Healthy Body Weight

The most favorite or least favorite topic of almost all the human race is body weight. No matter what your nationality, faith, or economic background is this one thing is the conversation and fight starter or finisher. Many have built their lives, and careers around it, and many have lost their money and sanity behind it. So today let's discuss this elephant.

So basically , human body weight = muscles + fat + water + bones + other nutrients + air + other lean tissues
Now when we say I have lost weight, what exactly you have lost is a question. But don't worry we have invented the machine that can tell you that BIA or Body Impedance Analysis. But using this machine every day is not possible.



Hence we use our simple weighing scale to weigh ourselves. If you have ever observed fluctuations in your weight, you will know how unstable is that. Why? Because any change in any component of it will change the total weight. Now why we discussed this in-depth? Let's see.

Currently, people are divided into two mindsets. One group believes that weight is the ultimate parameter of health. If I lose/gain weight I am making myself healthy. And other group believes that fat and muscle ratio, strength, and other parameters are appropriate and weight is just a number.

Being a health coach in a general scenario I am more inclined toward the second group. Since as we saw weight is made of different elements and weight loss can happen due to loss in any element. Only good element to lose is excess fat. Losing water, proteins or muscle tissue, etc will actually deplete your health in many ways. Hence until you don't confirm the actual percent of these elements through BIA you can't say I am healthy since I lost weight.

A person weighing 90kgs with 5.6" in height, though according to BMI is "obese", in reality, can be lean and healthy and vice versa. A person with 5.5" in height and 55kg in weight can look chubby and weak, and unhealthy. So weight doesn't state your health. This does not mean you should ignore your weight, it can tell you about so many things happening in your body. But you should not run behind in losing weight.

There are certain situations though when you have to give equal importance to weight. Let's see important and common in those -

• If you have joint-related issues, spine or specifically lower body bones and joint issues then better to maintain the ideal weight as more puts pressure on joints and could worsen the pain. But along with balancing weight, also improve your strength to stand any pressure.

• Before pregnancy: As during pregnancy weight increases and also your spine is under lot of pressure and excess curvature, being already overweight will add to your pain. And this will carry forward way after your pregnancy.

• Weight class sports athlete: Sports in these categories like boxing, weightlifting, wrestling etc. have different weight classes and to be able to participate in competition an athlete has to weigh in that range. In here weight management is compulsory.

There are many other situations where one has to pay more focus on weight. But always remember good weight loss = loss of excess fat weight.