Numbers! Why Are They So Important To Me?

I know I have nothing to complain about.  I am not really complaining.  I just don't know why I am so hung up on numbers when I am doing so well?
I have 3 lbs to get to my final goal.  No big deal.  Why is it such a big deal to me then?  I never expected to get this low.  My surgeon warned me that I may not lose weight.  I am a revision and I don't know if he said that because I had failed so miserably with my first surgery or if it was because he thought I had screwed up my metabolism so badly.  Or maybe he is just pessimistic.
I expected to lose slowly because of the revision and my age and my lack of physical activity.
I was perfectly content, thrilled actually, to get to a normal BMI.
So why does this last 3 lbs matter?
Because with my first WLS I got to 120 lbs.  I actually got a little lower, like 117 or 118 but didn't stay there for more then a day.  I hit 120 lbs and stayed there for a little while.  Then started gaining.  And gaining.
When I weighed 120 lbs I wore a size 3.  I can't remember what my body fat percentage was.
I even felt that I didn't look good at 120 lbs.  My face looked gaunt and I didn't feel I looked healthy.  I wasn't unhappy when I regained up to 130 - 135.  Even when I got to around 145 - 150 I felt fine.  It was when the weight started coming on uncontrollably that I panicked.  I stayed under 150 for about 5 years.
Now I weigh 123 lbs and I wear size 5, sometimes size 4.  My body fat percentage is 27%.  I see some people who weigh a lot more then me who have body fat percentages of 18% or 19%.  I can't imagine what I would look like with that little body fat.  I am sure I would have less body fat if I exercised regularly.
I am comfortable with the way I am eating.  I am not dieting.  I am not tracking calories right now.  The only thing I am doing is avoiding refined carbs, getting in a lot of protein and not snacking.  I can live with this.  I expect to have some bounce back, which is why I made my goal so low. 
It is almost like I am competing with myself, like I won't feel successful until I reach the same weight and size I did before with my first WLS.  How screwed up is that?  If this were my first WLS I wouldn't even think twice about it.  My BMI is 21.8. 
I do plan on getting more active.  I have a community center down the street that I am planning on joining when I have the money so I can go swimming and use their weight room. 

 I can't answer your question, of course, because it's for you to discover. But I can say that your ability to get to where you are is amazing & maybe complacency isn't your best friend. Maybe the obsession with numbers helps you ensure that you won't be OK with regain. All behavior & thoughts are purposeful, even when illogical, so figuring out the purpose or what you're trying to really achieve can help you decide if the focus on numbers is helping or hurting.

Thanks, maybe you are right.  If competing with myself is helping me to lose the weight then trying to improve things will help me stay dilligent against regain.  I am trying to use my previous experience to learn from so I don't have to make the same mistakes I did before.

I share your obsesion and have no clue what to do about it. Maybe when I am further out then I will be able to quit worrying so much. Uh, probably not though.

Do you think it helps you to maintain?

I believe that may be a good reason to stay scale obsessive. I still think I need to lose about 25 pounds. I am a size 8 though and that seems to be a good healthy size. I am not sure I could handle a size 4 or 3. I might look emaciated and then the food police might start chasing me around trying to get me to eat stuff I don't like. At the size I am now I am healthy and no one cares about the minute quantities of food I consume. Now that there is an eating disorder named Extreme Picky Eaters (a category I could easily fit into) I worry about the intervention that might happen. Right now no one seems bothered by what I do and don't eat because I am in the 150s weight wise and that number protects me from any of that.

I AM a numbers person also.  Clothes sizes do not bother me but the scale does.  I have been successful and do believe I've maintained fairly well due to my obession with seeing the numbers creep up.  When they do I immediately make changes for a few days and (crossing fingers) so far at 6 years out I've maintained with in a 6 lb range above goal. 

I'm going through a divorce right now which instead of causing me to eat the stress has caused my pouch to tighten up and I struggle to eat causing me to lose more weight.  I really need to find a balance, although the past week I'm eating better and more.

Hmmm.... How in the world can you be a size 4, have a BMI of 21.8 (which is on the LOW end of normal) and have a body fat % of 27%?!? Not questioning your statement, just confused because that's an unsual combination of numbers...

I would point out that the people you know with 18 or 19% body fat fall into the "underfat" category according to most charts (some more positively term this "atheletes"), and that a "healthy" body fat % is between 21 and 33 percent for women under 40 (up to 35% for older women).

I guess the question I would ask you if you were one of my clients is why it is so important for you to get to a weight that you, yourself, admit looked bad on you because it was too thin? What if there IS no bounceback (it does not happen to everyone)?

Just things for you to ponder...

Lora

The 27% is from my scale, which I have heard is not that accurate.  It actually says 27.3.  It seems strange to me but maybe because I am not athletic I have little muscle?
As far as getting to a certain weight all I know is it has to do with doing as well with this surgery as I did with the first one, only better, if that makes sense.  I really think that if I had never had WLS before I wouldn't care but since I have I want to know that I can do as well as I did the first time.
It's like being able to run a mile in a certain amount of time, which I don't know anything about since the only way you will catch me running is if someone is chasing me with a knife.  But if you had been able to run a mile in 5 minutes before and then didn't run for a while wouldn't the goal be to get to where you were before?
I hate to compare it to a game but like when you are playing a video game and you keep trying to get a better score?  Bad analogy I know but that  is how it feels.

Since I was not a fat child or teen or even a fat 20-something, I guess I have been trying to get back to the size and look I had as a 20-something before pregnancies and weight gain took that look away. Of course that is unattainable. But that is still the fantasy goal I have. So I can see you looking to get where you were before. The problem for both of us is that maybe we are not really thinking correctly about it. What we really should be thinking about as a goal is to be in our healthiest body possible. This may mean a little bit more weight than our fantasy desires but health requires what it requires.