Did you all know this?

y'all JUST WAIT til you're fifty.  You'll be throwing ROCKS at that BMR calculator. It's a guideline, just don't be setting any watches to it.

If getting to _____weight is that frustrating and upsetting, it would not be worth it to me. Not one of us should choose to be complacent, but I have learned that there is plenty i'm not willing to do to be at _____ weight.  That level of commitment is going to vary wildly between people. I just know for me, when I was 170#, i thought I should be 150.  When I was 150, i thought i should be 120. WHEN, if not right here, right now, will i be loved by me?  My body has had several levels of set points that it clings to.  Getting under 200 was a freakin act of Congress. Now that I am 185-i****'s happening again.  I gues the real worry is, if you "accept"  a 10# higher weight and THAT begins to creep upward, then what?

I guess that's why so many books tell you to eat right, exercise and throw away your scales.  I can almost accept that, but when I do, I begin to use NOT weighing as an excuse to eat junk food.  As you can see, I have no where near resolved my "food issues".  I don't want to be a slave to the scales, but at the moment I need to be able to see my progress to keep me motivated to keep going.   My weight doesn't bother me now, but I don't want it to in the future.   And I sure don't want to be miserable trying to maintain my goal weight, if and when I ever get there.  I don't have any answers, just more rambling thoughts.

I knew this in an around about way.  I posted on it several weeks go about BMR and eating according to you weight. The smaller you get the less you can eat or the more active you have to become.   Seems that only applies to us fat people because I see skinny people that eat 3-5000 calories a day and don't gain a single pound.   Andrea's right about these calculators. They're just not accurate. Each person is completely different.

that is right, Kriz...if you cud see how much my DH eats & drinks every day, you would toss that bmr calculator out NOW.  yeah yeah, the magic formula works for some people. - for a while at least.  Go on widdit, then.  As famously lamented, I already know they are not right for my body, i am thru trying to justify it to anyone else.  It's one more reason why my DH will have my undying devotion til i die, cuz he was the first one to acknowledge how hard i work at eating well, how i do not miss workouts, etc., all to end up at nearly 2 bills? wow. I mean I GET IT why I am not a size 2, no sweat. Not too many of us realistically has more time to work out than say 1-2 hours a day. Unless they got a sugar daddy to pay bills. okay, maybe.   Oh so exercise is the key? Ramp up the treadmill, let's see how much you get injured after about 6 months of THAT. or for me to come home after 9-10 hours of work and jump on my bike...ummm, where is the daylight for that let alone time with my DH? It's why wls IS the only, ONLY way for many people. They will *almost* never be able to get to a reasonable weight let alone stay there trying to play the game by the rules that were meant for people who never put on all that much weight in the first place or who already have a perfect fat burning machine of a body.  I'm realizing how depressing this post is, sorry it's where my head is.  I hereby decree to deny my total and complete loss of religion here:  Everyone, regardless of how much they weigh needs to develop all the tools of optimum health (regular exercise, balance, some degree of caloric control) to the best of their ability.  To not at least do that is setting a poor example to children in the home who have not put on the weight, never mind, to begin to try to not gain even more weight!

I'm not so sure that even WLS will work in the really long term, (10, 15, 20 years) for a LOT of people who get it.  All the rest of your post I completely agree with--depressing or not, it's realistic.

I was messing around yesterday trying to figure out my average metabolic rate (note, not quite the same as my BMR) since I began weighing.  Given that I know how much I lost over that period of time and I know how much I eat each day, I can derive my average MR over the period.  The number I am now referring to is the total average number of calories I actually burned each day over the period from 3/21 to 5/23.  If you will bear with a little math: Period:  3/21 - 5/23 Days in Period: 63 Total Weight Loss for Period: 75 pounds Pound Per Day Loss: 1.19 So, given a pound is 3500 calories, I burned an excess of  ~4166 calories a day.  Since I know I do not eat more than 1500 calories a day (except in two instances throughout the period) I can get a reasonable number for my MR as 5666 calories burned per day over that period. Now I probably burned more per day at the beginning of the period and less per day at the end of the period.  I could get a more accurate number by including more data points (more days I weighed in) and weighting the appropriately skewed toward the more recent weigh ins, but for now I'm just weighing in once a week.  5666 calories per day, however is a good number for me to work with to do any planning or prediction based on my current weight, activity level and the number of calories I eat per day. Compare that number with online calculator estimates of my BMR (which is admittedly a bit different number) which put my BMR somewhere in the 3500-3900 range.

Soooooo, I bet when you started this thread you had no clue it would spark this much debate.  I know that some of you are really close to goal and that is something you must concern yourselves with, but right now I have just got to concentrate on getting there!  I think the battle is different for everyone, my dad and my husband both can decide, oh, I've put on too much weight around my middle and drop 10-15 lbs. in just a couple of weeks, my sister can pull off 15 lbs. in a little over a month, but me, hell I'm beginning to wonder if I'll make that 15 lbs. by July 4th.  The ironic thing about all of this is my sister is the one that has ALWAYS been able to sit down and eat a loaf of white bread and not gain a lb.,  I have never been a bread eater, just never cared that much for it.  People have always been amazed at how little I eat and still retain my weight.  When I was 20 something (a lifetime ago) I wanted to be a dietician so I have studied the nutritional values for different foods and knew what was "good" foods, but I have had to battle my weight ALL of my life, mostly because I am lazy and I hate exercise, make it fun and I'm all about that, but also because I inherited the fat gene from my mother's family.   I guess what I'm really trying to say without continuing to ramble is, I agree with Neecee and Andrea, evrybody is different and some of us can lose weight and continue to live a healthy lifestyle and maintain that weight, while others have been cursed with the genes that doesn't allow our bodies to maintain.....we will have to continue that battle for the rest of our lives. Fair?  Hell no, but that's the hand we were dealt and I refuse to fold!!!!