What should be the normal weight?

What is the normal weight? Most often it is associated with external attractiveness, but one should not forget that the optimal body weight is also the prevention of many diseases.

Normal weight in women

Most modern people, especially young people, have a very distorted concept of how a woman's weight should be. The aesthetic standards of the female body that exist today do not really have anything in common with either health or medical standards.

What should be the normal weight of a woman? Representatives of the fair sex, which 50 years ago would be considered normal and even thin, today considered, to put it mildly, plump.

About 30 years ago the normal body weight was calculated by the formula "growth minus a hundred." Later, the formula "growth minus one hundred and ten" appeared. Today, increasingly, in various sources, the rule of calculating the weight of women - "growth minus one hundred and twenty." Modern women are imposed not just harmony, and unhealthy thinness, which often leads to a violation of the menstrual cycle and the inability to conceive a child.

And what do physicians say about the optimal parameters of female weight? According to experts, the formula "growth minus one hundred" is not accurate, because it does not take into account the growth, age, width and weight of bones, the volume of muscle mass, the amount of fatty deposits, the type of addition. With this calculation, the error can be 5-7 kg.

There are other ways to know your ideal weight. Many more trust this indicator, such as the width of the fat fold on the abdomen, which is captured vertically at the level of the navel. If this parameter is from 2-4 cm, then the woman has a normal weight.

The formula "weight minus one hundred and ten" can not be called correct. This option of calculating the normal weight is not suitable for people below average growth. For example, a short girl who does not have excess fat, will weigh more than the result obtained.

To determine whether a woman has a normal weight, you can use the body mass index. To know its value, you need to weight in kilograms divided by the height in meters, squared. If the result is less than 15, then there is an acute shortage of body weight. With a value of 15 to 18, you can talk about the lack of weight. The optimal variant is observed at a value from 20 to 25. Weight is considered redundant, if this figure is 25-30. The index above 30 indicates obesity.

There are special scales with which you can find out how much percent in the body is fat. The weight of a woman is considered normal if this value is 18-25%.

Normal weight in men

How to determine the normal weight of a man? Like women, this can be done by the width of the fat fold on the abdomen. The norm for representatives of the stronger sex differs from the female one and is 1-2 cm.

The formula "growth minus one hundred" is correct for men not always. Most men, whose weight is so important, look lean and can be considered normal. Athletes who do not have excess fat and look fit, weigh kilograms by 10-15 more than unsporting men of the same height with a body weight of "minus one hundred". Athletes with developed musculature weigh at least as much as men with obvious fat deposits, since muscles are heavier than fat.

If we measure the weight of a man by the mass index, then the normal weight will correspond to values in the range from 20 to 25. Obesity begins at 30.

The formulas that today determine the normal weight of both men and women can not take into account many factors, so the results can not be considered accurate. Such calculations are completely inappropriate for people of older age categories. To assess the weight of doctors suggest measuring the circumference of the waist. In men, this figure should not exceed 95 cm, in women - 80 cm.