think I can safely add some lbs to account for muscle weight.

I think you're right- we all make adjustments as we get closer to goal!

Shel

To set my goal, I went to Fitday (www.fitday.com) and used their website to find the healthy weight range for my height. Then I picked a goal smack dab in the middle of my healthy weight range. I've reached my goal and now I'm thinking of maybe dropping another few pounds.

By the way- I bought Atkins for Life and found it to be much more professionally written than his previous books. The problem is, that at this point I don't really want to follow recipes so that I can get exact carb counts, and so it's therefor difficult to guess whether I've added 5 or 10 or however many carbs to my diet.

I adjusted mine down. I thought 130lb was gonna be good, because I have more muscle than before but turns out I overestimated my frame size. I had quite a bit to go at 130lb...