Goal Weight -- what should it be?

I chimed in... but unfortunately my response is basically worthless LOL - I still agonize over what to do!

Your responses are never worthless! It's nice to have insight from someone else in the same situation (i.e. in this case - someone who's 5'10" and can't decide on a "goal" weight LOL)

I advocate using body fat percent.  If you're at 80% of EWL, get a good body fat test done, and go from there.  I think "healthy" bf% for a woman is in the 25% range...  You can do the research on that.

I think it makes sense to do body fat since "weight" doesn't take into account muscle mass, bone structure, water weight, etc...  get your BF number with a DXA scan, hydrostatic weighing or BodPod, and then you can compute how much more FAT it makes sense to lose.  After all, we're trying to lose fat, right?

Where would you recommend getting this done?  

I have an aria scale which gives me body fat, but I do not think it is super accurate - currently at 40%.  Yesterday at the gym, after a workout (so not as accurate), I used their scale w/ the hand montior and it said 33%.  This seemed somewhat correct to me.  Do you do the full on dunk yourself body fat measurement?  

Thanks!

I think the gold standard is the DXA - which is sort of like laying on a full body flat-bed computer scanner and it gives a read out of your body fat, bone density, etc. (they use it for detecting osteoporosis as well)...  Sports medicine clinics have them as well as some third party places and radiology clinics.  It seems to vary as to whether or not you need a doctor's order.  Mine cost $100

The bodyfat scales can be useful to show you trends, but at the extremes (low or high BF) they seem way off...  If you get one of the more precise measurements done then you can relate your scale to that and then use the scale to trac****il your next one - you'll get a sense of what direction your moving.

BodPods are done in health clubs often.  It's similar to the dunk tank - but uses air pressure instead.

The dunk tank (Hydrostatic weighing) is found in university research labs often... 

I had to google around to find who had a DXA scanner in town - found several.  Then I had to get a referral from my doctor - no biggie there.  I bet your doc knows where one would be - if not find a sports-medicine clinic and ask them.

Here's what the report looks like (I'd like to point out that the report shows me at 10.9% BF, but OVERWEIGHT BMI)  That should tell you all you need to know about BMI as a measurement of anything.

Thanks!

this is exactly what I'm going for! I had the dexta test done and i have lost 50 lbs and I'm at a body fat of 46% and in my age range I should be between 20% and 30 % , so I'm aiming for a 20% body fat as my goal weight.

I find BMI calculators extremely inaccurate, body builders would be"overweight" even obese at times if they go by bmi , so it makes no sense to , once I get to 120 I will get another test done and see from there. 

I'm 5'3" and my initial goal weight was 150...then I changed it to 145...then it became 135.  I've had underwater body fat testing done and I'm stiting at 26.7% right now.  I want to get to 20%.  So this means I need to gain about 4 lbs. of muscle and lose another 5-6 lbs.   For me - from now on - it will be about body fat percentage and NOT about the number on the scale.  

Don't get me wrong -- I will still have a "comfort zone" of 4-5 lbs. that will alert me to if I need to make some changes to my food plan.   But I don't want to live-and-die by the number on the scale.  My doctor agrees with me.  

My doc didn't set a specific goal either, so I set my goal at 100% of what it took get to a 25.0 BMI.  That number was actually like 97 pounds, so I did round it up to an even 100 pounds.

I have beaten even that number though.  However, if I'm successful with my current muscle building and BF% goals, I'll actually gain my way back to around that figure.  That will be all muscle though, and a sub 12% BF%, so I won't be complaining.

Yes! It's just so hard to tell with individual variation - the only thing that makes sense to me as one gets close to goal is switching to BF.  BMI is probably good enough when you're starting at 100+ lbs excess weight... it's what you did, it's what I did - make a SWAG using BMI, then fine tune when you get close...  Check BF once or twice a year in maintenance to make sure the scale is telling you the right things...