Thursday, February 28, 2013

How To Know If You Need To Lose Weight

Before you start looking for how to lose weight you must first be sure that you are actually overweight.
So, how do you know if you are overweight?
There are several methods that you can use to determine whether you are overweight but, you have to realise that none of these methods is perfect; most of them actually provide you with a good guide of the amount of fat in your body.
In this article we are going to be looking at two of the most widely used ways of determining whether you are overweight.

Method one-Measurement of body mass index (known as BMI)

Your body mass index is a statistical measurement of your body weight in relation to your height. It is one of the commonly used guides to determine whether a person is overweight or not. You can calculate your body mass index by dividing your body weight in kilograms by the double of your height in meters.
The body mass index of people can be classified into these different broad groups:
Group A-Underweight
If your BMI is less than 18.5 then you are considered to be under weight; what this means is that you should increase your calorie intake and you should also eat lots of protein to build up your muscle mass. You should also consider taking up bodyweight training to build up more muscles.

Group B-Normal weight
If your BMI is 18.5 to 24.9 then you are considered to have a healthy weight. However, you must realise that even though you are within the normal weight range your body might still not be fit especially, if you are living a sedentary lifestyle and if your diet lacks some essential nutrients that your body needs.
So, even if you are within the normal weight range you can still improve your fitness levels by exercising more and eating more nutritious foods.

Group C-Overweight
A BMI value from 25 to 29 means that you are overweight and you need to shed excessive weight quickly so that you do not become obese; if your BMI is in this range you need to start exercising and eating the right diet.

Group D-Obesity
If your BMI is over 30 then you are obese; at this level you must take urgent steps to shed off excessive weight. This level of high body weight makes you very vulnerable to serious diseases like diabetes, hypertension, stroke, and heart attack.If you are obese you need to make immediate lifestyle changes; you must start exercising everyday and you should also overhaul your diet.

However, note that BMI does not take the muscle mass of the body into account and most body builders and muscular athletes will erroneously have high BMI.

Method Two- Measurement of waist circumference
This is another way of determining the level of the weight of the body. This method is considered to be a better way of determining whether you are excessively fat because it actually measures the size of excessive abdominal fat which is actually a stronger indicator of the predisposition of the body to develop serious weight related health problems than other methods of measuring body fat.

To measure your waist circumference all you need to do is wrap a tape measure around your waist while you are standing and then read the measurement on the tape.

If you are a woman with a waist circumference above 35 inches you are overweight; if you are a man with a waist circumference that is above 40 inches then you are overweight. It is better to have a "pear" shaped body with a narrow waist line with fat hips and thighs than to have an "apple" shaped body with a wide waist line and thin hips.

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