Weight Goals

Weight Goals 

Thursday, July 21, 2011 

When I signed up for the SparkPeople site, I knew I needed to lose some weight. I didn't have a clear idea of how much. Never mind, you can change it later. So I started without a weight goal. 

10 days later, I've done my reading and thought about it. I weight 155 in high school, 165 as a young single guy, and my weight went up from there after I got married. In high school I was a totally non-athletic type with no upper body strength. At age 49, I took up weight lifting, and even after a year of no regular lifing I'm stronger than I was at any time prior to my 49th birthday. So I have some muscle mass that I didn't have when I was thinner, and I don't really know where I can go down to. 

Read some more, thought some more. Top of healthy guideline for BMI would be 182 for me. I got down to 185 last year, and felt pretty good. I could also still see a small roll of fat around my waist at 185. Looked at some ideal weight pages on the internet, and found two methods that calculated my ideal weight at 170 or 177 for medium frame, which is probably what I am. 

Okay. My goal is 175. I can change it later if I need to, but that gives me something to shoot for. Never mind that I bounced off 190 once, and failed to maintain 185 another time. I wasn't tracking food then. Give this a shot. From today's weight, that would be losing 19 pounds. I know I can do the first 9, because I managed that before. 

Got that far, and couldn't find how to set a weight goal on SparkPeople. The FAQ pointed me at a link that didn't exist to change my weight goal. Dig further. To set a weight goal when I don't have one, I have to reset my goals. Fair enough. But this also blows away the food and exercise I've tracked to date. Dumb design, but if that's the way it is I'd rather do it before I have a long time period tracked. 

So I reset my goals, accepting that it would blow away data I'd rather keep. Did it twice, because it turns out that I can't have a weight goal unless I change my focus (on the site) from "live a healthy lifestyle" to "lose weight." That's a psychological blow. The health comes first, the weight is a side effect. I could not care less how I look in a swimsuit, and I view shopping for different clothes as a disadvantage of chainging weight in either direction.

Went through that dance. Got to keep my favorites in nutrition and my food groups. Lost my favorites for exercise tracking. My Other Goals, which consisted solely of tracking steps by day, remained. At least that's something. I re-created today's food and exercise from memory, so at least I won't have the issue of the program thinking I didn't do anything the first day because I happened to sign up in the evening. 

Time to stop lying to myself about how much muscle mass I gained by lifting weights. I'm not a body builder, and I didn't add 20 pounds of muscle mass. I might have added 10. I remember being 175 and thinking I was overweight; we'll see whether I still have some flab around the middle when I get there again.