Nope… It’s Healthy BODY COMPOSITION
My Dad has asked me to do a quick questionnaire on ‘healthy weight’ for an article. Here’s my take;
“As a nutrition professional, how would you define ‘healthy weight’?
You can only define a healthy body-weight if you think about the sum of its parts.
Body-weight is broken down by the following;
- Water mass
- Bone mass
- Muscle mass
- Fat mass
- Skin
- Organs
These individual components all contribute to your body weight.
Your skin, organs & bone mass will develop from birth & plateau when fully grown. It will then fluctuate slightly throughout life.
Water mass will be relatively consistent throughout life.
Body Fat will fluctuate greatly depending on lifestyle & muscle mass.
Your muscle mass can fluctuate greatly & is the key component to focus on to dictate your healthy body composition.
You maximise your lean muscle mass by prioritising protein & fibrous carbohydrates with resistance training. If you can stay consistent with this you can maintain a healthy body composition your whole life.
If you prioritise starchy carbohydrates & minimal protein with inactivity your muscle mass will not be maximised & your Body Fat will increase.
How would you measure it?
The more common ways are hands on measurements with calibers, tape measures & scales or using Bioelectrical Impedance which is what some of the more expensive home scales are able to do.
All accessible ways of measuring body composition has to be seen a a ‘ballpark’ figure. Scales, tape measures & callipers for skin-fold measurements all succumb to human error in some form. You need to choose a method & stick to it for a period of time that allows for patterns to emerge & be recognised in order to be rectified.
How to achieve healthy weight?
The best way to manage your body composition is to spend a set amount of time focussing on all the types of measurements available & look for patterns. If you monitor/track your food intake against calorie expenditure whilst doing this you will be in a good place to understand how your body composition can be managed or improved for long term results.
Or;
- You prioritise protein & fibrous carbohydrates with resistance training, every day.
For elderly people, how to gain weight (or stop losing it)?”
- You prioritise protein & fibrous carbohydrates with resistance training, every day.
If a persons biomechanics limit movement then starchy carbohydrates should be limited also. These are fuel sources & if the fuel isn’t used, it is stored. Stored fuel can turn into Body Fat.
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I have spent over 12,000 hours applying the above to many, many people.
It’s no nonsense, it’s boring, it’s THE ONLY WAY to do it properly.
