Did you get to a healthy BMI/is that your aim?

[eatyeateat]

I started just under morbidly obese, have lost 2 stone, still got a BMI of 35. According to BMI the top end of my healthy BMI weight is 11 stone! I don't think I've ever been 11 stone and I was a size 8 as a teenage!

Is that really what I need to get down to to be healthy? My primary aim is improve longevity (I am a slightly older mum)

I think I’m aiming mainly for clothing size- most of my comfortable adult life I’ve been a solid medium, sometimes medium large. Before starting I was L/XL. My goal is S/M.

But I have no real clue what that weight will be as my lifestyle is different and I’ve had kids and extra pregnancies. At 170lbs I thought 145ish (healthy BMI is 135). Now I’m wondering if a healthy BMI might be possible for the first time as an adult!

oooh smart BMI says losing 8lbs is significant for my health; but if I put that as my starting point it suggests losing 8lbs. Fiddling around it really suggests 140 as when losing extra weight makes no difference

I was aiming for a healthy BMI, based on very little, now I think about it. It's just what always gets levelled at me whenever I have doctor's appointment, what I'm "supposed" to be - now I think about it, I don't think I've ever been a healthy BMI. I've always been overweight - less so when I was younger, but never in the healthy range.

I tried Smart BMI but it annoyed me when I set my target as the top end of healthy BMI and told me it was too ambitious. I mean - it's not like I'm expecting to drop to that weight in a month. I'm in it for the long haul!

If I don't get to my 'healthy BMI' goal, I'm ok - I'd just like to be at a point where I'm feeling healthy and comfortable in my own skin.

I can imagine it is hard to visualise what a lower weight is like if you’ve never been that weight. However I have been slim before, so I know the healthy weight range is an accurate indicator and a goal to reach. In fact, I’m aiming to get to around BMI 20 as opposed to 25, because I used to have back rolls and general fat all over at BMI 25. I want to be lean/fit.

I don’t think dress sizes are a good indicator of progress. I could fit into XS clothing when I was obese - because the individual items were oversized and the measurements weren’t a typical “XS”. It doesn’t mean I was literally XS. Personally I feel like I’m I failing myself if I didn’t reach a healthy BMI through MJ as I’d still be at risk of weight related health issues

Similar for me. I know I felt happiest and healthiest with a BMI of 21/22 so that’s what I’m aiming for.

I think we've actually lost sight of what slim looks like. I read a lot of comments where people say they're happy to get to 'just overweight' because theu look 'gaunt' at a normal weight.

For me personally, I always aimed for a normal BMI and then had a think about where I want to be ultimately without getting too carried away.

I am currently 9 stone 11 and I think I'm going for 9 stone 5

Oh and I commented before reading anything more than the op! I'm not aiming my comments at anyone on this thread!

I started with a BMI > 40, to get to an overweight BMI I need to lose 6.5st. To get into the healthy BMI bracket I need to lose 9st in total (that is an entire person!)

In an ideal world I'd get to a healthy BMI eventually, it feels unachievable and too far away right now, overweight feels possible by around March/April next year with a moderate 2lb/week loss (already down 3st) so will reassess once I am close that.

I’m bmi 28.5 now and am a size 12, even in shops other than M&S 😁. My collar bone sticks out, my stomach is almost flat now. I’m aiming for bmi 26 which is the weight I was when I got married. The only time in my life I went below 25, when I was marathon running, my periods stopped

we are all so different

I am someone who piles on muscle the second I look at a gym, and am good at sport generally. So I think I am very dense fibered 😁

Thanks everyone, I tried the smart BMI thing, it told me im overweight but I think I'm obese. And still wants me to be near 11 stone to be healthy

I'm aiming for BMI 24 to 25. When I was younger I was always in the top half of the normal range, and I build muscle quite easily and quickly so don't think I'm designed to weigh much less. I started at 34.5 and now 31 - the difference is huge already.

For me to be in the middle of the healthy bmi bracket I would need to weigh 8st. Only 10st to lose! I can not comprehend that as a target as it just seems completely unobtainable. I think dress sizes is a better target for me. I am a size 20 now and would be over the moon to get to a 12.

If the primary objective is longevity then you need to consider BMI as one metric of health alongside waist circumference, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugars, activity levels etc. If you’re over 40 you can have these checked every five years on the NHS.

