How I Picked the Magic Number

Like I said before, I won't be putting my weight down in numbers on this blog. I will only divulge the pounds I want to lose and the pounds I have lost. I am going to be posting monthly pictures of myself documenting this progress. The reason I'm doing it that way is because with my body build and muscle mass, I shouldn't try to get down to the ideal weight for my height. My height is 5'7, and I think the ideal weight for that is 130. I can tell you right now I have not weighed that since 7th grade. I'm not a waif; I have curves and muscles and a belly. Now, I do want all those things to be smaller, 27 pounds smaller in fact.
I chose my goal weight after doing a lot of research about what is healthy for a girl my age. That weight also happens to be what I weighed as a senior in high school. I'm not trying to recapture my glory days or anything like that. When I was 17 and a senior, I didn't have to try for anything to maintain my weight. I could eat what I wanted, then go to basketball practice and sprint for two hours and be fine. I'm no longer 17, I no longer have a basketball coach yelling at me to run and I no longer have the super-metabolism that I had back then. I certainly can't eat like I did back then, dang it.
But why this number? Why 27 pounds? Why keep up this diet after the wedding is over?
Well, I have done my research and have come to the consensus that this is the healthiest number to be at.
I decided to stay on the diet because I am married now. To me, what I'm doing seems backwards; I've got the ring, he's tied in, now's the time to let myself go! I can't do that though. I started thinking about what it means to be married, and the vows "as long as you both shall live." I want to live as long as possible. I have to treat my body like a temple and only put good, substantial things in it, not only for me, but for my husband. We have a lot of living to do and we have a lot of fun doing it.
I also realized that being married means having children. We don't know when that will be, but every time we see a parent with a child, we know our first pregnancy will come a little sooner than we originally planned. I fully understand that my body will go through unimaginable changes when I am pregnant, including the fact that I will gain weight. I want to give my body a fighting chance to lose that weight once I've had the baby. I think that if I kept the weight I'm at now, I might be at risk for complications during the pregnancy. My body needs to be super healthy when it starts baking that baby-bun. Also, if I kept the weight I'm at now and gained more weight on top of that during a pregnancy, not only would I not look healthy, I wouldn't feel healthy and would have that much more weight to lose. It wouldn't be good for the baby, my husband or me.
There you have it. I hope this will bring understanding to anyone who is reading. I know I'll have to revisit this post throughout the process of this lifestyle change, as it'll get hard and I'll need to be reminded of why I'm doing it. It's not just for me, it's for my family.