Generally people think that the men and women who are neither overweight nor underweight are fit and healthy but this is not so. Health and fitness depend much more on your body composition and abdominal fat than on your body weight. Body composition means the percentage of your body weight that consists of fat.
If there are two people with same weight and height and one is muscular and the other has the high body fat percentage, then the former one is healthier than the later. Also if there are two persons with same weight and height and one has accumulated fat around his belly while the other person’s body fat is distributed all over. Here the later one is healthier than the former. So we can say that the fat percentage of our body and the fat around the abdominal area should be taken more seriously than to just on your total body weight.
There are two ways to know about your fat
1) Measuring body fat percentage
2) Measuring waist to hip ratio
BODY FAT PERCENTAGE
Men below 40 years – 8 to 19 %
Women below 40 years – 21 to 31 %
Men above 40 years – 11 to 24 %
Women above 40 years – 23 to 35%
Body fat percentage can be measured by using body fat scales and analyzer or skin fold capillaries. You can also go for professional assistance to know about your body fat percentage.
WAIST TO HIP RATIO
This is a procedure by which you can know about your extra belly fat moreover it is very easy to calculate the waist to hip ratio. Take a measuring tape and measure the circumference of your belly and hips. If the circumference of your belly is greater or equal to the circumference of your hips than you are storing too much body fat.
Divide the circumference of the belly by the circumference of hips. If the ratio is less than 0.8 then it is considered healthy in the cases of women and 0.93 in the cases of men.
Another way to know about healthy weight according to your height is BMI (body mass index). Overweight can cause many health problems like diabetes, heart diseases, blood pressure etc. BMI does not give the exact information but it can give you a rough idea of how much weight you have to lose. 19 to 25 BMI is considered normal.
