How to Set a Realistic Weight-Loss Goal

Is your low-carb weight-loss goal realistic?
Can you really be as thin as you were in high school?

Need to set a realistic low-carb weight-loss goal? 

What's true for low-fat diets won't necessarily be true for low carb. When you get adequate protein and fat, body composition at the end of your diet phase will be different. You'll wear a smaller size than others at the same weight. 

Confused? 

Here's what's really going on.

No matter which low-carb diet program you choose to use this year, one of the first things you might want to think about and do is set a weight-loss goal. 

Although, I personally don't set goals anymore and plan on being content with whatever weight the body chooses to stop at, I realize that most people need to set a goal to keep them self-motivated and on track.

Living by purpose, instead of by goals, takes a lot of awareness to stay on point. Most people don't want to make the effort that takes. 

They just want to know how to get the weight off, so in this post, I'm going to show you an easy way to set up a goal that will take care of some of that internal stress and struggle you're probably feeling right about now.

At the bottom of the post, I'm also going to fill you in on what I'm personally doing.

The size you pick to stop dieting at must be
realistic and sustainable.

The size you choose to stop at has to be a size that you can maintain without a lot of struggle and hardship. 

This is the number one lesson I’ve learned about myself over the years. 

If you have to spend the rest of your life hungry to maintain a smaller size, it probably isn’t going to happen. 

When it comes to weight-loss goals, most of the time, the destination you choose involves a number on the scale. Sometimes, that number is realistic, but most of the time it's not.

Why is that?

Are Weight Loss Charts Accurate?

Weight charts are sometimes used by medical professionals to tell you exactly what you should weigh. 

This is how Weight Watchers determined your best weight in the 80s. They measured your height, put you on the scale, and then looked up your target weight on a chart.

These numbers were supposed to take your height, gender, and sometimes age under consideration.

The general rule of thumb is that a 5-foot individual, such as myself, should weigh about 100 pounds. A young man that size should weigh around 110. For every inch taller you are, add an additional 5 or 6 pounds. 

Using this method, a 5-foot, 4-inch woman should weigh about 120 pounds (4 x 5 = 20), while a 5-foot, 10-inch man should weigh 160 pounds (10 x 6 = 60). 

These weight-loss charts were designed by life insurance companies to determine how much to charge you for life insurance. They were not created by the health industry for dieters. 

The numbers are not a reflection of health and well-being. They reflect the life expectancy for the average individual and sit on the low side of reality.

The medical community has since recommended that you weigh at least 10 pounds more than what these initial charts say, so that would be 130 pounds for a 5-foot, 4-inch woman and 170 pounds for a 5-foot, 10-inch man.

However, this chart doesn't take skeletal build into consideration. Nor muscle mass or head size. 

It doesn't look at age or health status. 


Everyone is lumped into the same weight expectation, based on the false assumption that if you're underweight, you'll live longer.

Height-Weight Charts were invented by insurance companies.
The longer you live, the most money the company makes.

Measuring body mass index (BMI) is similar. 

BMI looks at your height and weight, and then it attempts to discern from those two measurements alone if you’re too heavy or at a healthy weight. Although BMI was created by the medical community, it doesn't look at your:

• frame size
• muscle mass
• age
• health issues

Or any other characteristic that makes you an individual.

Scale Weight Doesn’t Consider Lean Body Mass

Neither of these two ways of measuring health considers your lean body mass (LBM). 

LBM consists of everything that is not fat, so it includes muscle, organs, and body tissues such as your hair or skin. It also includes undigested food, water, blood, and other body fluids. 

When it comes to weight-loss goals, what matters most is how much body fat you have.

Since the scale doesn’t tell you how much of your weight is body fat, weight is the least reliable measure of a healthy body composition.

There are weight-loss scales that measure water, body fat percentage and weight, but they are not reliable when it comes to low-carb dieting because severely restricting carbs keeps your glycogen depleted, so you are always in a dehydrated state -- even if you drink lots of water. 

Several pounds of water were used to process the lost glycogen. Maintaining depleted glycogen leaves you too dehydrated for these scales to be of any use. 

Dehydration gives you an inaccurate body-fat percentage.

Health isn't determined by the number on the scale.
The amount of excess body fat is what matters. 

In my own case:

The scale would measure far too low – even when I was on a diet break and not low carbing. 

I had more body fat then a Tanita-like scale told me I did. 

