Healthy Weight And Healthy Living
THE DELICATE BALANCE
Healthy Weight And Healthy Living
Copyright 2005 Healthy Body Secrets
A person who is within his healthy weight limit is less susceptible to health risks. To put it differently, healthy living is directly related to having healthy weight. Body mass can be a determining factor of someone’s level of wellbeing.
When people speak of healthy weight, it means being on a normal weight range. Factors in measurement of a proposed weight range are highly considered. Underweight individuals are near to the level of malnutrition and overweight individuals can be close to obesity – both of these conditions do not match in the healthy weight level.
How to determine if a person is in healthy weight
Medical doctors, with the help of dieticians and nutritionists, have developed several means to compute and measure a person’s status in the healthy weight field.
1. BMI (Body Mass Index)
The BMI or Body Mass Index formula is designed to compute body fat, if it is in healthy weight range, depending on the respondent’s height and weight. For men and women, the range of 18.5 to 24.9 is the normal health scale that can easily be associated with healthy weight. A person who appears to have a BMI lower than 18.5 suggests that he may be underweight. If he/she has a BMI of over 25, he/she is overweight, and healthy weight is a major concern. Worse, a person who exceeds the BMI of 30 is most definitely an obese, and a healthy weight loss is a requirement.
2. Percentage Body Fat
Percentage Body Fat determines the rate of tissues which are merely pure fats in the body. For men, it is healthy to have 3% to 10% body fat but requires not to exceed to 20% to 25% in order to maintain a healthy weight. For women, on the other hand, 12% body fat is healthy and 30% to 35% is an abuse.
However, both BMI and percentage body fat calculations still need other considerations depending on a person’s situation. A muscular athlete like those who engage themselves in body-building, for instance, may appear overweight and out of the healthy weight range in BMI but is healthy in percentage body fat calculation because of less amount of body fat since body builders go through extensive workouts. Or, a person who has a normal BMI but does not exercise at all may appear abnormal in the percentage body fat calculation though a similar finding may not appear in his body mass index.
3. Waistline measurement
Measuring the waist line is the simplest method to determine if the amount of abdominal fat goes beyond the normal mass and can be a means to verify healthy weight. Men with waist lines measuring 40 inches and above are usually indicative that their body has an abnormal buildup of body mass. Same goes for women whose waist measures 35 inches and above.
It must be reiterated however that waistline measurement is not always precise in terms of determining a healthy weight. There are still other factors that make the process inaccurate.