Sarahs Weightloss Blog

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for everyone thats been following my blog, this has really helped me stay on track and keep focused.  I hope I’ve been able to give you all some advice which has helped you achieve your own goal or get started on a new life style.

However now I need a little help and advice from you guys.  I have two questions:

1) how do you know when you have achieved a healthy weight? 

and

2) how do you maintain your weight when you are sure your done?

This is why I am mulling these questions over, and haven’t come up with an answer by myself . . .

I was thinking, everyone (understandably) talks about losing weight, but what about what happens after the desired weight loss has been achieved?  For example I’ve been losing weight for 11 months now.  At the beginning I had an ultimate goal weight in mind of 65kgs which would bring my to the top of a normal BMI for my height, which I broke up into smaller stages of weight loss goals.  As you know I’ve knocked through my penultimate goal of 75kgs and am now 73.8kgs.  Now I’m actually quite happy with my body shape.  I feel loads more confident, have much more energy and my personal life has improved so much as a result of this.  So I posed a question to my (obviously biased) husband: ’should I lose any more weight?’  After reassuring him that it wasn’t a trick question, he said that it was up to me, but in his opinion I really didn’t need to, plus I did just spend around 400 quid on clothes in a UK size 10, so why would I want to lose more weight and not fit into them?  Good point.

I keep asking myself though – am I really a healthy weight? How do you know really if you are a healthy weight?  Sounds silly I know but hear me out, this is my conundrum:

1) I still have an overweight BMI of 28.1, however I am pretty sure I am now an English dress size of 10 after my shopping spree at the weekend – what seriously is that all about? How thin do you have to be to be ‘normal’?  

2) One possible explanation is that I cycle, run, swim and do weight training a lot, and BMI can’t tell apart being overweight due to fat or being heavy due to muscle, so maybe throw this BMI out of the equation and accept I am now the size and shape I want to be and leave it at that?

3) BUT I use the machine at the gym to measure my body fat, it uses a light electric pulse through the hands, I have no idea how accurate it is, but it says I have 31.7% body fat, which according to the charts is ‘obese’ – I am V confused!  

So to sum up, I am pretty happy with myself, I would like a slightly flatter tummy perhaps, but that’s about it.  I am the dress size I want to be, the shape I want to be, I don’t particularly want to be loads thinner – I like being a petite curvy girl.  But all the charts say I’m overweight or obese – hmmmmm.

But that’s not all I’m a little worried about.  My other major problem is: where do I go from here?  I know how to eat and exercise to lose weight.  BUT what do I do to maintain my weight in the long run?  How do healthy people eat? I don’t know, I’ve never really been a healthy person who could control their eating habits. Is it just as simple as – track the calories against exercise and balance the two? I think I could probably manage that, but we’ll see . . .

So what do you all think? The floor is open, post your comments and suggestions please.  Anyone else have or had similar issues?

Till next time