What keeps me on track long term is wanting to be healthy and fit so I can enjoy the land I own now and into my old age.

What keeps me on track day to day is a personal belief that within the next few years we are going to see additional health insurance restrictions or surcharges based on BMI measures. I would expect that we will start seeing surcharges next year, but I am determined that if they happen to be introduced during this year's health insurance open enrollment period (October) that I'm not going to have to pay extra because insurance companies find it cost effective to criminalize obesity and overweight. I'm also considering the possibility of retiring as early as 50 (7 years away) and to do that I would need to be sure I could get private health insurance. I'd hate to have all of my pennies saved, and have the decision as to whether to retire at 50, 55 or somewhere in between be controlled by the insurance industry.

I'm STILL ticked off about applying for health insurance when I was self employed and 272 lbs, applying with me as the primary and my husband (who has had serious health problems in the past) as the dependant, and having the company send back a letter addressed to him telling him that he was accepted but I was denied because of my weight. They didn't even send ME the rejection letter. It was as if I didn't even exist because I was the wrong weight. I'm still mad about it.

You can get a lot of weight loss out of determination to never again have your employment or retirement choices held hostage by insurance companies' BMI calculations and cut offs.

I'm actually in a bit of a bind right now. At my height, I need to weight 166 to ensure that some idiot calculating my BMI and not carrying any digits after the decimal point will still label me as normal weight. Figure 6 lbs difference between morning naked weight and an afternoon weigh in with clothes and shoes, and that means I should keep my weight at 160 or less.

With my current lean mass (which is still going up), 22% body fat would be 159 lbs. If decide that I really don't want the risk of someone ever calculating a high BMI on me, my final weight needs to be somewhere between lean and very lean - not just good old "normal". And I bet that 3-5 lbs of the lean mass is from a dab of extra skin here and there which makes absolutely no difference to health, but would still get tallied up as fat by a bunch of morons who think BMI should be the gold standard of body evaluation.

Still, I just can't see how insurance companies can avoid fat surcharges or policies that limit access to care for fat people when they currently have to foot the bill for a booming number of gastric bypass surgeries. I've seen our local clinic advertising and apparently selling gastric bypass with a "free" tummy tuck follow up (upcharging the bypass to pay for later "free" surgery), and at my company alone (which isn't that big), I know of at least 6 people that have used the company health insurance to get the surgery. I'm sure there are quite a few more, especially when you consider spouses and dependants. Those costs will have to be passed on to the other insured folks, and I really believe BMI calcs will be used to decide which of us has to pay how much.

October is coming fast, and I'm going to feel a lot better knowing that my BMI isn't going to be an issue for any insurance company. Of course, hiking with a lot less lbs is going to be really nice, too - and I don't mind getting that sooner rather than later.

Lynda