Your Happy Weight

How many times have you looked at someone else and thought that you would love to have a body like him or her?

Have you every actually put your head on that body and imagined what you'd look like?

This article talk about what our ideal or "happy weight" is and how to determine and accept it.

There's five things that are listed:

1. Take into account when you're looking at your body things like your age, exercise habits, whether you've had kids are going to have an effect on your "happy weight." The link to the article also provides a link to a calculator to determine what you're happy weight is.

2. Aim for a healthy body fat percentage. Seems as though the definition of a "healthy" body fat percentage is around 22%. The article again gives you a link to a calculator to determine your percentage (although looking at the calculator, I'm a bit skeptical that it's going to even give you a ballpark figure).

3. Be critical of media images of women. This has been a problem for a long time and will probably continue to be. Some of those models out there are just walking skeletons that I would never want to see any of my clients strive for.

4. Give yourself enough time to take the weight off. I've always pushed that if you lose 1 to 2 pounds a week, you're on a good path. Not that I think there's anything wrong with losing a little more than that a week, but losing 1 to 2 pounds can add up to 25-50 pounds in 6 months.

5. Recognize that you're ideal weight is going to change over time. That stupid thing called "getting older" can cause problems with your weight. Have stressful jobs, have a kid, metabolism slows down, etc can all have an impact on how your body is going to respond and it may respond differently than it use to before.

I think the article is getting at that you don't want to get to the point of being completely consumed and obsessed over how you want your body to look.

At the same time, I don't think there's anything wrong with having a goal. If you have an ideal in your mind and you want to give it a shot to try and get to it, then by all means give it a try. But just give yourself time and don't let it take over your life.

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