I’m overweight and that’s ok.
There are many people in America who hop on and off a scale and try one million diets in a year in an attempt to achieve some physical standards set by some strange entity. We are inundated from a young age with what it means to be beautiful and healthy. Growing up in the nineties, it was all about having a skinny waist, flat bottom, and big breasts for many women. The standard for men fluctuates much less but that doesn’t mean that this standard of the Adonis was never set? In order to be attractive as a man, you go do thousands of crunches and biceps curls to get the bulges in all the right places. There also were set weight brackets that you needed to fall into to, based on your gender, be considered “underweight”, “normal”, “overweight”, “obese”, and “morbidly obese”. It didn’t matter how tall you were or your body’s water weight.
Recently, countries started moving to a new method of health analysis. They’ve started focusing on a more overall body composition analysis also known as body mass index (bmi). This calculation takes into account your height. So, it is an improvement to the old ways of thinking. To calculate your BMI:
BMI = Weight, kg/ (Height, m)2
The normal range is 18.5 ~ 25.0. That’s a bit of jargon but it’s the formula we’re dealing with. I really wanted to know what my body was made of but I never wanted to be obsessed with numbers. In my journey, I’ve always been plagued by trying to fit numbers. I wanted to get to certain weights and waist sizes. To find my best body, I had to drop this way of thinking and I swore off numbers. I stopped weighing myself and focused on my health and how I looked in the mirror. If I didn’t like it, I’d change it but I knew that no one else would be prescribing me a magic number of health. Fast forward to now, to a more confident and self-assured Willie and I was presented with the opportunity to have my body indexed. I decided to do it out of curiosity. In short my results were that I weigh 172.4 lbs, my total body fat is 20.7 lbs, and my lean body mass is 151.7 lbs, of that my bones and muscles make up 40.6 lbs (I have abnormally strong bones as well) and 111.1 is water.
Here is what that means:
Muscle-Fat Composition: To have a better muscle-fat control I need to increase my body fat by 0.01 lbs and increase my muscle by the same amount. (WHAT?) I also have a basal metabolic rate of 1856 kcal. That means that at rest, without exercise, my body burns 1856 calories in a day
Body Composition: My overall weight is just above what is normal for a male of my height. My lean body mass is also “over” the normal line and body fat is in the normal range.
Obesity: I am considered overweight. Yep, for my height and total body mass, I’m overweight according to my BMI. However, my total body fat is 12% of my entire weight. The normal range is 10 ~ 20.0%.
By a technical standpoint, I am considered at risk for obesity and obesity related diseases. If you look at me, you may think otherwise. This is the flaw of the BMI. It does not account for your muscle and fat. It lumps everything into one large number. I only illustrate this to make the point that I and you included are not the sum of your numbers prescribed on your health. You have to find love and health in the mirror before searching externally. Don’t look for everything else to define you. Get healthy on your term. Don’t be reckless and release the obsession because we may never fulfill the society’s standards for us.
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