Back then, I was in my late 50s and sedentary, due to the vertigo and off-balance issues. Even though I am large boned, it would be highly unlikely that I was carrying around 120 pounds of lean body mass. But that’s what the scale told me.

Think Size Rather Than Pounds

The best way that I have found to set a weight-loss goal is to think more in terms of size than weight in pounds. Size is a much better indicator of where you’re at, even though it is still not 100 percent reliable. 

Think Size Rather
Than Pounds

You can actually be normal weight and carry too much body fat. This occurs among those who don’t eat adequate protein and lack the muscle mass to cause them to look as large as they should be.

It used to be that for a low carber, arriving at goal weight with too much body fat was extremely rare. 

However, with the twisted ideas that many low carbers have about protein these days, becoming skinny-fat could believably turn into a real "thing."

The bottom line:

The amount of LBM you have at a healthy weight will affect the final number on the scale. Low carbers will weigh as much as 10 or even 20 pounds more than your final size would suggest. There are valid reasons for this, but these reasons are often misunderstood.

Does Muscle Weigh More Than Fat?

One of the popular notions among the low-carb crowd is that muscle weighs more than fat. 

In fact, many low carbers often use this fallacy to support weight-loss plateaus and stalls. If you aren’t losing weight as quickly as you think you should, the common justification is that you might be putting on muscle. 

The reason given?

Muscle weighs more than fat!

If you take a pound of muscle tissue and place it on a balance scale, such as the one pictured below, and then you take a pound of body fat and place it on the other side of the scale, both will weigh exactly the same amount. The scale will be completely balanced.


A pound of one thing is always equal to a pound of another.

Do You Believe That
Muscle Weighs More Than Fat?

What you’ll discover, however, is that muscle tissue is denser than fat. It is more compact, so it will be smaller in volume.

Smaller volume is what you want.

Body fat takes up more room than muscle tissue does, in the same amount of space, so as you lose weight following a low-carb diet, you will fit into a smaller size than your weight suggests. When compared to the average individual who weighs as much as you do, you'll be smaller.

For example:

When I reached 160 pounds after following the Old Weight Watchers Exchange Program, a well-balanced diet, I fit into a size 14. When I reached 160 pounds on low carb, I wore a size 12. 

Many people who find their last 10 pounds to be extremely difficult to lose are already at a healthy weight. 

As a low carber, the number they wanted to see on the weight-loss scale was unrealistic for them.

Truth About Gaining Lean Muscle Mass

The idea that you can gain muscle while dieting
is another low-carb myth.

Along with the belief that muscle and fat weigh the same is the belief that putting on muscle mass is relatively easy if you just eat low carb and exercise. 

For those new to weight-bearing exercises, this is true. 

Sedentary beginners eating a high-protein diet do tend to put on more muscle mass initially than those who have been exercising for awhile, given the same dietary macros and calories. 


Weight-lifting beginners can put on muscle weight at the same time as they are losing body fat, especially if they happen to be obese. They will also lose more body fat anyway because they have so much of it. 

When this happens, less weight will be lost on the scale because the body is either adding to its muscle reserves, rebuilding muscle, or using less of what you already have to repair other damaged body tissues, but the amount gained is smaller than most low carbers realize. 

Even for beginning weight lifters, lean body muscle gains only total about a pound of muscle per month, or less. It also takes insulin spikes to build muscle.

If you are very overweight or obese:

You will have more muscle and connective tissue to support that muscle because during weight gain, some proportion is lean body mass. You don’t just gain body fat because it takes more strength to haul around your fat stores. 

This is why many medical authorities believe that a percentage of LBM loss during dieting is acceptable in obese individuals. The muscle mass lost was in excess of what was needed for an average person of healthy weight.

If you are not new to weight lifting:

You will not gain LBM while dieting. 

Period.

Muscle gains take a specific weight-gain regimen. 

What you might do instead is convince the body that it needs to hang on to your current level of muscle mass because you need it on a consistent basis. 

This is what’s happening when you cross the threshold between beginner and an average exerciser. More body fat losses than lean tissue can result in those who exercise because exercise improves insulin sensitivity. 

The body won’t get rid of what it believes it needs. 

It will choose to adapt in some another way. What you’re left with is a higher number on the scale, but a much smaller size.

Realistic Weight Loss Goals

I thought a size 7 would be a good number. 

About 125 to 135 pounds was the original weight-loss goal I set for myself. 

