Sunday, March 16, 2014

Healthy Weight Chart - A Guide To Healthy Weight Management

By Sam Jones


I recently did some research for an article that was requested by several readers to my website. The question was, Am I Overweight? This got me thinking about how we determine healthy weight and the tools we use such as the healthy weight chart.

The healthy weight chart is a fairly crude formula that takes into account many general factors relating to the overall body shape of a person.

The healthy weight chart or height weight chart can give a result that leaves some people confused.

To clarify, these charts can be used to produce a rough idea of where we are in a healthy weight range, what band we fall into based on a height and weight formula.

There are some questions about the accuracy of this system. The height weight chart has been around for several decades and many of us have seen it pinned up on the medical practitioner's wall when we have visited the surgery.

There is a particular problem with the modern diet that means that many of us now carry excessive and disproportionate amounts of fat around our waistline.

The healthy weight of an individual can vary and the height weight chart is intended to be used as a guideline to determine if a man or woman is in the healthy weight range.

The healthy weight range system was established by collecting data from the population as a whole.

For the vast majority of the population the height weight chart gives a realistic picture of where you are within the range of healthy weight.

The real question though is, if the height weight chart can be relied upon?

In some cases the results for certain individuals when using these methods proved to be wrong.

We identified a subject (over 6 foot in height) who has now been assessed as being at risk of fatty liver disease, even though his healthy weight range score indicated otherwise. This is an example of the problems with this simple system.

Fatty liver disease is thought to be related to the amount of fat that is carried around the abdomen.

Men with an abdominal circumference of above 40 inches who are over 6 feet tall could be mislead as they may be considered in the overweight but not at risk category according to their BMI using the healthy weight chart.

To sum up: Due to known inaccuracies of the measurement systems for height to weight ratio, more doctors have now updated their advice to patients to be aware that carrying weight around the middle part of your body can put you at increased risk of diseases.




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