Health and Fitness Information Center

Know where you stand with your weight

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• Weight Control

Realizing your weight alone doesn't distinguish whether the pounds come from fat or muscle. In order to assess your physical fitness level, you need to regularly monitor your body fat. Reducing body fat and building muscle is associated with numerous benefits such as greater strength, reduced likelihood of injury, and higher metabolism.

There are several ways to determine your body fat percent available today. Gaining wide support by medical and fitness experts is the bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA). From the privacy of your home, this method offers the easiest and most convenient method by integrating advanced technology and traditional BIA into a bathroom scale.

Height-Weight Tables were originally developed by insurance companies to establish recommended weight ranges for men and women. The "desirable" weights were those associated with the lowest mortality among large population studies of insured people. Unfortunately, these studies do not accurately represent a cross-section of the entire American population.

Waist Measurement
Waist size is an additional, independent risk factor and can be used in conjunction with any other method. It reflects growing evidence that excess visceral fat - surrounding the abdominal organs - on its own increases the chance of heart disease or diabetes.

Research indicates that visceral fat (waist size) is more important in the disease process than subcutaneous fat which is just under the skin ("love handles", "pinchable inches"). Abdominal fat cells appear to produce certain compounds that may influence cholesterol and glucose metabolism. In men, a waist size of >40" and in women >35" is an indication of increased health risk.