Archive for the 'Am I Overweight?' Category
More and more people are finding it hard to lose weight. The world today isn’t helping with the rampant boom in fastfood restaurants and plus size servings.
Many are discouraged because they equate losing weight with spending a fortune. You will be surprised that free weight loss information is available to anyone and everyone online. The local library can be a great source of information, too. With the right attitude and discipline, anyone who is determined to lose weight will achieve his goal.
I’ve decided to start a weight loss plan. How should I determine what weight I want to reach?
Remember that your weight is just a small part of the whole picture. Other, more valid, indicators of your fitness level are:
How do you feel–energetic or wiped out?
Do you have good muscle tone, or are you flabby?
Are you able to walk up a few flights of stairs without panting?
Are you able to accomplish the daily tasks that you want/need to do?
If you’ve been overweight since childhood or adolescence, you may not even know what a “good” weight for you would be. Setting a goal of a normal body fat percentage (see “Is using body fat percentage a good way to tell whether I’m overweight?”) or a certain clothing size is probably more realistic than aiming for a specific weight, but even here you should use your common sense. Most women would love to wear size 6 (or smaller) clothes, even those whose large frames make this a totally unrealistic and unhealthy goal for them.
-AM I OVERWEIGHT?
-What do the terms “overweight” and “obese” mean?-
Physicians usually define “overweight” as a condition in which a person’s
weight is 10-20% higher than “normal”, as defined by a standard
height/weight chart. “Obesity” is usually defined as a condition in which a
person’s weight is 20% or more above normal weight. “Morbid obesity”
variously means 50% to 100% over normal weight, more than 100 pounds over
normal weight, or sufficiently overweight to severely interfere with health
or normal functioning.
-Is using a standard height/weight chart a good way to tell whether I’m
overweight?-
Your weight is only a very rough indicator of the amount of fat that your
body contains, and most physicians feel that the percentage of your weight
that comes from fat tissue is far more important than total body weight
(which includes not only fat but also muscles, bones, and bodily fluids).
Height/weight tables could indicate that a lean, muscular person is
“overweight”, while a person whose weight is within the “normal” range might
actually be carrying around more fatty tissue than is healthy. Covert Bailey
states in The New Fit or Fat that standard weight tables can be off by as
much as 20-30 pounds for any given person.