First thing first, drop weight

To start stylish fitness, one thing which is of utmost importance is to keep yourself within the range of acceptable weight. Easiest, but no so a perfect way is to measure your Body Mass Index or BMI. Weigh yourself and then measure your height. Use this formula to determine BMI

= weight in KGs/ (height in meters²)

A crude evaluation can be done as follows:

Underweight = <18.5

Normal weight = 18.5–24.9

Overweight = 25–29.9

Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater

BMI applies to adult women and men who are 20 years or older. Children who are two years and older are best assessed through BMI percentile.

Now it is established that your BMI is more than 25, you have to be serious in taking care of this.

It means only one thing; you are taking in more than you are spending. So, it’s not just the amount you are eating, but we have to take into account the whole lifestyle you are living. It may be that you are eating far less than your neighbor but still are gaining weight. Are you getting my point?

My husband is a doctor and when we use to visit our friends or family, most of the time he is asked for advice to lose weight. His answer was always simple, which even I grabbed it after a long time. He used to smile and says, “Don’t eat!” Ironically, the gross over-weight friend of ours always used to say, “I don’t eat much, but still am gaining”.

The culprit is not how much you eat, but the imbalance between input and output. Suppose, your intake is 15 gram (equals to 1 Tablespoon) more than you can spend every day. Even this small amount will collect over a period of time. Let’s calculate, in 30 days you have 15 x 30 = 450 grams (roughly half a Kg), which is 12 months will amount to around 5.4 Kg. Although, the daily increase seems to be so less, over time, say around 5 years, a total of more than 30 kg of extra you.

That was a hypothetical situation we have seen for the fact that 15 grams are too small a unit used here, secondly, imbalance of intake fluctuates and finally, we even don’t realize that we have accumulated.

To start with, you should have data to compare yourself to. If you don’t have it, buy yourself a weighing machine. A simple digital scale should not cost more than 10 USD (700 INR, 1500 PKR, 850 BGT). Every day, after getting off the bed in the morning, pee and without even drinking water, you have to weigh yourself. Record this in a table of daily reading.

Now that you have got your daily weight record, you can easily see that if you are gaining daily, i.e. you are taking in more than you are spending. We will not talk about calories intake or type of complex foods you must take etc., which may be the topic of any other posting, but here we want to put it very simply, without going into the trouble of calculating caloric value of food or type of food you are taking. We are merely measuring the imbalance between intake and output.

Just by weighing yourself each day will give you an idea that a slight increase from the previous day means you took in more than you have spent the last day, so either you have to reduce your intake or to increase expenses.