Dear Kayla,
I started OMAD (one meal a day) last August and I also started to add exercise at the same time. I was 200 pounds and am now 150 pounds. My height is 5’4. I do have a goal to reach 120 pounds. I am 67 years old. My BMI says I’m at the fair level but still obese. Do you think that my goal of 120 pounds is reasonable? Thank you and I would appreciate any advice that you would have for me.
Signed,
Dani Cheryl LaMay
Dear Dani,
First of all, congratulations on dropping 50 pounds! That’s amazing! You wanted my opinion on whether your goal of 120 is reasonable. Since you asked, I’ll give it, with the caveat that I’m not a doctor, and I would encourage you to seek a medical opinion from your physician if that’s what you’re after.
My personal opinion is that if you feel comfortable, it would be a good time to stop now and enter maintenance. Let’s talk about how I came to this conclusion. First of all, I entered the data you gave me into a BMI calculator. According to it, you are NOT obese. You are just hovering on the lower end of overweight, and in fact, you’re only 5 pounds from being in the normal BMI range.
But it’s truly your age that gives me pause on encouraging you to lose more. I tend to take most scientific studies with a grain of salt, but the data seems to be pointing to a slightly increased BMI being beneficial in older age. In this study of people in their 70s and early 80s, adults who had a BMI of less than 25 or greater than 35 had more problems with mobility, higher fall risk, decreased muscle strength, and increased risk of malnutrition.
Since your current BMI is 25.7, I think it would be wise to hang out around here, or maybe even let your weight go a little bit higher as the years pass. Here’s an additional reason for that: another study found that while there was a large decrease in all-cause mortality when a person went from an obese BMI of 31.1 to a normal BMI of 23.4, there was no significant difference in mortality between a BMI of 20.8 to 27.7. In other words, losing more weight probably won’t lengthen your life. Also, if you decrease your BMI lower than 20.8 (and your goal of 120 would put you at 20.6), your mortality risk actually begins to increase slightly. (See graphic below.)
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All that being said, I think the best thing to do is to listen to your body. It will let you know when you’ve lost enough weight. If, after doing some soul searching, you believe you’re there now, give yourself permission to enter maintenance. If you want to lose a little more, I have no doubt that you can, you’ve proven that with your performance over the past 7 months.
No matter what you decide, I wish you the best in your continued journey!
Sincerely,
Kayla Cox
PS: For what it’s worth, when I got down to a BMI of 25.5 (158 pounds for me, and slightly overweight) I felt so good that I decided to stop and maintain there for a while. I maintained for about a year before I decided to try to get down into the normal BMI zone. I got down to 142, and then realized that I wasn’t feeling any different at 142 than I had at 158. I still felt just as comfortable and just as energetic. I think that for me, I found the diminishing point of returns for weight loss, which is why I chose to stop losing weight and make the 140s my maintenance goal.