Normally, I enjoy reading Self magazine, and I think it's a pretty reliable source of health and fitness information. However, a few months ago, I stumbled upon an article called "Find Your Happy Weight!" and it made me raging mad. And then I stumbled upon it on their website today (here) and it reminded me how angry it made me. And here's why.
According to the article, a large percentage of women who are trying to lose weight have an unreasonably low goal weight. No surprises there. So they provide this calculator that you plug your stats into and it tells you what a reasonable weight would be for you. It takes into account how much you exercise, and even if you allow yourself a treat 'every so often,' so in theory, it would gauge your general lifestyle and tell you an estimate of what your goal weight should be.
According to this calculator, my goal weight is 117 pounds.
I'm a pretty reasonable person when it comes to my weight. I'm 100% happy with what I weigh right now (same as when I graduated college, go me), although I wouldn't mind losing 5-10 pounds. When I say I 'wouldn't mind losing' I literally mean just that - I'm not going to drastically change my diet, which I think is already pretty healthy, or increase my workouts, which I already do 5-6 times a week, to make that happen, but if it happens, then great. I think any of you who has known me for a solid amount of time knows that I have what might be considered a high to borderline too high self esteem, and I am truly not bothered about the way that I look in a bikini. I could look better, but I don't really care to make any more changes to my lifestyle to do so.
And here's the problem: I haven't weighed 117 pounds since my junior year of HIGH SCHOOL. I had the metabolism of a marathon runner at that time, and I was in dance class 4 nights a week. I in fact have a video from the school musical that year (Guys & Dolls) in which I essentially played a stripper. I was wearing probably what was the least amount of clothing passable for a high school production. And I looked like a skeleton with gigantic boobs. I looked ridiculous. If my boobs weren't so big (thanks, genetics) I would have looked like I was about 12. And aside from dance, I did no serious weight training at that time, so I estimate that I didn't have much muscle mass.
In essence, I think it would be 100% IMPOSSIBLE for me to ever weigh that much again, unless I decide that anorexia is the way to go (and with my love of chocolate and pizza, that is certainly never going to happen). Going into the article, I figured that the lowest weight that I could reasonably maintain (should I ever get back there) would be about 125 (what I weighed after my freshman year of college). To be fair, when I changed the settings in the calculator to say that I have a large build rather than medium, I got 123 pounds...which is slightly more reasonable, but I definitely don't have what would be considered a large build.
So I just want to say this: SHAME on you, Self magazine. You created this tool to encourage women to stop trying to reach unreasonable goals, yet from my experience, all you are doing is encouraging them.
You guys should all try, and let me know how it turns out in the comments. I'd love to see if any of you get a weight that seems reasonable to you. I'd like to know how reliable this thing really is.
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4 comments:
for a small build- 113
for a medium build - 119
I'd love to be 120, just 5 more pounds. What makes me small/nedium buold? However. I'm pretty excited to be where I am. This "reasonable" weight seems pretty hardcore to me.
I found your blog through missjordypants. I agree that their calculations a bit suspect. Accoring to them, my "Happy Weight" is between 101 and 136. If I weighed 101 lbs, I'd be anorexic and anemic and generally very unhappy and unhealthy. If I weighed anywhere near 136, I'd be very fat. Their ranges are too extreme.
Oh, and BMI is not a good indicator of health because it doesn't take muscle weight into consideration.
I as well found your blog through missjordypants :)
I found the calculator to be pretty reasonable, which surprised me a little bit. Of all the things I've read before, they tell me I can range anywhere from 103 to 137. I have to say, at 137 I'm huge, and at 103, well that was my sophmore year in high school. However for 5'3" it gave me a range of 116.9 (small build) to 123 (medium build). The lowest I've been in the last couple years was 119 so I think the calculator succeeded for me.
5'5", medium build - 130
headlet, good post. i am with you, pumpkin. i saw this a few months ago and was delighted with the idea. to keep myself in the 125 - 130 range (two years ago, when i was diagnosably anorexic), i ran over six miles EVERY day, strength trained three times weekly, did power yoga twice each week, and also rode three to four times every week for up to two hours. for the entirety of this, i was eating 1200 - 1400 calories per day, maybe the 1600 self recommended for "dieting". better answer? do what feels good and chuck my scale. i don't know what i weigh, but i guarantee it's more than 130 (i'm all muscle!) and guess what? i dig it. suck it, self. these body parts were made for ass-kicking!
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