Here’s another consideration: Once, when I was working myself into despair over the size a project my friend Larry and I were working on, Larry asked me, “How do you eat an elephant?” Puzzled, I couldn’t reply. He quietly answered, “One bite at a time.” Big, overwhelming tasks always less daunting once you break them down into smaller, more manageable chunks. Losing 100 pounds or more is easier to achieve if you break it into a series of smaller goals. And each goal you achieve means less of the elephant to eat.
The Final Goal
First, let’s talk about the big goal:
The healthy BMI range is from 18.5 to 24.9, which when translated into pounds turns out to be a big plus-or-minus — just over 20 pounds if you’re 4'10", but over 50 pounds if you’re 6'4". It’s tempting to just pick a BMI out of your hat or choose a weight within that range that sounds right.
But there really are big- and small-boned people out there: people whose skeletal and muscular mass are less or greater than average. The key is not your weight so much as it is your fat-to-muscle ratio. This ratio varies according to not only sex but also age and your general activity level, but isn’t affected by the size of your bones or the width of your skeletal frame.
Here’s my idea: Get within the healthy range now; fine-tune your fat ratio later. The graphic above left is a range of weights in pounds at various heights in inches that approximate a BMI of 24.9 or slightly less. (In case you’re a math wonk: BMI = weight in kilograms times the square of height in meters.) Pick the weight that corresponds to your height and use that as a provisional final goal. Once you get your weight below that number, then there are a few alternatives for checking your body composition which vary in cost, availability, and accuracy.
The Intermediate Goals
When picking your intermediate goals, look for particular weights that mean something to you personally. Let me give you my intermediate goals:
- 262 lbs.: At my height (5'8"), that’s a BMI of 39.8. I’ll still be obese, but not morbidly obese. I’ll likely need new pants by this time, too.
- 249 lbs.: At Six Flags Dallas’ Water World in 2006, I was mortified to discover that a couple of the slides I wanted to try were closed off to people over 250 lbs. A similar maximum weight applied to the attic stairs at my last residence; every trip up those stairs to store items or change the furnace filter found me wincing at the thought of a step snapping under my foot.
- 233 lbs.: Just under the halfway mark to my final goal!
- 196 lbs.: That’s a BMI of about 29.8. I will be overweight but no longer clinically obese. Coincidentally, it’s also how much I weighed when I left for Marine Corps basic training in August 1982. Also, my primary care physician has told me that if I drop below 200, she’ll take me off some of my meds.
- 174 lbs.: At my last weigh-in during my brief stint with the Corps, I weighed 175. I had a “spare tire,” but I was still in better shape than I had been since I was twelve. I could knock out at least 60 sit-ups in two minutes and run three miles in 32 minutes. One thing I want to do after I cross this line is to run a 5k event!
Final Thoughts
You see? These smaller goals aren’t merely boxes to check or numbers pulled out of a mathematical formula. They relate to my life and represent triumphs over the past as well as aspirations for the future. They matter to me in ways that mere percentages could not. Those are the kind of smaller goals you should choose and strive to achieve.
So make eating the elephant easier by setting some smaller intermediate goals. Each time you achieve an intermediate goal, do something to celebrate it, to check the box with a flourish. Do everything you can to remind yourself that each victory represents progress and progress leads to final victory.
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This post is dedicated to the memory of Robert E. Layne (1968 – 2011), who would have been 51 years old today. Miss you always, baby bro.
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