[AnneWonders]

I found a nice website on Healthy Weight at the CDC. Yep, for us Americans our tax dollars did something nice. Take a look.

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/index.html

Note that it doesn't ignore preventing weight gain in the first place or maintaining weight loss as a important components of healthy weight management.

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/prevention/index.html
http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/los...pingitoff.html

Enjoy!

Anne

[bargoo]

These are excellent, thanks for the information. I bookmarked them so I can refer to them again.

[Mudpie]

These are good reference points.

But nowhere do I see an explanation of how the BMI of very muscular people should be adjusted. BMI tends to put us in the high end of normal. This might throw some people off and cause them to lose too much weight so they will be in what the BMI says is the low-mid range of normal.

Dagmar

[fiberlover]

Good site. I do get irritated with the BMI, though. I wish there was some better tool. I really want to get my body fat tested, just out of curiosity.

[AnneWonders]

Originally Posted by Mudpie

These are good reference points.

But nowhere do I see an explanation of how the BMI of very muscular people should be adjusted. BMI tends to put us in the high end of normal. This might throw some people off and cause them to lose too much weight so they will be in what the BMI says is the low-mid range of normal.

Dagmar

Dagmar,

I hear what you're saying. BMI is certainly a not a perfect measure of body composition. But it's easily measurable, and a good indicator of increased health risks for a large majority of the population. The weight assessment page also lists waist circumference as an additional test.

I liked the emphasis on healthy (as opposed to ideal) weight, lifestyle choices, manageable changes, and the health improvements that are gained with just a 10% maintained loss in body weight for an obese person. Sometimes I think we focus too much on an ideal or goal weight. Losing modest amounts of weight and keeping it off are worth it, and I like finding advice like this aimed at the general public and not having to go picking through the abstracts of the peer-reviewed literature, where only professionals and obsessives (like me) will find it.

Of course, this CDC website isn't in serious competition with the South Beach diet for popularity, but I'm glad it's there.

Anne