How do you know when you're done losing?

I'm really curious about how people stay accountable to the concept of a goal weight. I'm a 29 year old woman and I'm at 128 down from 173 (about a year ago), so I'm at the goal weight I set after I reached the first goal weight I had. I want to go for another five pounds for an even 50 lost, but then I also want to account for some weight fluctuation, so maybe I want to lose more. I'm also increasingly aware that there's gotta be a point when I stop losing and settle into the size I am.

I'm sure this isn't disordered thinking. I've heard that the "last ten pounds" aren't important- I know that I'm in the middle of a "normal" BMI, my weight is no longer a risk to my health, and people no longer see me as a fat person. There are people I know who have never seen me fat! I've also kept a really positive body image and kind self talk throughout this process, even at the start. I'm fascinated and delighted to see the changes to my body- my hip bones are so present and the jeans i'm wearing still look impossibly small. I even have some hint of abs under the layer of fat on my belly! And while I didn't have a deficit every single day, or I sometimes ate more than I meant to, I was always accepting of the nonlinear path and never framed it as anything but a regular part of the process.

And I still want to lose a bit more. I really thought that, at my goal weight, I'd have less belly fat and lose my double chin. I wonder if I had a distorted body image in the other direction when I was bigger because I'm absolutely bewildered that it's possible to still have even this much fat on my body after losing 45 pounds. I never thought I had that much extra before!

I'll admit that I'm also really enjoying the tangible progress of weight loss. I work in animal advocacy and it's so hard to measure our progress- seeing the numbers on the scale or tape measure go down really scratches an itch for clear metrics. I know that the usual advice is to shift the focus to fitness goals, but I've got a couple of injuries that prevent both running and strength training, and my physical therapy goals feel more like the animal rights ones than the number on the scale. I've been swimming but I need to be gentle with it, and even walking is severely limited. Neither injury is

I guess I want permission, to hear that it's okay to work on a final few pounds that are purely aesthetic, that it's possible to do that once or a few times without developing an eating disorder, and some guidance on when to say enough is enough. What if I still have a double chin at 120? When do abs happen? And how do you actually go about the shift into maintenance without actually just shifting into gaining? My weight fluctuates so much anyway, it's a little intimidating to try to get information from it on more than a bimonthly basis.

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