Ideal Weight

This is my followup article to Losing Weight and Muscle growth.

Today I'll talk about the current fads that people seem to follow when they judge others on their weight, Firstly we will start with BMI.

BMI = Body Mass Index, its a way to tell if your weight is normal based on two things, Your height and your weight, by taking these two things and putting them in some equation you'll find out if you're healthy or not...

Check this chart for your bmi

At least in theory that's whats supposed to happen, yet BMI is probably the most useless thing you can use to base your weight on, it means nothing because it just tells you.... well it doesn't tell you anything at all really, Because BMI takes in just weight and height, it doesn't factor in other things like body fat or muscle mass, which are way Way more important in judging just how healthy you are, For an example on how badly BMI sucks here's an 'overweight' guy.

Get out of the way fatty

Thats Steven Crawford, he's an Olympic runner, he has 28 BMI, he's overweight because his weight is 200 pounds and his height is 177, as you can see BMI didnt take into account his muscle mass, instead it just judges on Weight and Height alone, which is why You shouldn't use it.

But if BMI is so broken, then what should we use? I mean we all want to know if we are improving so should we just use the scale as a way to tell us if we are healthy?

Well....no not really, sure if you just want to lose weight then the scale is enough, but if you want to get a better body then the scale wont really help you there, to do that you should measure your body fat.

Body Fat tells you how much fat is in your body ( Surprised? :P ) there are scales for this that tell you how much Body fat you have, they are usually quite inaccurate and might give you an extra 2-3% body fat, but you should use them anyway, Why? because like an inaccurate scale that adds say 5 pounds to your weight, if you use it enough times, it will tell you whether you're gaining or losing weight, it just wont tell you accurately how much you currently weigh.

Body fat will make the biggest difference in how you look, 2% difference in body fat makes a huge difference, and its a tough thing to lose, much tougher then weight ( That's the difference between weight and fat, weight = the combined total of everything you have together, Fat = how much of that spongy stuff do you have)

Since pictures speak a thousand words, here's what different body fat % look like.

This is the level most athletes are, getting below 7% is not worth the effort

20% body fat is considered average

Well thats what guys would look like, by the way average for guys is 20%, for women is around 28%

Definition is lost as body fat increases

28% may be average but it isnt healthy

The above illustrates the difference in just a few % of body fat, generally women will have 10% more body fat then men. But what about the rest of you? if you're say, 15% then where does your other 85% come from?

Well The human body is made of a lot of things, those things take up a lot of weight, bones, organs, blood all that factors in and those are things you cant change, but you should focus on muscle mass, because Two people can have the same weight, same body fat level, but because of a difference in muscle mass, they will look completely different.

I think the one on the left is more muscular :/

As you can see, more muscle mass makes a huge difference, body fat is important but without any muscle to back it up, you'll just be a skeleton.

And that's really all there is too it, judging a person just from their weight or BMI wont work, its literally whats inside them that will determine what they look like, reducing body fat and increasing muscle mass should be everyone's goal, not seeing some number on a scale that doesn't even matter.

Love your body. :D.