Welcome, Lynda! Congratulations on your fabulous weight loss!
You’ve found the right place — here at the Maintainers Forum, we’re all about keeping this weight off for the rest of our lives.
You got some great advice from Ilene! She’s right that nothing’s really going to change for you once you reach your goal weight, whatever that may turn out to be. Most of us have discovered that maintenance looks like losing because you’ll probably eat the same way as you did to lose and you’ll probably exercise the same ways and amount. So it may not be all that important to know WHEN you reach your goal weight since life’s going to look pretty much the same afterwards. I personally had a number picked out and when I reached it, it was an anticlimax — like, OK, this is nice, but tomorrow I’ll get up and do exactly the same things as today, so what’s the big deal?
But to answer your question, how to know when to stop? Sometimes your body just tells you where it wants to be and your weight loss stops. I’m at the point now where it’s extremely difficult for me to lose any more pounds. My body likes it where it is right now. So you may find that though you want to lose ten more pounds, it’s just not in the cards.
Or you can go by a weight chart or BMI (pretty much the same thing), although as Ilene points out, BMI is not accurate for those of us who carry a lot of muscle. You could also use clothes size as a gauge and at a size 8, I’d say you’re doing very well!
Another measure is body fat % — you’d need to go to a gym to have this done or use a BF gadget (which may or may not be very accurate). There are also some on-line calculators that use measurements, but I’m a little skeptical of them (one put me at a
negative 4% body fat! — I don’t think so!
) In any event, I think that body fat % is a better overall gauge of health and fitness than a number on the scale or BMI.
You bring up a hot issue about friends and family telling you not to lose any more weight. Many of us have experienced similar reactions from others, telling us we’ve lost too much or we look sickly or any one of a number of negative reactions. There’s a lot of reasons why we get these comments, most of which don’t have anything to do with us (it’s more about them). In the end, it’s up to
YOU to decide where you want to be! It’s your body that you’ve worked so hard to transform — you decide where you're comfortable and what’s reasonable to try to maintain for the rest of your life.
As to your last sentence:
I am really frightened that if I stop the weight will sneak back up. You’re absolutely right: the weight will PILE back on if you stop! Keep doing what you’re obviously been doing so well and see how your body reacts. And stick around here with us — this is a great group and we’re all dedicated to keeping the weight off for the rest of our lives.