Be Your Ideal Weight Key Things to Understand About Weight, Fat, BMI and Calories
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| Be Your Ideal Weight Key Things to Understand About Weight, Fat, BMI and Calories |
What is your body type and ideal weight? How many calories does your body actually need each day?
Doesn't it annoy you when you hear "It's easy to lose weight, just eat less and exercise more". Agh!
Is it that simple? Yes and No! Certainly what we eat and how much we eat generally influences whether we achieve weight loss or gain. However, there are definitely some big mistakes people make with dieting and muscle building, which makes weight control kind of tricky.
Here I'll explain some key things to understand about weight control, the difference between losing weight and losing fat, muscle and shape, cutting calories and daily exercise.
Ideal weight and Body Shape
It's true we all come in different shapes and sizes, but how do you know what is an ideal weight for you?
Well, part of the answer is about your specific body types or shape, but the other part about ideal weight is actually about self-image. Self-image is the picture you have of an 'ideal' body, which may be completely different to what's idea for you! If criticising your 'assets' is you all over, maybe take a look at fitness models & celebs lately to get the showdown on the good, bad and downright ugly!
Firstly, these supermodels and celebrities are on a permanent diet - and not a healthy one in many cases - - so
who wants to live like that!
Secondly, these skinny female body shapes are NOT actually attractive (not just my view), they scream malnutrition and obsession rather than representing an ideal weight. When we see the pictures, they shock us, but unfortunately, many women secretly want to be like that - creating all kinds of eating disorders, fad diets and more obsession, especially in kids and teenagers.
Skinny models distort our view of the attractiveness of normal body shapes, especially for women. Your ideal weight isn't a comparison to these images of women.
So keep it real!
Remember the women in the renaissance paintings or the Venus de Milo sculpture and think about Marilyn Monroe.
Words like 'curvy' and 'voluptuous' spring to mind? And not negative, but complimentary.
body image of marilyn monroe A healthy weight should be within the normal percentage (%) body fat for men or women, or you can aim to lower body fat and achieve a lean or athletic body shape. Shape comes not from weight but from the proportion of muscle mass to your body fat. This is why body mass index (BMI) is a really outdated measure now.
Once you start to know these kinds of 'figures', you can actually work out your ideal weight, resting metabolic rate (RMR), which tells you how your body's daily calorie and protein needs.
But how does all that stuff help you maintain your weight or lose weight?
We lay it out here, simple like!
An average woman, of an average height needs to consume approximately 2,000 calories per day, and 2,500-3000 calories for men per day, to maintain weight. However if you are consuming an extra 500 calories per day, over a week you have exceeded your required calorific intake by 3,500 calories.
This may not sound much but that figure equates to approximately 1lb of extra stored fat. Over a period of a month that could be a weight gain of 4lb in body fat and over a year, wow - that's almost three and a half stone!!!
Now let's cover a few more myths!
Health Risks of an Expanding Waist
In fact, the simplest way to check yourself against an ideal weight and your health is to measure your waist size or the ratio of your waist to hip measurements.
Circumference measurements in different places on your body will give you feedback about how well your diet and exercise regime are working.
So measure yourself regularly if there are some 'trouble' areas for you, such as losing belly fat. You can see if certain places are lagging behind others in toning up, or in the case of waist and hips, if you’re gaining body fat.
lady with belly overhanging tight jeans Stomach fat and an expanding middle in men and women is actually a REALLY good way to check how overweight a person is. This is because as the % body fat increases, the waist size increases. Usually it's the first place you gain and the last place you lose.
Instead, waist circumference is a pretty accurate measure of future health problems because what matters is where you carry your excess fat.
The waist is a key measurement, because when your waist size is going down, you know your overall body fat is going down. Of course, you notice it too even without measuring, because if your waist goes in even a little bit, your trousers get looser! Your waist can completely change the way you look – even if you don’t gain any muscle.
Of course, people do have different distribution of fat around certain parts of the body. This can affect the look between different people. You know if you're an apple or a pear!
For example, if one managed to reduce her fat percentage to 20%, yet had a high amount of stomach fat, then she may not look as slim as her friend who has 25% body fat but a more even distribution of fat over the body - heard the expression "hides it well" or "look ok in clothes, but bit squidgey in a bikini".
The result is she would have to work harder and reduce body fat percentage even further if she wanted to look leaner than her friend around the belly.
So what are the take home messages here?
Waist size a REALLY good indication of how far off your ideal shape you are because it relates very well to your percentage body fat.
People who are an apple shape - they store fat around their midriff - are far more likely to develop heart disease and diabetes than those who are a pear shape or more diffusely plump.
So, as I've indicated above, abdominal fat and a large waist measurement is a real indicator of certain health risks, which can lead to cardiac failure, liver disease and so forth.
As a health guideline, a waist circumference greater than 80cm (32in) for women and 94cm (37in) for men indicates increased risk, while a measurement of more than 88cm (35in) for women and 102cm (40in) for men is particularly worrying.
An even better measurement of health risks of an expanding waistline could actually be the ratio of your waist (the narrowest point on your abdomen) to your hip (the widest point. A ratio of more than 1.0 for a man (in other words your waist is bigger than your hips) or 0.8 for a woman means you urgently need to reduce your weight and increase your levels of exercise.
So remember earlier ... how does all that stuff help you maintain your weight or lose weight?
Well the more you understand the fundamentals, the easier it is to make decisions about what you choose to eat or not eat, when you eat and how much you eat, AND how to avoid the common pitfalls in a weight loss programme.
In terms of the energy that our body burns and calculating calorie requirements, you need to factor in two things that impact on you maintaining an ideal weight. The first is basal or resting metabolic rate or RMR. This is the number of calories burned when the body is completely at rest, purely to survive.
The second is your level of daily activity, whether you sit down most of the day in an office or in your car or on your sofa! Or if you are walking, going up and down stairs, cleaning, gardening etc., and the amount of specific exercise you take, such as cycling, swimming, jogging,