Goal: Have you reached yours? If not, have you revised your goal?

My original goal for myself was 150. I am at 175 right now and 16 mths out. My surgeon told me 150 was too high and said he wanted me to get to 130. I'm still keeping it at 150 though because once I have the skin removed, that should take quite a bit off. I don't want to be 100lbs!

Maria,

I am so happy that you have hung in there and allowed the band to work for you.  You have really worked hard and have fought frustration along the way. I can't wit to see you in a size 12 or smaller.

You kind of know my story.  I wanted to get down to 146 and to be a size 10.  At146 my BMI would have been around 24.7.  When I got there I kept losing and got down as far as119.  I looked , bony and like an old scarecrow.  I have leveled out now at 125 which is a comfortable weight for me.  I could not be more surprised about fitting into a size 0 or 2.  I am sure I am carrying at least 8 lbs of loose skin.....

Hope to see you soon.

The only weight goal I had was to have a normal BMI. I figured I'd know what my actual goal weight was when I got there and that it would probably be less than the 132 that got me to a BMI of 24.9. I got down to 112-113 (BMI 21) but I was kind of scrawny and I wanted more muscle. I ended up around 119-124 in the end and I liked it.

Then I crashed my bike and couldn't work out due to a head injury and I got as high as 131 before I got my head injury and eating under control. I'm heavily into weight loss mode now, not really dieting, but not very hungry either, and I'm back down to 126 and I figure I'll aim for 120-122 as I've lost some muscle from not working out and see what happens again.

I am a firm believer in two contradictory things. First, I believe a lot of us do settle because we are a bit afraid of being a normal weight and/or we don't want to do the work to get there. Second, I believe some of us torture ourselves needlessly aiming for some sort of untainable perfection and can't be happy no matter where we are. These are the people who consider themselves a failure because they have a bit of bounce back or didn't quite get to goal (though if you subtract their loose skin pounds, they are pretty darn close).

So sometimes I want to encourage people to keep going and to change their way of thinking about food and exercise so they can get down closer to their ideal weight and sometimes I want to encourage people to go for their Happy Weight, the one that's 10 pounds above their Perfect Weight, but still looks damn fine, so they aren't obsessed with the scale and talking like they are failures when they've lost a tremendous amount of weight and should be proud of themselves.

So sometimes I want to encourage people to keep going and to change their way of thinking about food and exercise so they can get down closer to their ideal weight and sometimes I want to encourage people to go for their Happy Weight, the one that's 10 pounds above their Perfect Weight, but still looks damn fine, so they aren't obsessed with the scale and talking like they are failures when they've lost a tremendous amount of weight and should be proud of themselves.

Amen.  Well said.