Most everyone who has a weight loss blog has a desired weight they want to get to. I think most people in general have a desired weight or weight range they want to be at. Some look at the weight range as a far off dream they can never achieve, others use it to motivate themselves to make healthy choices throughout the day.
That number, or range, taunts us at times, it seems to hover in the distance never getting any closer. Mean huh?
I have never been good at gauging a person’s weight, that whole “guess my weight” game? I suck at it! Combine that with not really knowing what an appropriate weight is supposed to be and well, I start to get lost when it comes to weight ranges. I remember as a kid in grade 5, we had an assignment where we had to create a person, draw them, write a bio for them, the whole bit – just as if they were real and you were researching them. I don’t remember why we had to do this but the why isn’t really part of my point right now. lol. I created a lady, I don’t remember what age I made her, probably in the 20’s cause I thought that was the perfect age to be at. 😛 I remember I made her tall-ish and thin. Now, I totally randomly chose height and weight numbers because I didn’t really grasp how tall or fat any of the numbers I could choose from would make a person, shrug. What I do remember is my sister, when she saw the weight I made my person exclaiming over how thin I made her – apparently she was so thin she’d have been severely underweight, oops!
I tweaked her numbers until my sister said they were more realistic and left it at that. But lately, I thought of the woman I created and realized I wouldn’t do any better at giving her a good height/weight ratio today then I did back in grade 5.
So many things affect how we view the world, view others, view ourselves. It would be great if the entire world was just chock full of healthy people, if we were all somehow healthy – but who can even say what healthy is? There are so many different ways to judge a person’s health, and so many different definitions of what is healthy. Some people argue being overweight is a lifestyle choice and you are just as healthy being obese as you are being thin – I am not making this up! I watched a documentary about it. Others say you can measure a healthy body using BMI, weight, measurements etc. Some say just eye ball it, if you look good then you’re fine. Or go by how you feel – if you feel healthy then you are. So how do you know if you are healthy when there are so many ways to “measure” health, and many of those way contradict each other.
Years ago, when I still lived in AB and had a family doctor, she gave me a very stern lecture about how I was fat and needed to lose weight. She made it sound like it was the easiest thing in the world to do and she even seemed honestly confused that I wasn’t sure how to get rid of the fat I had accumulated. Please keep in mind this lady is one of those so-skinny-she’s-a-twig people and even when she was pregnant was super tiny and lost all the weight super fast. She said she “experimented” with many different types of diets so she could speak knowledgably about them to her patients – I applaud this, and yet, was annoyed by this. How could this woman, this incredibly thin woman, tell me after she’s tried the South Beach Diet, and Atkins and a whole bunch of other eating plans which one was best when she doesn’t have an ounce of body fat on her and never has? She doesn’t really know what it is going to take for me to lose the weight, she just has theories.
One thing she did give me though, was information. She let me know, for my height and gender what weight range I should be at. In case you are wondering, I am 5’8″ and female, so I was supposed to be between 130-135lbs. All these years later I am using those numbers as my goal, thinking nothing has changed and that information is still accurate. Well, I double checked that today and found times have a-changed and that weight range isn’t exactly what I should be aiming for. According to Weight Watcher’s, for my height I should be looking at a range of 132-164lbs. The way larger range they say I am ok to be using made me wonder what other numbers I might find out there. So I went googling…
On www.divine.ca the range I got was 125-144lbs. On www.healthcentral.com my range is 144-158.4lbs. I could keep going on with different websites but suffice to say, they all give a broader range then my doctor ever did and all the ranges are different. Most of them overlap with part of their numbers but still…none of them match. How is it so hard to find out what your ideal weight range should be?
What makes it even harder is I am in the entertainment business, which means a “normal” weight is considered a “larger” weight in my world. I have met actresses who in real life are in such good shape, they are toned, they are fit, they are thin, they are what many aspire to be. And yet, they have network officials telling them daily to lose weight because they look too fat on their tv show. It’s sad, not surprising, but sad. The camera really does add weight to your frame, and so these women, who look amazing in real life look a tad larger on screen then what we as viewers are used to and what the network officials are happy with.
I was checking out a website of an actress I don’t know because I was thinking of getting a website from the same company and they said to view hers to get an idea of what mine would look like – format, layout etc. I was checking out the various pages on her site and saw her stats, she is an inch taller then me and lower in weight then the range I had been aiming for. So, she’s 5’9″ and was 122lbs. This made me want to hit my head against a wall.
Here I am at 5’8″ struggling to get to 130-135lbs and she’s even lighter then me while being taller then me. Which means, even if I was at 130lbs, if I stood next to her, I’d look large. Crap.
Losing weight is hard enough without the added pressure of your work industry hovering over you like a rainy cloud. I try to ignore the knowledge that for an actress I am quite fat, and therefore way limited in the roles I can audition for. Sure, I have lost weight, and opened up more possibilities for me career wise, and yes I have my agent now which will help, but really, to have the best chance possible I have to get down in weight, and clothing size, and measurements, in everything…and not just to the weight range I’ve had in my head this entire time but to at least 5-10lbs below it…which means my journey just got ten pounds longer, sigh.
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 
WW uses BMI for their calculations of the weight range. A healthy BMI for any person is between 20 and 24.9. If you look at a bMI chart for your height those numbers should coincide with the weight range WW uses. I agree that there are tons of numbers out there and they don’t all agree however once you get below a BMI of 20 you can start developing health issues. Not to say you will, thats just a number saying you are at an unhealthy weight but not necessarily unhealthy. I would focus more on BMI and body fat % and try to get those numbers into a healthy range. Then if you still think you need to lose weight due to your profession go from there. That’s just me though. I have a number I am aiming for on the scale but that number is what will get me to a 24.9 BMI- no longer overweight. Once I get there who knows what will happen.
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