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| Weight and Eating | |||||||||||||
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Many people are overweight. A lot don't accept it: excuses such as "I've got big bones" or "I've always been big" are just excuses, nothing more. Many years ago a formula was devised by the American insurance industry which linked weight to life expectancy. This is the result of dividing your weight (in kg) by the square of your height (in metres), and is known as the Body Mass Index (BMI). A normal BMI is between 20 and 25. You can calculate your BMI here (imperial) or here (metric) - courtesy of BBC Health. If your BMI is high, try putting in some lower weights to see how much you would need to lose in order to bring your BMI down to be inside the normal range. The following table shows the significance of different BMI's in adults.
Diet is an important part of a healthy lifestyle. You have probably already heard the message of "eat less fat", but you can do more than this. Total fat intake per day should be around 65g for someone on a 2000 calorie diet (53g in a 1600 calorie diet, 73g in a 2200 calorie diet and 93g in a 2800 calorie diet). However, no more than 30% of the body's calorie intake should come from fat. (Each gram of fat provides about 9 calories.) Of this total amount, ideally no more than about 20g should be saturated fat, the rest consisting of polyunsaturates and monounsaturates. The body makes the cholesterol it requires. The amount of cholesterol consumed in a day should not exceed 300mg. In addition to watching the fat in your diet, increase the amount of fibre (roughage). Fibre is found particularly in cereals, fruit and vegetables, and in the gut it helps to bind onto fat and reduce its absorption into the blood. Lots of claims are made for vitamin supplements, to help keep you healthy. In reality, if you are eating a well-balanced diet, you are likely to be getting all the vitamins you need in your diet, and you won't need any more. If you take extra vitamins, they are not absorbed from the gut, and are simply wasted. |
