Healthy Weight Chart - Is BMI Reliable?

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.

If you are not familiar with these charts you may well have seen one pinned to your doctor's wall in his surgery, but this method of calculating healthy body mass is not without its critics.

The fact is that due to many changes in lifestyle and the modern diet this age old method may well be due for retirement. In some cases it has produced some very misleading results.

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?

Caution, there are cases where the results have been incorrect for example:

Our subject who was over 6 feet in height was given a false assessment when using the methods discussed above. His physician has said he is at risk of fatty liver disease because of his accumulation of abdominal fat.

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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