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Your Doctor Recommended Ideal Weight - Healthy Or Not?

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Tuesday, 06 March 2007

Your recommended "healthy" ideal weight is a table made up of a list of heights and the weight you "should" be to be healthy. I do not know where the table originated from but I guess it was the medical establishment or some government body, or possibly pulled out of someones' butt.

Now according to these tables I am obese, I think my ideal weight is around 95kg - skinny in fact for me.

Yet a girl I know who eats junk food every meal is considered healthy by her doctor because she weighs in within the ideal weight range for her height... 

I believe these ideal weight charts were drawn up as a guideline somewhere in the 1940's as were the Daily Recommended Intake* and not revised since then. 

I remember going to a doctor then a dietician back when I first started training and being told that I was lighter than my ideal weight and I should put on a little more weight, but they had no idea about eating really. The dietician added a small steak to my breakfast and a couple of eggs to my lunch I believe - it was not much of an addition and he never mentioned the ideal of eating more meals.

I often have problems trying to discuss diet or eating habits with people as they get their advice from such luminaries as their Doctor, the Dietician, or weekly (trash) womens magazines.

If you want advice on your weight - go ask someone who looks like you want. I do not go to some fat slob at the pizza shop and ask him how to grow big muscles and get fit. What difference does it make if that fat slob puts on a Doctors smock and goes back to his office?

So getting back to it. I am obese (from the World Health Organisation webiste):-

The prevalence of overweight and obesity is commonly assessed by using body mass index (BMI), defined as the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in metres (kg/m2 ). A BMI over 25 kg/m2 is defined as overweight, and a BMI of over 30 kg/m2 as obese. These markers provide common benchmarks for assessment, but the risks of disease in all populations can increase progressively from lower BMI levels.

My BMI is over 30, yet my female friend who eats only saturated fats and sugary nutrient poor foods is considered healthy by these same authority figures because she in within her ideal weight.

My advice is to ignore these self appointed 'experts' and think about it for yourself, I mean it is your health, shouldn't you take responsibility for it? 

The only way to tell if you have an ideal weight is to stand in your underwear and look in the mirror. Do you have a good body? A good healthy body is lean, muscular and taunt. Skinny and flabby is not healthy anymore than just plain fat.

  

* Daily recommended vitamin intake was made up to serve the army during WW2, it was the minimum amounts of vitamin and mineral intake needed to keep a soldier in the field. It has nothing to do with health or real requirements it is merely the minimum needed to stop soldiers getting sick from deficiencies or malnutrition. 

 

 
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