This was quite a bit higher than what weight charts told me I should weigh. I’m not a young chicken, and with 160 pounds placing me at size 12, size 7 initially appeared to be realistic.

I’m not so sure that’s true anymore.

If you have been overweight or obese for any length of time, the body is hardwired to return to that higher body fat level, known as your set point. 

It will fight to get back there.

It doesn't understand that completely full fat stores are unhealthy because its goal is to save your life from a future famine, and hefty fat stores are life-saving when there's no food, or little food, available.

After I finished the HCG diet in 2011, I weighed 145, but it was only for a few days. The weight I'd lost came back fairly quickly, once I moved back to Atkins. 

Before I realized what had happened, I was sitting at a size 14 again. That 14 was the size my body was comfortable with, but I didn't understand that then.

What I Am Doing Now

A few years ago, I started a sister blog, separate from low carb, where I could:

• post questions I had about low-carb diets
• reflect on the moderate-carb research I was doing
• sort through my personal health issues
• run personal experiments to discover what worked best for me

It’s called Life After Low Carb, if anyone is interested.

There are not a lot of posts over there. I don't post there very often. I keep getting distracted with my health and found out that letting go of the low-carb dream to be especially difficult.

I wanted to believe that low carb would still work for me.

I felt guilty blogging here about the low-carb life when I wasn't eating Atkins or even a modified Atkins anymore. I was eating what I considered to be maintenance, but I wasn't sticking with Induction-friendly low-carb foods. 

I was eating whatever I wanted, but within reason for my size.

I was angry because the science I had been looking into, more in depth, was not supporting what all of the low-carb experts had been telling me over the years. 

None of their theories and hypotheses were supported by science, but they keep preaching them from the low-carb pulpit and insisting they are  low-carb science, anyway. 

Just like low carbers do today.

I struggled with the way they got defensive all the time and refused to look at anything with an open mind. In essence, low-carb magic was eroding for me, and I was having a hard time understanding what was going on.

I have a better grip on reality now.

I understand the place that low-carb diets have in the world.

I have my health concerns straightened out, or at least I know what they all are now, so I can make better choices based on what's to my advantage, and not what so-called experts want me to believe and do.

I have been catching the vision of the purpose for each of the blogs I have decided to keep, and part of that vision is to resurrect and be more involved in the moderate-carb blog. 

I've been eating that way for a few years now, ever since hubby and I came back from visiting three of my four sons, my daughter-in-law, and grand baby in Texas -- before we moved here.

It's been working well for me. 

By:

• giving up the sugary sodas
• cutting down on the starchy carbs
• cutting back on portion sizes

I have been able to lose 40 pounds, so far, with most of those pounds coming off during the first couple of years I was eating that way. 

Giving up regular soda and deciding not to drink my calories anymore didn't do a thing for my weight, by the way. Nor, my health. I just made unconscious decisions to eat more fat.


Once I realized I was doing that and stayed aware of my portion sizes and how many starchy carbs I was eating per day, the weight started to drop. I honestly need to start doing that again, as I've been stalled for a couple of years now.

I wanted 2016 to be the year that I finally turned my life around and took charge of the body, mind, and spirit that I had been neglecting for years now. 

And that did happen.

I just need to reevaluate where I am right now and make a few more course corrections to get the scale moving downward again.

But I don't feel comfortable recording my journey here. 

I want to keep this blog tightly focused on low-carb dieting and keep it a major resource for low-carb diets.

It's becoming fairly obvious to me that as the years go by, Dr. Atkins legacy is getting pretty threadbare and tattered. The ANA keeps changing the diet, making it appear that eventually, Old-School Atkins might disappear completely. 

I don't want that to happen.

Each year a different low-carb scheme catches fire, and I don't want the low-carb diets that work to get lost in the shuffle, especially since Atkins Nutritionals has come out with their own low-carb diets now.

Some of you might have noticed that I've been dividing the site up into topics to make it easier for you to find the information you're looking for. 

We currently have one 3-day menu for getting into ketosis fast, and a 7-day Atkins Induction menu simplified for those who don't want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen during their first 2 weeks on Atkins.

We also have an Atkins Induction and Ongoing Weight-Loss post that shares templates you can use to create your own menus with.

And if you're new to a low-carb diet, don't forget to check out our in-depth beginner's guide. It contains all of the basic information that you need to know to get started.