Though one of the most popular tools used today to determine whether someone is at a healthy weight or not is the BMI, body fat and lean muscle tissue don’t figure into the equation. This has led many experts to discount BMI as an archaic measurement that isn’t accurate for many people. What is BMI, and why is it a good measure for some, maybe, and completely wrong for others?

BMI, or body mass index, was created in the early 1800s by Adolphe Quetelet. Because of that, it’s sometimes called the Quetelet index. It’s nothing more than a way of comparing a person’s weight to his or her height, and determining if his or her weight falls into a healthy and normal range. The BMI is still used today pretty much as it was when Quetelet invented it.

The formula for figuring BMI (body fat, bone and frame size, muscle and body type aren’t included in that) is this: Take your height in meters squared (your height times itself) and divide your weight in kilograms by that number. For example, if I’m 5 feet tall, that’s about 1.5 meters. To square that number, take 1.5 times 1.5. The result of that is 2.5. So if I weigh 120 pounds, that’s about 54.5 kilograms. Divide 54.5 by 2.5 and I get 21.8 as my BMI. The normal weight range is from 18.5 to 24.9, so 21.8 is classified as a normal weight. Underweight is considered 18.5 and below, while overweight people will calculate a BMI of 25 to 29.9. A BMI of 30 or greater indicates obesity.

BMI, body fat and general health can all be used as signs of how fit a person is. But where general health is pretty self-explanatory and the percentage of body fat clearly shows whether a person gets enough exercise or not, BMI is a bit trickier.

People with a lot of muscle don’t show accurate BMI readings. Because muscle weighs so much heaver than fat but takes up less space, a relatively small statured person can carry a lot of muscle weight without looking huge. BMI doesn’t take that into account. Football players, professional wrestlers, bodybuilders, and virtually any athlete who has a lot of muscle is going to measure as overweight and even obese according to the BMI. So it’s not accurate for them. Is it accurate for everyone else?

The answer to that is yes, and no. It depends on you. The BMI typically doesn’t show an accurate result for children. And extremely tall or large-framed people will show overweight or obese classifications more easily because of the extra weight from their bones and muscles. So for very short, tall or muscular people, the BMI appears to not be a good tool.

There’s also no distinguishing between men and women in the BMI. Body fat is more natural for women who are supposed to have more than men, so some sort of distinction in the measurement of the sexes would help the BMI’s accuracy

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Carb Pills How to Have Carbohydrates On the Adkins or South Beach Diet

If you are trying to go on a low carbohydrate diet such as the Adkins Weight Loss Plan or the South Beach Diet and find that you have trouble reducing your carbs, you may want to try anti carb pills. These are not actually medicinal products but rather dietary supplements made from all natural ingredients not chemical blends.

The reason carb smart diets such as Adkins and South Beach stay alive despite all of the negative media publicity is that they work. But, too many people find that they have trouble minimizing the amount of carbohydrates they consume for a long period of time. That is where the carb pills come in.

While more recent variations of the low carb diets have allowed more carbohydrates in the form of whole grains, it is still tempting to have a cookie from time to time. The carb pills absorb excess carbohydrates in the diet by blocking the carbohydrates consumed from being absorbed in the body.

One of the carb blocking ingredients in the pills is made from white bean extract. They are 100 percent natural and safe to consume.

It is best to take a carb blocking pill right before eating a carb heavy food or meal. They can also be taken during or after the meal, but this has a reduced effectiveness.

Here is how the carb pills work on the body. Fat accumulates in the body when carbohydrates are broken down by alpha amylase, which is an enzyme produced in the pancreas. When you exert yourself through exercise or daily energy, these carbs are burned off. However, if you take in more carbs than you burn, you will store the excess as fat.

Carb pills prevent the fat by preventing the excess calories from being converted through blocking the digestive enzymes from acting on them. This means that the major portion of the carbs are passed through the system without being absorbed.

So, do carb pills work? The scientific community has not really taken up this question because the major pharmaceutical companies fund most of the research. As the carb pills are not produced by these pharmaceutical firms, researchers have not found it worth their while to independently evaluate the pills.

However, the companies which produce carb pills have produced their own studies. They have shown that in the short term at least, the carb blocking pills do in fact keep up to 45 grams of carbohydrates from being absorbed in the system.

There may be some side effects from using the carb blocking pill. These include gastrointestinal distress, heartburn, excessive gas and diarrhea.

The two most common brands of carb pills are Carbo Lock and Ultra Carb. These pills can be expensive a 30 day supply typically retails for $30. If you buy the products in larger quantities, you can often bring the daily cost down.

