The one way to stay healthy as you age is by keeping tabs on your weight based on your height and age. The optimal weight will change as you age, and the only way to know what your ideal weight is for your age and height is by listening to the advice of your doctor. You can also work with registered dieticians to help you as well with that. However, in order to find your ideal weight based on your height and age, you will want to look into several factors which determine that. The one component to look at is your body mass index or your BMI.
Body Mass Index
Body mass index is a tool that is used the most, and the rule of thumb is that if your BMI is under 18.5, then that means you are underweight. If it is between 18.5 and 24.9, then you are at the optimal weight. However, if your BMI is between 25 to 29.9, then you are overweight. If your BMI is over 30, then that means there is obesity. However, there is one problem with BMI. It always takes height into account, but it does not take into account the proportion of your muscle mass. It also does not take into account the distribution or proportion of fat, and it does not take into account the measurements of your hips and waist.
That means if you are highly muscular because you work out often, then you will likely have a BMI of over 25, but that does not mean you are overweight. It means you are muscular and muscle weighs more than fat. Additionally, you may not necessarily be overweight but you may have a larger bone frame, and extra muscle can correlate with larger bone frames. Therefore, high-performing athletes will have high BMIs for that reason.
The BMI is more of a guideline to show you if someone’s weight is healthy or not. Therefore, if you are measuring the BMI of someone who works out all of the time and they have high muscle mass, and they have a high BMI, you will realize that the muscles are the reason for that. Therefore, their weight is healthy. However, if someone is not muscular and does not have a large bone frame, then the BMI is a lot more accurate. You can also look at the waist-to-hip ratio.
Waist-To-Hip Ratio
You want to look at where the fat is distributed, and if you are overweight, you will want to compare your waist size to the size of your hips. If your waist is higher in proportion to your hips, then that shows that you are more likely to develop cardiovascular ailments or diabetes. That is also why this is another tool to measure weight in addition to BMI. This method paints more of an accurate picture.
The way you measure it is by measuring the narrow part of your hip above your naval area. Then you will divide that measurement around the widest part of the hip. For instance, if your waist is 25 inches and your hips are 32 inches, then divide 25 by 32. The number would come to 0.78. The risk of diabetes or cardiovascular disease is low.
That is because for males, anything under 0.9 is low risk, and for females, anything under 0.8 is low risk. If it is for males, 0.9 to 0.99, then the risk is moderate, and for females, if it is from 0.8 to 0.89, the risk is moderate. The risk is high over 1 for males, and for females, it is 0.9.
That is how you know your ideal weight for your age and height. And your doctor will be the one to assess that when you go for your checkups. The best thing to do is to eat healthily and stay active, and you can keep your weight at the best level by doing that. Take medications if you have thyroid or other metabolic conditions.
