Normal weight

I’ve been losing weight for the past few years, and wanted to share a small milestone: With a body mass index of 24.9, I am now in the range the National Institutes of Health consider “normal weight.”

It’s been a strange process. Subcutaneous fat departs on its own schedule—probably mostly genetic, but probably other things as well—so I’ve had the experience of bodyparts changing shape at unexpected times. A few months ago I noticed something hard in my side, a couple of inches down from my ribs. It took some seconds of poking with my finger, tracing out the contours, for me to realize it was my pelvis. (For someone who assembled a Visible Man in elementary school, I had a surprisingly poor conception of where the pelvis is. I thought of it as being down by my hips, but the top of the iliac crest comes up to the height of the navel, I guess.) I had similar, if less startling, experiences with other bits of my skeleton, including my ribs and my cheekbones.

I wish I had a better understanding of what changed. I’d been overweight essentially all my adult life. I’d been trying, largely without success, to lose weight for 40 years. Then, a few years ago, something changed, and the weight started gradually coming off.

I did make an effort to eat less, and to exercise more, but I’d done those things a hundred times before.

I know some of the things that changed. I quit working a regular job, so I had more time for exercise, and more flexibility in my schedule to schedule the exercise. I started studying taiji, which is not an especially vigorous exercise, but which I now do almost every day—and consistency has a vigor all its own. Jackie’s willingness (and creativity) in producing healthy meals that conform to my odd preferences has been a big help.

One other thing that was different from all the other times was that this time I didn’t have a goal weight.

All the other times I had an idea in my head that I wanted to lose 15 or 45 pounds, and I’d calculate how many weeks that would take if I had a calorie deficit of this or that amount. Then I’d track my weight, and be pleased or disappointed as it progressed along or deviated from that track.

This time I didn’t do that. Instead, I decided that my goal was simply having a downward trend to my weight. Being in calorie deficit would (I figured) improve my blood chemistry, and probably right away get me most of the health benefits of losing weight.

Since I don’t have a goal, I’m not at an inflection point here, now that I’m at “normal weight.” I can just carry on doing what I’ve been doing. I’m in no danger of becoming underweight any time soon. (The National Institutes of Health suggest I’d be “underweight” if I lost another 40 pounds.) So, I’ll go on gradually losing weight for a while. I expect it will become more and more gradual over the next year or two, before I eventually stabilize, probably not too far from the midpoint between “underweight” and “overweight.”

There’s no evidence for a health benefit to weighing less than I do now, but probably some health benefits to being in calorie deficit—so it makes sense to prolong that phase.

There are, of course, the other benefits to losing weight. There’s an aesthetic benefit. (At least, I think I look better now than I did 40 pounds ago, and expect I’ll look better still if I lose another few pounds.) There’s a convenience benefit. (Society has upsized almost everything as Americans have gotten larger—the main exception being coach seats on airliners—but being slimmer still makes almost everything easier and more comfortable.)

If I lose another 15 pounds or so, I’ll be at the same body mass index as Jackie. She’s most fetchingly slim, and there’s a certain symmetry to us matching that way, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a goal. Just a whimsy, really.

I promised a while back that this wouldn’t becoming a weight-loss blog, and I think I’ve kept that promise, but this was a milestone that I wanted to share. I’m not sure there’ll be any more, though. Since I don’t have a goal, there’ll really be nothing to announce.