How Much Weight to Lose

How much weight do we want to lose? That is the question that baffles a lot of people but this matter needs not confuse us. This will just keep us moving around and around a circle and not work on the actual need we have to change our lifestyle.

Now let's see. The first thing to do is to study the information that is out there. We know that the recommendation is a weight loss of 10% of the body weight. Why did the experts recommend this figure? Because researches on this issue have shown that this 10% loss has demonstrated cardiovascular risk improvement.

Now, don't go all way out and set goals according to the above pronouncement. Let's use it as a guide because it does not mean that losing more will not bring benefit. It also depends on one's body mass to start with. Besides, studies have also shown that a loss of 5 to 7% resulted in 58% decrease in the development of diabetes.

Some obese people will not want to achieve just a 10% weight loss. They want to lose more than that despite counseling that 10 to 15% reduction is reasonable enough. As a matter of fact a 10% loss for the overweight is easily achieved. And it will make a difference as well.

So how do we figure out how much weight to lose? Experts say the formula is to multiply the current weight by the percentage of the desired weight loss. For example if our weight is 200 pounds and we want to lose 10%, we multiply those two figures and arrive at 20 pounds as the goal of weight loss.

The loss of 20 pounds will reduce the risk for diabetes and make the cardiovascular risk better. But so would a 5% weight loss which in this case is only 10 pounds. Isn’t that great? To think that losing 10 pounds may prevent diabetes and cardiovascular disease is awesome.

So let’s roll our sleeves and get going. And we do not have to stop at 10 pounds for this is only our first goal. Once we reach this goal of 190 pounds, we can start over with another goal of 5% weight and so on and so on until we reach our dream weight. Wow! Bikini, here I come.

This is great because we are not setting our goal too high (not the bikini goal, mind you). This way we will not be discouraged and have to give up on something that will be of enormous benefit for our health. This is so within our reach it is empowering.

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