I was obese, and when I started losing weight, I aimed only to get to the lower end of ‘overweight’. But once it became my ‘normal’, it wasn’t hard to keep going (low carb, low cal, intermittent fasting), and retirement meant I had more time to go to the gym, so here I am two years later at the lower end of ‘normal’ (SBMI says I could do with gaining half a stone!), the slimmest and fittest I have been since I was a teenager, with a flat tummy and firm abs. I’ve just bought a pair of size 6 slim fit jeans to wear this evening. They are snug, but I wore jeans a lot tighter two years ago and had muffin tops. Now, no spare fat at all - but at my age, I can’t shift the excess skin :-(

@LoserWinner well done that's amazing.

I need to lose another stone to be healthy weight which is 9 stone 11. Its stopped working for me and I haven't lost any weight for a few months, but I am maintaining.

I'm 58 and it's hard to get down that low I think. I've lost over 3 stone.

I am now a healthy BMI, but not yet a healthy waist circumference. I have another 1.5 inches to lose off my waist to get it to 33 inches. So I will keep going. Waist height ratio is more important than BMI.

It’s funny isn’t it because I’m still well into overweight BMI but my waist-hip ratio is already ‘healthy’. I do think there is a lot of variation between people and that BMI is a pretty crude measurement. I have big broad shoulders and long legs, so there’s a lot of weight that isn’t near my waist!
I don’t really aspire to ‘slim’ and definitely not skinny. Strong and healthy for me, and I really am not sure what weight that will be at because when I was skinny in my teens and 20s I was hugely unhealthy.

Weight, height and dress sizes baffle me. I’m 5ft 6 and now weigh 12.8 stone. I wear a size 16 or 18. I’ve read on here of people being 5ft 1 weighing similar to me wearing size 12. How can that be. I will need to lose another couple of stone to fit into a size 12. 😂😂

I only started gaining weight 7 years ago after a traumatic event, a couple of things getting diagnosed, then another traumatic event.

Before that I was slim, fit and healthy and never got to a healthy BMI. I did alot of weights and kick boxing so had quite a bit of muscle my body fat sat around 20%. If I could get back to near that I would be happy. So I am not overly focused on BMI.

I’m 46 started with BMI 35 ) size 18-20. have lost 3 stone and BMI now 28.5. I am already half a stone past where I wanted to be and am wearing size 16 jeans. I am going to aim for BMI 27 ( 12 stone) will be wearing size 16 dresses and feeling comfortable .

I definitely want to get to BMI 25, I don't really see the point of stopping before I get there. It is the top end of healthy after all.

I will play it by ear but I think I will try and go to 22 or 23, if for no reason other than to give me room to gain a bit while still being healthy if I struggle with maintaining.

I'm 5 ft 3 and one of the pushes to start MJ was that my size 14 jeans didn't fit any more and size 14 t shirts weren't covering my tummy very well (at 14 stone). I wouldn't say I was petite though - even when I was a skinny teenager I couldn't fit into my aspirational size 8 topshop jeans because my hips were the wrong shape.

Yeah, for me the whole point was getting between ‘healthy’ parameters. BMI is a crude tool but it works for most, so as I’m not a bodybuilder I thought it was a reasonable parameter to follow.

BMI is a bit of a blunt instrument. Even when I was pretty slim, my BMI was always high end of normal. I'm an endomorph body type, like most of the women in my family - heavier set and build muscle easily. Even when I was younger and a slim size 10, training for sport a lot and didn't by any stretch of the imagination look overweight, according to BMI, I was. But a body composition analysis said I had a lower than average body fat % and higher than average lean muscle %. I've done weightlifting competitively and have always been able to lift heavy with relatively little training. It's just how I'm built. I can lift more than a lot of the men at my gym. They hate it 😁

I do go to the gym and am active, but don't train like I did when I was younger and before kids, and I suspect that the top end of "normal" BMI is where I'll land. I started at a BMI of just over 30, I'm at 27.5 now. I probably have around 6kg to go to get just under the 25 mark and I think that's likely to be where I'll stick and see if I can maintain. I'm using MedExpress and I think once you're at 25 that's it for prescribing anyway, and I'm on the lowest dose.