Being pleasantly plump was once considered a symbol of good health and affluence. These days it’s in to be lean, but more people than ever are overweight. The love handles and pot-belly that were once idolized are responsible for an increase in health problems. This doesn’t mean you need to aim for super-model skinny to be healthy, but you need to be careful about how many pounds you pack on.
Your body naturally contains millions of fat cells. Each one is an expandable pouch filled with fat droplets, called lipids, that are made of fats, sugars and amino acids derived from the foods you eat. Under normal circumstances, your body uses fat tissue to cushion bones, to regulate temperature and as fuel when blood sugar runs low.
When you eat more food than your body needs to function, fat cells expand until they fill to capacity. If there are plenty more calories to be stored, your body manufactures new fat cells. (Until recently, experts believed the human body stopped producing new fat cells after puberty. Now they know that overeating can trigger fat cell production in adults.)
Not all body fat is equally bad. The body’s most dangerous fat collects in your abdominal cavity, packing around internal organs. This central fat releases hormones that upset body chemistry, significantly raising your risk of heart disease and other major conditions.
Looking in the mirror or stepping on the scale are two obvious ways to tell if you’re over-weight. But how can you tell if you’re pleasantly plump, or dangerously porky? Sometimes your weight may be hovering in the danger zone without it being readily apparent.
To find out if your weight is at a healthy level, calculate your body mass index. The BMI takes into account your weight and height to figure out the healthy range for you frame. It’s a handy number to know. In fact, most doctors, health experts, and even insurance companies use it to gauge the healthiness of your weight.
Have a scale around? Calculate your BMI now. If you do your weigh-in at the gym, you can calculate your BMI by yourself by dividing your weight in kilograms by your height in metres squared.
If you weigh 70kg and are 1.71m tall your BMI is 24:
Weight: 70kg
Height Squared: 1.71 x 1.71 = 2.92m2
BMI: 70 ÷ 2.92 = 24 (23.97 to be exact!)
For adults 20 and older, BMI ranking fall into the following categories.
20 to 25: Normal
25 to 30: Overweight
30 plus: Obese
40 plus: Extremely Obese
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