What's a Healthy Weight?

What's a Healthy Weight?

Although nutrition experts still have different ideas about the precise limits of what's a healthy weight, there's a good working criteria based on the ratio of weight to height. This ratio, called the body mass index (or BMI for short),consider the fact that taller people have more tissue than shorter people, and so should weigh more.

Nothing magical happens when you cross from 20.4 to 20.5 or from 31.9 to 32. These are just convenient reference points. Instead, the chances of developing a weight-related health problems increases across the range of weights.Lots of studies that have included more than a 1000 thousands adults have indicated that a body mass index above 25 increases the chances of dying early, mainly from cancer or heart diease, and that a body mass index above 30 dramatically increases the chances. Based on this consistent evidence, a healthy weight is one that equates with a BMI less than 25. By convention, overweight is defined as a BMI of 25 to 29.9, and obesity is defined as a BMI of 30 or higher.

Muscle and bone are more dense than fat, so an athlete or muscular person may have a high BMI, but not be obesity. It's this thing that makes weight gain during adulthood such an important determinant of weight-related health—few adults add muscle and bone after their early twenties, so almost all that added weight is fat rather than muscle.