Ideal Weight
How do you know when you're there?
By improving my eating habits, increasing my mileage, and doing some dumbbell work, I lost about 20# in a couple of months. At 6'6", and with a genetically slender build, I'm now hovering around 212#, and the same routine isn't taking off any more weight. I essentially lost the 20# in roughly a month, and have been hovering since then. While I don't have a 'gut', I do feel some fat on top of my ab's if I grab a pinch. I don't know whether working to rid myself of that is trying to go too far, or if I should continue to try and "burn the fat; feed the muscle" to eliminate all vestiges of my formerly corpulent self. I don't mean to piss off those who might struggle with more significant weight issues - just bear in mind I'm someone who was 165# in HS and 185# in college. Your basic beanpole, but I haven't seen a weight that started with a 1 in decades. Having experienced what cycling can do for my health, I decided there is no reason I shouldn't be at my optimum weight.
I want to get into competitive shape. I've already driven my wife to distraction by the relatively extreme nature of my efforts. It didn't go over too well when I actually fainted Saturday night, apparently from orthostatic hypotension (have an appt with my MD this afternoon). Whether it is a result of my training or something else, I've been having frequent light-headedness/dizziness when standing, and one second I was steadying myself on a doorframe, and the next I was waking up on the floor as she asked me "what are you doing?". This happened the evening of a day when I had done a fairly intense 44 mile morning club ride. Still got dropped despite my efforts - I backed off when I was kicking into zone 5.
So anyway, short of getting a precise BMI, what's a reasonable way of determining whether to:
A. keep working on fat reduction, or to
B. declare victory and try and find the right caloric input to stay where I am?