Measurement

As with any health care plan, it is really beneficial if you have a healthcare professional help you with measuring and recording the progress of your Healthy Weight For Life program. In addition to helping interpret your results they can also be a great support in times when you need them most.

There are numerous ways of assessing the benefit of your Healthy Weight For Life program and you will be surprised to know that measuring your body weight is only one method!!

Some of the ways you can assess the benefit of your weight loss are:

• Decrease in waist circumference OR
• Decrease in Body Mass Index or BMI OR
• Decrease in blood pressure OR
• Improved blood glucose levels OR
• Improved cholesterol and triglycerides OR
• Your doctor reducing or stopping some of your medications
  (REMEMBER — don’t adjust your medication yourself always discuss any changes to your medication with your doctor first) OR
• Increased energy OR
• Improvements in personal body image and sense of wellbeing OR
• Decreased snoring OR
• Less joint or muscle pain

Two of the most commonly used measurements to determine if a persons’ weight is healthy or unhealthy are Waist Circumference and Body Mass Index.

Waist Circumference

Excess weight carried around the abdomen (sometimes incorrectly called a “beer gut”) is an independent risk factor for health problems such as:

• heart disease
• type 2 diabetes
• increased complications of diabetes.

When you reduce the amount of fat you carry around your waist you are effectively decreasing your risk of developing heart problems and improving your health. Every centimetre that you can lose will help.

So, what waist circumference should you aim for?

A healthy goal for caucasian people is to aim for a waist circumference of less than 94cm for men and less than 80cm for women.

At present there is a consensus among diabetes experts that waist circumference targets should be adjusted downwards for Indian, Asian and Aboriginal populations and adjusted upwards for Maori and other Pacific Islander populations, but as yet, no definitive measurements have been determined. If you are from one of these populations you should speak to your diabetes specialist or ask your GP for a waist circumference target that is appropriate for you.

Measurement Technique

It might be surprising to know that there is actually a set of instructions that describes how to correctly measure your waist circumference. It is important to know how to measure your waist correctly so you can follow the same procedure each time — this will make sure that the measurements taken each week can be compared to one another accurately.

To correctly measure your waist circumference, take the tape measure that you received with your phase 1 kit:

• Find a point mid way between the bottom of your lowest rib and the top of your pelvic bone.
• Stand comfortably with your feet approximately 20 – 25 cm (10 to 12 inches) apart.
• Fit the tape measure snugly around your waist without compressing any of the underlying soft tissue.
• Measure to the nearest 1⁄2 cm at the end of a normal breath out.

Body Mass Index (BMI)

BMI is a calculation that is very well suited to assessing the levels of overweight and obesity in large populations. It adjusts for weight and height which allows people of very different body weights and heights to be grouped together into BMI ranges.

It is calculated by: BMI = weight(kg) ⁄ height(m)²

If you don’t know your BMI, you can use the formula above or refer to the table in your TEMplate™ book to work it out.

BMI calculations should be used with caution when looking at the health risk of an individual person because BMI calculations will:

• Overestimate the amount of body fat for people with proportionally high muscle mass e.g.athletes and people of certain ethnicity
• Often underestimate the amount of body fat for the elderly & people with a physical disability who may have muscle wasting.

Classification of weight by BMI