I'm nine-tenths the man I used to be. Through 8 weeks, I'm down 23 pounds and over 10% of my starting weight.
So, now, in addition to continuing their ominous warnings about the rate of my weight loss for a third week in a row, OWW tells me that I should start to focus on my goal weight. I don't know what exactly their advice is for setting a goal weight, but default setting for their program sets you with a dismayingly low weight. In my own case, OWW's default goal weight was 139 pounds, which I haven't weighed since one week after the end of my high school wrestling days, and which I have no ambition to ever weigh again.
Originally, I had set my goal weight in the system as being 180 pounds, believing in the importance of reasonable goals and thinking that if I lost 32 pounds that would be, you know, a lot. Then, however, I realized that if I did manage to reach 180, I would still be "overweight" according to the CDC's BMI standards.* It seemed a little strange and unambitious to go to all this work of dieting and have my goal be something that was still overweight. So, I lowered my goal weight to 170, which was the highest 5-pound increment that would put me in the "normal" range. I did have a friend tell me this weekend that she didn't think 170 was a "realistic" goal, but, well, 170 (or a little less) was what I weighed before the Great Weight Gain of 2003.
That said, frankly, I'm still going to be pretty happy if I make it to 180. For that matter, I'm happy now, but, still, determined to keep with it, although my willpower regarding food did show significant cracks this weekend.
* There are important caveats to using BMI to determine whether one is overweight, but, I don't think I could honestly use any of those caveats to argue that a "normal" BMI for me is higher than the CDC standards.
5 comments:
i would need to weigh between 162 and 163 pounds to be at the high end of normal. but i could weigh as little as 121 pounds and still be normal. that is a wiiiiide range, at least it seems so to me. also, holy crap, i think i would look pretty scary at 121.
should i start leaving malt balls outside your door to tempt you? maybe a malt ball here and there would slow your weight loss down a bit.
My resolve is stronger even than malt balls.
we'll see about that. i've broken many people stronger than you.
Yeah, I don't know about those ranges. The bottom of my "normal" range is 108 pounds. I weighed 110 pounds in high school and my doctor put me on Ensure Plus (the liquid fat and protein they feed people in nursing homes) in addition to regular meals.
On the other side of things, a friend of mine runs in the morning and plays soccer at night (and will often play three games a day in a weekend tournament) and is classified as "obese."
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