If you want to have the benefits of a low carb diet but occasionally indulge in carbohydrate rich foods or meals, you might want to consider investing in carb pills which block the carbohydrates in a pasta dinner or piece of chocolate cake from turning into fat.

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There may be thousands of diets on the market today but not all of them work. As a matter of fact, studies suggest most dont which means if you are looking for a way to lose weight you should discover weight wachers. The best diet in the world is not the best diet for you if you do not lose the weight. Even more importantly, the diet that helps you get to a certain size but doesnt remove body fat is not the diet for you either. The bottom line of dieting is to lose body fat.

If youve ever been on a diet before, you know that deciding on the wrong diet can mean weeks or months of deprivation that end up resulting in minimal weight loss and possibly binging from deprivation of so many of the foods you normally enjoy. The beauty of dieting the right way, such as when you discover weight wachers, is that you dont have to suffer while you diet. When you discover weight wachers, you discover a way to eat the foods you love sensibly so that you can enjoy eating and lose weight at the same time.

Realistically speaking, many people dont have time to prepare a meal every time they want to eat. Many lifestyles, families, and job commitments place significant demands on our daily living. We simply dont have time or access to the good home cooked meals we would like to eat. Sometimes the best we can do is to grab a quick bite on the way to a meeting or soccer practice or other obligations. For this reason, to discover weight wachers means providing yourself with a reasonable way to begin losing weight and to maintain that type of eating regimen until your ideal weight is reached.

When you discover weight wachers, you are giving yourself the weight loss advantage that you need. Your daily routines can be stressful enough without adding a diet plan that stresses you further. Eating is a fact of life. We have to eat to live. You shouldnt have to practice a eating routine that is a big ordeal and difficult to maintain because if you do, chances are you arent going to stick with the routine or see any significant weight loss because its too much trouble to maintain and too much of a hassle to be involved with.

Knowing that theres a weight loss plan that will let you continue with your life just as it is right now is important and can be the key to getting started with your weight loss right away. More importantly, when you discover weight wachers you are making an investment in yourself which shows others that you care about your body and want to be around for those that you are about also. So it doesnt really matter at all whether you want to lose 5 pounds or 100 pounds, you can discover weight wachers and start losing the weight today.

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BMI calculations might seem like some esoteric and complicated process that you have no hope of figuring out. That’s not true. BMI isn’t magic or some scientific secret withheld by those in the know. If you’ve ever used a BMI calculator online, then you know that you put in your height and weight, and it cranks out special number. There’s always a chart handy, or the website interprets it for you, and tells you whether you’re underweight, normal weight, overweight or obese, all based on this single number. The website did the calculations for you, but you might be wondering just how it arrived at that number. BMI calculations are fairly simple once you understand the basic formula. But first, let’s look at what BMI is and what BMI calculations are used for in the first place.

BMI is the measure of body mass. By comparing your weight and height, specifically dividing your weight by your height, squared, the BMI calculations give us a single number. Depending on where that number falls on a special scale, it tells you if you’re underweight for your height, in the normal range, overweight, or obese.

BMI doesn’t measure body fat, however, so often the number is wrong when it comes to athletes or very muscular people. Muscle weighs more than fat, so for them, BMI isn’t an accurate measure at all. For most people, though, it’s a very good estimate of weight in relation to height. So what BMI calculations allow us to arrive at that magic BMI number?

BMI calculations may seem complicated, but they’re really not. At its most basic, the formula is kg/m2. Or your weight in kilograms divided by your height in meters, squared (your height in meters times itself). A person who’s five-and-a-half-feet tall stands about 1.7 meters. Square that number (1.7 times 1.7) and you come up with 2.89. A person who weighs 150 pounds weights about 68 kilograms. So the BMI calculations to determine this person’s BMI would be 68 divided by 2.89. The result of that is about 23.5.

A BMI of 18.5 or below indicates that an individual is underweight. The normal weight range is from 18.5 to 24.9. Overweight people will calculate a BMI of 25 to 29.9. A BMI of 30 or greater indicates obesity. So a person with a BMI of 23.5 is within his or her normal weight range, according to the BMI calculations.

If you don’t want to convert feet and pounds to meters and kilograms, then you can use one of the other BMI calculations to figure your number. This person’s new formula would be weight in pounds, 150, times 4.88, or 732, divided by height in feet squared (5.5 times 5.5) which is 30.25. Then divide weight by height squared (732 divided by 30.25) and the result is 24.1, very similar to the metric formula’s result. BMI calculations can also be done by taking weight in pounds times 703, and dividing by height in inches, squared.

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