Healthy weight | How to be healthy

 
Actually, you're too fat, according to Body Mass Index.  But that does not mean you are very unhealthy.  It depends really on where the fat is established.  Indeed, a curvier you are, you can also fight off disease.

Want to know if you are overweight; calculate your Body Mass Index (BMI).  For that you need your weight by your height in meters squared.  If you are for example 1.72 and you weigh 65 kilos, then you first calculate the square of your height: 1.72 x 1.72 = 2.96.  Then share your weight by that number.  So 65: 2.96 = 21.96.  That number is your BMI.

Under this directive, you have a healthy weight if your BMI is between 18.5 and 25.  A BMI between 25 and 30 is, especially if you already have health problems, wise to lose weight.  A BMI of 30 or higher, results in considerable health risks so, losing weight is necessary.  But the BMI is not everything. Children, the elder, pregnant women and people with more muscles have different standards.

But there are further comments on the BMI score.  Whether you are overweight or unhealthy, it depends also on the spot where the excess fat is stored.  Especially visceral fat is a risk to health.  That fat is stored around the organs and is not visible.

 It is possible that a thin person with a BMI of 20 inside is still a fat. Conversely, people with high BMI can neatly be inside skinny.  A familiar example is the Japanese sumo wrestlers. They especially have fat under the skin.  And that is not unhealthy.  Skinny fat people inside are much worse off. A lot of fat in the abdominal cavity is an important risk factor for the development of diabetes and heart disease.
  


New research shows that a high BMI is not necessarily correlated with an increased risk of diseases.  It is even shown that people with a BMI and overweight are less likely to develop lung cancer, chronic bronchitis, anemia and osteoporosis.  The journal Obesity published a long-term study which showed that those with a high BMI have a lower chance of dying than any other weight group.

The Wageningen professor Michael Muller, specialised in nutrition and metabolism, says that good fat may have anti-inflammatory properties.  These relate mainly about fat that lies just under the skin.  That fat produces all kinds of good materials.  The same goes for fat on the hips, thighs and buttocks that is chemically very stable fat.  Stable fat 'captures' harmful compounds during the digestion of food released.  That is good news for pear shaped people.

This does not mean you can be more thick than thin.  It only means that a slightly high BMI score or a few pounds more is not directly a threat to your health.  Your health is mainly about your lifestyle with adequate exercise and healthy diet.  This is also the only way to counteract dangerous visceral fat.  But remember this as you struggle with weight, you are fit. One man has a healthy lifestyle as a BMI of 22, the other with the same lifestyle hear a BMI of 27.

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