"Goal" is just a number. You're allowed to change it. If you think your real goal is 5 pounds below your offical goal, go ahead and change your goal!

Originally Posted by FB:
I'm admittedly petty and because my goal weight falls at the upper end of a 'decade', it would be disheartening and mentally exhausting to swing back and forth between those numbers. It's trivial, yes, but 14- and 15- are a big difference to me. That, in addition to temporarily 'losing' goal would play a mind game with this new maintainer.

I SO get that. I agree, maybe sometime it won't matter. But right now, I definitely want my whole maintenance range to be within the 130s. It would drive me a little batty to range around between 138-142. But 135-139 I could live with :) It's funny, because I don't think 128-132 would bother me. That's where I used to sit. Oh well, I don't think it's anything I can make sense out of :dizzy:

Thanks girls - for understanding my crooked thinking and reassuring me.

I think another problem as of late, playing with my goal is that I was experiencing some very occasional, mild, but irritating comments from other losers on the board - questioning whether I'm done or not already. Perhaps it's a way of paying a compliment, I don't know. In turn, I question myself.

Of course it isn't too low! I've done this very healthily, eat a ton of good food and am into building muscles - a body - I'm not into just being skinny. I work with trainers and my doctors, getting regular feedback. In addition, no one in my real life thinks I'm in danger of looking too slim - quite the contrary - they're generally impressed by the physique I'm managing to build.

I am relatively new to bodybuilding, and I think conceptions of weight are a little different in that world. Removing my stats for the most part from my profile helps. But that sucks, I worked HARD for those stats. Then again, I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea - think I'm a waif.

This board has been a very critical part of my weight loss, invaluable. At this point I need it more than ever, and honestly don't want to lose any acceptance I might have gotten so far.

Goal for now is a lean 141-147 at 5'10" if my previous statements raise any concern.

~Julie - I get that. Especially considering how hard you've worked to bust through the 40's.

Originally Posted by FB:
As more time passes, I'm sure the numbers won't mean so much, it will all be old hat - but at this point it's shiny, new and fresh - so in all honesty, the numbers do matter right now. A LOT.

Is it unreasonable right now, in your opinion to make goal the redline? Until I get a better grasp on this? Or should I just give my poor self a break? Losing weight, as we all know very well is so much work.

FB - I just read this post, and want to respond from the perspective of not quite at six month maintaining. My original goal was 127. I hit that in August. After that I continued to lose until the end of October, getting down to 121. I never changed my goal. I can tell, you though, that at that point, even swinging up to 125 from the new 121 freaked me out. At first, it was very important to me to not go over my original goal, and then, it became just as important to not go over the 121. In my head I reset goal to 123 because I wasn't swinging up over that, so that became my high redline. I also saw that some days I was swinging as low as 117, only once went lower and my response freaked me out a little - I found myself wanting to get lower desperately. That was when I read something from Schumeany and set 117 as my lowpoint redline. :) I was afraid if I set too tight a margin I would freak myself out - five pounds between 118-122 felt good to me. The 117 & 123 felt good to me for the limits. I would never have set the fluctuation to be a few pounds over and a few pounds under goal. The idea of it made me feel like I had never made goal in the first place, honestly.

So, I know how you feel. You think about hitting goal and all the excitement that comes with it, then saying 'well, now I can gain two pounds back and I'll be fine', while most likely true, feels like you are doing something wrong. Saying your redline is goal right now isn't bad at all in my opinion. You may find that you continue to lose a little after you hit your official goal, anyway, as you tweak calories to find maintenance range. You may find that you don't. You may get to goal and be perfectly okay with small fluctuations above or below.

It will be six months for me at the end of this month and I'm starting to relax a little with the maintenance, but I still don't think I would set my redline to be above my goal. I did move my range up 2.25 pounds to account for my new breast implants, and even that was hard. My first thought was to lose a little weight when I got back up and around, then I decided to give myself a little break. Really, I haven't gained any other weight except the actual implant. As I weighed 119.5 yesterday and 120 on the morning before surgery, I may have actually lost some... Approaching redline, and I can already feel the pull of 'ooo, I could cut back a little and with this extra weight I have a few more pounds to go before I hit underweight BMI...'. While it is all just numbers, the numbers are very important to me right now!

So, long rambly answer, I know. Bottom line, I don't think it is unreasonable to set redline at goal, as long as you are prepared for the fluctuations and don't let them make you crazy. Good luck!:hug:

I've set it at 5, to make room for water weight and other natural variations, but I guess it's actually closer to 2-3. I don't really plan for TOM any more (I haven't had my period since, uhm, October? so it'd be a bad excuse); since I wear jeans and fitting clothes most of the time, 2-3 lbs is already enough to make my clothes feel tight; and I'm short, too, so a larger variation doesn't work well.

Honestly, I go less by the scale and more by my clothes. Tight pants is my "red line" to get seriously back on track. For the first 3 years, I maintained very easily around 130. This year has been more of a struggle (I had a tough work trip and then a tougher death in the family). I have found that my clothes do not fit well at 137, I would like to stay around 130. I have set 135 as my scale red line.