Healthy Weight

A healthy weight is neither overweight nor underweight. Overweight can lead to illnesses, such as heart diseases, stroke, or diabetes, while underweight can affect your health, because your body doesn’t get enough food. For a healthy weight, consider these:

Eat According to the Need

An increase in body weight results from an imbalance between energy intake (food) and expenditure (metabolism, thermo-genesis and physical activity). The excess energy is stored in the body, usually as fat. Body weight gain can also result from an increasing muscle mass. So for people having regular weight training, it doesn’t necessarily mean unhealthy.

Make sure that you eat as much food as your body needs. Think before you eat: Do you really hungry? Is there a healthier choice?

Balance the Diet

To get all the necessary nutrients for keeping a healthy body, you need a balanced diet. Ban strange diets. They may work in short term, but almost all are doomed to fail. Choose healthy foods and eating smaller portions, slowly. For most people a balance diet should consist of:

· More fruit and vegetables, whether fresh, frozen, canned, dried, cooked, or juiced. They should make up a third of the diet. Take at least five portions a day.

· More starchy foods such as bread, cereals, pasta, potatoes, beans and lentils. They should also make up one third of your diet. Try to eat in variety and choose whole grain, whole meal or high fiber varieties whenever possible.

· Less fat – especially saturated – salt and sugar. You'll probably eat some foods containing fat, like butter, cooking oils, salad dressings and mayonnaise; keep these to minimum and choose low fat varieties where possible. The same goes to cakes, biscuits, pastries, ice cream and sugary drinks. Sugared soda, fruit drinks, or juice can give you several hundred calories a day. Boil, steam, grill, poach or microwave food rather than fry or roast.

Getting Physical

Be more active. Physical activity is a good way of using up extra calories, and maintaining body weight. Choose activities you enjoy and do them every day. No need to join a gym, though. Some daily routines may help you burning off excess energy, for example, walking after lunch, using stairs instead of lift, walking (or jogging) for some shorter journeys or getting off the bus one or two stops earlier.

Measuring Healthy Weight

There's a good way to know whether or not you have a healthy weight, based on the ratio of weight to height, called the body mass index (or BMI). It based on the fact that taller people have more tissue, and so tend to weigh more.

Your BMI is calculated by dividing weight in kilograms by height in meters squared. For example, a woman 1.67m in height and weighing 65kg would have a BMI of 23.3. The healthy weight is ranged from 18.50 to 24.99, overweight is measured as 25 or more with obesity determined as 30 or more.