Wishing everybody happy holidays and with the first of the year, everybody wants to lose weight. It is always the number one resolution. So we’re going to talk a little bit about that. Typically what happens, you go to a doctor’s office and they take a BMI. All that really is measuring is height and weight. And then it puts you in a category. You are underweight, you are overweight, you’re obese, etc., but it doesn’t tell you where the body fat is. It doesn’t tell you how much muscle mass you have. So some Australian researchers have done a study and they’ve come up with a different method that’s very easy to use. And this is measuring whether somebody’s “over fat.”
Over fat they are defining as abdominal fat, fat in the abdominal cavity. The more dangerous fat, according to the researchers, is fat that’s carried on your belly, around your midline. This has more medical complications than just being fat all over. So just the fat that’s underneath the skin.
What they are saying is this has a lot of health risks. It’s a different type of fat. A way to measure that is you take a tape measure, and you measure your waist at your belly button level, not where you wear your pants. That can be two different sizes. Measure your waist right at your belly button level. Then take half of your height in inches. So if you’re six foot, that would be 36.
So if your abdominal size measures less than 36, you would not be considered over fat according to this. Over that, you would be, regardless of what a BMI says. So a way to start the new year, easy check, see where you’re at. Maybe something you want to work on. If you have further questions, contact us at fitnessforlifept.com.