Most people feel that they need to lose weight, even if they appear to be of a healthy weight. Often our weight loss goals are based on what we think we should look like rather than what's reasonable for our bodies right now. In general, a candidate for weight loss may have the follow:
- A BMI of more than 25.
- A Waist-Hip ratio of higher than .8 for women and higher than 10 for men .
- An Abdominal Girth measurement of more than 35 inches in women and 40 inches in men.
Of course, these aren't the only clues that tell us that we need to lose weight. There are those annoying indications like tight clothes, getting out of breath doing simple activities, or stepping on a scale for the first time in awhile. But, before we set goals based on what we think we should weigh, it is better make sure that do we really need to lose weight.
Finding the Right Weight Loss Goal
Once we have made up our mind to lose weight, the next step is to set a reasonable weight loss goal for ourselves which is probably the most difficult thing to do. The goal should be realistic in nature and not just too hard to reach. If the weight loss is just for health reasons, the goal may be more modest, say 5-10% of our current weight. But what if we have something more specific in mind like a certain clothing-size we want to fit into, then the task of setting a weight loss goal becomes very difficult. Before setting up any weight loss goal we need to understand that every single person is different. It is not good to have the same weight loss goal as a friend or family member who is 5”6 while we are only 5”2 in height. Another thing to take into account when setting our goal is how overweight we are now actually. That will help us to decide how much weight we should ideally set to lose in the beginning. If we have quite a lot of weight to lose, it is always better to set small targets. For example, if we are over ten kg overweight, we should set ourselves a target to lose around three to four kg as our first target. Starting off little will help us to keep the goal achievable and we will not become depressed for not reaching it. So we need to focus our own body, keeping in mind our height and what doctors say about our ideal weight before setting up our goal. The key to setting weight loss goals is to follow the standard of goal setting. It needs to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and tangible. We should not aim to going back to how we were in high school? If so our goal is extremely likely to be unreachable as we were probably a lot more active in high school. It can be hard sometimes facing up to the fact that things are simply different now and we will never be how we were years ago. However, that doesn’t mean to say that you will not be able to slim down, it just means that we have to be realistic about our goals. If we set sensible goals for ourselves we are more likely to meet them and have a better chance of keeping the weight off. In fact, losing even five to 10 percent of our weight is the kind of goal that can help improve our health and looks dramatically. Overall the main reasons people fail to lose weight is because they make their weight loss goals unattainable. By keeping our goals realistic we are much more likely to succeed. Also, we must not forget that everybody has bad days so if we do end up gaining a little weight back it is not the end of the world and we can still reach our overall goal. As for how much weight we should expect to lose depends upon the type of exercise we do, the food we eat and our body type. Most of us notice a bigger weight loss at the beginning of our weight loss program but that steadily declines over time and when we get extremely close to your ideal weight, it seems it will take forever to lose those extra few pounds. This is because our bodies know when we are almost of the right weight and do not let us go below our ideal weight without a fight.
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