Personal Training In Surrey with Pete Griggs

The Body Mass Index or BMI is a tool that measures a person’s body mass and determines if a person is overweight or not. It utilizes a mathematical formula that is based on the weight and height of a person. BMI is equal to weight in kilograms that is divided by the height in meters squared (BMI = kg/m2). A BMI of 25 to 29.9 concludes an overweight person. A person having BMI that is 30 or higher has to be considered as obese. As we can see, it is flawed because the BMI does not measure body fat levels. You could be ripped with pure muscle but the BMI will tell you that you are obese. The BMI does not take into consideration the difference between pure muscle and excess fat. People with denser bones will also have problems with their BMI.

Since the ideal weight determined by BMI is a bit unreliable and controversial, what we need is a more significant measure to see whether we are healthy or not, overweight or not, etc. We should aim for controlling our body fat percentage. The ideal body fat percentage for a man would be 10-14% and 16-20% for a woman. A lot of people are not familiar with this but if we know our current body fat percentage, then we would be able to determine what our ideal weight would be.

A rough estimation to determine your body frame type would be by gripping your wrist with your other hand, making your thumb and index finger meet. If your thumb and finger overlaps, then you have a small body frame. If your thumb and finger just touches each other, you have a medium frame. If both fingers do not touch at all, then you have a large frame. A skin fold caliper is also good tools to determine whether your frame has just right or excessive body fats.

Measuring body fat is a lot better than measuring body weight because the latter does not consider muscle mass. Some weight loss programs make you lose muscle mass instead of body fat, which is quite problematic. Maintaining muscle mass makes you burn more calories and thus makes muscle mass essential to a healthy body and to losing weight as well. Muscle is metabolically active and can burn calories even when you just sitting still. This is why an ideal weight loss formula would be something that enables you to lose body fat while still maintaining or building more muscle.