We don’t have a set of scales in our house and I don’t weigh myself. Whenever I visit a Doctor or a Nurse they always want to know what my weight is or ask me to stand on the scales. I mentioned this to someone recently and expressed my opinion that it wasn’t necessary for me to know my weight or for anyone else to know their weight. The response I got was “how do you know if you are healthy if you don’t know what you weigh”?
Traditionally, Doctors have looked to a body mass index (BMI) score to measure obesity. BMI is a height -to-weight ratio which classifies people as either; ideal, over-weight, obese or clinically obese. Critics argue that BMI on its own is not a good measure of health. The BMI score does not take into account body composition, including muscle and bone mass. Muscle weighs more than fat, but fat takes up a bigger surface area than muscle so an athlete could have a high BMI score without having any fat and being overweight. Some experts believe that waist and hip measurements are a better indicator of potential health risk.
For someone trying to lose weight, using scales as a measurement can be misleading, because an increase in exercise and protein, for example, may have increased their muscle and reduced fat resulting in a healthier body but the scales might not reflect the improvement leading to despondency and a “whats the point” attitude.
So if you know of anyone who is obsessed by weight, diets and/or calorie counting The Spence Practice weight control programme may be the solution. No diets, no scales and no calorie counting. See http://www.thespencepractice.co.uk/lose-weight.html for more information.
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