You now need a goal-where you want your weight to be. Oh sure… we’ll have smaller goals along the way but lets pick a destination. We will first determine your healthy weight range by calculating your current BMI. Body Mass Index is the relation between your weight and height and it is one of the most accurate ways to determine if extra pounds are posing a risk to your health. A BMI of 18.5-24.9 is considered normal,25-29.9 overweight and over 29.9 is morbid obesity. A BMI of 25-34.9 with a waist circumference of greater than 35 inches in women and 40 inches in men is associated with a greater risk of a wide variety of diseases. I like the BMI calculator at the CDC website(google CDC/BMI).
Once we determine where you are now, lets decide where you’re going. We are going to pick a weight within the 18.5-24.9 range for your height and guess what the people at the low end of this range are not as long lived as the people in the middle-end of the range in recent studies. One possible reason is that people who are frail from chronic illness may appear on the low end of the BMI scale. I recommend you chose a weight at the 21 to 24 BMI for most persons. One way to decide is to think back to the size/weight you were when you felt-as an adult -you were at your optimal weight. (If you have been overweight your entire adult life we will go with the 21 -24 BMI) Figure what that weight makes your BMI. Could you easily maintain that weight back then?
An example is a man who tells me he is 5’9 and 220lbs placing him in the morbid obesity category of BMI greater than 30. This may suprise some of you since, while overweight, those numbers don’t sound all that terrible. However his BMI places him at high risk of a whole host of unsavory diseases. He then tells me he weighed 164 lbs as a young man when he exercised regularly in his line of work and played on a work fast pitch team. He felt he looked good at this weight and that he maintained it fairly easily until he changed jobs and no longer exercised regularly. Over the years the pounds crept up. We decided to make this his goal-which would put him at a BMI of 24.2.
A second example is a middleaged woman who is 5’8 and 171 lbs which is a BMI of 26 or overweight. She tells me when she was young she modeled at a weight of 118 lbs putting her at an unhealthy BMI of 17. She later weighed in her 120’s for a decade or so but struggled to maintain this with bizarre eating habits and consequently had a lack of energy. Further probing reveals when she gained weight back then her weight would settle at 137 or so..something at the time she did not like..but on further reflection was a weight that she could maintain-at the time-fairly easily. This would have given her a healthy BMI of 20.8. After further discussion we settled on a weight goal of 145 lbs.-a BMI of 22 and representing a weight loss goal of 26 lbs. . We set the goal for this weight loss at 6 months.
An important point. Your body knows what it wants to weigh. Help it achieve that goal weight. Than we will talk about how to keep it there.
Review
1. What is your current BMI?
2, At what adult weight did you look and feel your best?
3. How easy was that weight to maintain healthfully for you?
4. What BMI is that weight goal? Is it in our desired range of 21-24?
5. If it is not in the goal range of 21-24 lets talk about how easy was it to maintain. If it is a BMI of 20 but you did easily maintain it maybe it is reasonable for your frame. Spend some time reflecting on your past weight. If you never really achieved a desirable adult weight figure with the BMI calculator a BMI for your height between 21-24. Make that your goal.
Finally -how many pounds do you want to lose? 26 like our female patient or 126? Both are doable. We will figure on roughly a pound a week-some weeks you will lose more..some weeks you will not lose at all..and occasionally you will lose gound. Don’t get discouraged.
Remember YOU DID NOT GAIN THIS WEIGHT OVERNIGHT!! WHY ON EARTH WOULD IT THEN BE IT BE LOST OVERNIGHT!!
Unreasonable expectations combined with no idea of where you are going-no goal-equals failure without doubt.
But now you have an idea where you stand,where you want to be..next I am going to show you how we get there.
