Hello everyone! I've been lurking on this section of the message board for awhile now, and I thought it seemed like a good fit for me and what I'm trying to do, so I'm jumping in.

I'm 24, in grad school, attempting to lose weight for the millionth time. But I am much more successful now that I've ever been before, and I believe it's in part because of all the inspirational stories I have been reading here, so thank you all for that!

I had a big "hurray" moment this week! I hope no one minds that I'm posting it here, but I know I am always psyched to read other people's victories. It also helps me to write them down so I can remember how happy I was during the tough times. Okay, here we go...

I've been at my parents' house for the holidays, and so I have been checking my weight on their scale, but I have been using it more to keep track of weight gain/loss rather than a measure of my weight since theirs is slightly off from mine. However, I came back to my house today, and I found that I'm 142 (which is a 4 pound weight loss from the last time I recorded). This means I'm officially 3 pounds under my driver's license weight! And when I was 16/17, I certainly was already lying about my weight and was probably into the 150s when I told them I was 145; therefore, this is defintely the smallest I've been since high school. Yay!

Now for my set back. I went to the doctor's while I was home, and she took my height and weight. I thought I was 5'3, but I'm actually 5'2.5! Boo! I don't really care about the .5" difference except that I was really hoping to get to a "normal" BMI of 140, and now my goal BMI is 136. Ugh. I know it's only a 4 pound difference, but I feel like each pound is such a fight, and I was getting so close to being in the healthy BMI range for probably the first time since I was in grade school. So now I've also bumped my goal weight down to 125 from 130. I'm thinking that I should probably go to 120, but I cannot stand the idea of still having over 20 pounds to lose.

Anyway, thanks again for being such a great community!

You'll be fine . . . just take it a day at a time!

The difference in your height might be the time of day when you measured. During the day, our spinal disks compress and make us shorter by half an inch or even more. At night, they expand so we're taller in the morning. Perhaps your previous measurement was in the morning and this one was later in the day. The only point here is that half an inch isn't a lot of difference and it's a moving target, anyway. I wouldn't sweat it. It's really how you look and feel that matters.

Thanks for the support! I didn't mean to sound so negative before. I'm psyched about the progress I've made, and realistically, I know that a .5" difference is basically nothing and 140 was never a magic weight. It was just a small mental thing.

Thanks again.

Yes, but sometimes those small mental things really get to us! Congrats on the loss!!