Obesity in America has reached epidemic levels. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that over 68 percent of America were living at an unhealthy elevated weight in 2007 and 2008. The two strategies that bariatric specialists believe are most effective in supporting weight loss are recording your weight each day and counting calories. A specific relationship between your height and your weight, known as your Body Mass Index or BMI, will tell you how healthy your weight is at the current time and those same parameters dictate the number of calories you can eat each day and still lose weight.
Step 1
Correctly measure your height. Many adults stop measuring their height after junior high and its not uncommon to be off by an inch or more.
Stand against a flat wall without shoes and position your chin level to the ground. Place a ruler on top of your head and press down lightly so you are measuring your body height, not your hair. Then place a mark on the wall where the ruler touches the wall or have someone do this for you. Using a measuring tape or ruler, measure your height to the nearest half inch and record this in writing.
Step 2
Take your weight daily for 30 days, average these weights and use this average to calculate your body mass index. Weight can change by several pounds over the course of a month; especially for women of reproductive age, and this method will insure the greatest accuracy.
Step 3
To calculate your BMI, divide your weight in pounds by the square of your height in inches. Multiply the result by 703.
To make this even easier, the National Institutes of Health publishes an online BMI calculator which can also be downloaded to a mobile device. You can find a link in the Resources section.
A BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 is considered healthy. A level from 25 to 29.9 is called overweight and any value above 30 is considered obese.
Step 4
Measure your waist to make the BMI assessment of your weight level more accurate. An analysis performed at the University of Missouri, published in the May 2010 issue of the "International Journal of Obesity," noted that BMI fails to detect excessive body fat in 50 percent of people who meet the overweight criteria. By measuring your, waist you can detect the most dangerous type of obesity which occurs when fat accumulates around the abdomen. Abdominal obesity is diagnosed when a woman's waist circumference is greater than 35 inches or a man's is more than 40 inches. Putting this measurement together with the BMI gives an accurate assessment of health.
Things You'll Need
- Bathroom scale
- Tape measure
- Pencil
- Journal
References
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Faststats -- Obesity and Overweight
- "International Journal of Obesity"; Diagnostic Performance of Body Mass Index to Identify Obesity as Defined by Body Adiposity: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis; O.Okorodudu, M.D.; May 2010
- National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute: According to Waist Circumference
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