Your BMI Score: Are You Fit or Just Acceptable?

Do you know that you don’t have to be overweight to have too much body fat? You can weigh in at what you think is your ideal range and normal body size, but still be considered obese and thus, at risk for future heart problems. This phenomenon of “normal weight obesity” is the focus of a report by the Mayo Clinic, whose authors estimate that as many as 30 million Americans fall into this category.  An informative feature story about this appeared in the Wall Street Journal’s HeartBeat Column this week.

Apparently, what’s most critical in evaluating whether you’re really fit or just acceptable is not your BMI score, the traditional measure for obesity,  but how much body fat you’re carrying around. If you don’t have access to a gym that has equipment for measuring your body composition, a simple way to estimate if you are really fit is to measure your waist or use a metric called the waist-to-hip ratio (are you an apple or pear?).  Many research studies have proven that fat stored around the middle (a particular problem for post-menopausal women) doubles the risk of death from stroke, cancer and cardiovascular disease. Why? Dr. Joann Manson, a Harvard endocrinologist explained in an NPR interview that “abdominal fat cells tend to be more active in producing hormones and chemical  messengers that cause inflammation throughout the body.”

So, if you’re on a weight loss diet, be sure to include exercise, particularly weight training, to ensure that you’re building lean muscle as you lose weight. And don’t think you’re sitting pretty just because you’ve reached your ideal weight. If your percentage of body fat is still high, you’re not fit, you’re just at a (barely) acceptable level.