Do you believe in the Ideal Body weight?
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I remember my first real encounter with Ideal Body weight was when I was applying for health insurance. It must have been at least ten years ago. We had a woman come over to the house to meet with my wife and I. We ran through a long question and 
answer session and lots of paper work, then we did a blood test, and finally we did our height and weight. At the time I was in some of the best shape of my life. I was not far removed from competitive sports and I was continuing to work out for multiple hours a day. My eating was also much more health conscious than it had been since I was very young.
So to my amazement I was shocked to find out that I was actually borderline obese. I thought the lady was joking when she tole me I was close to 30 p0unds overweight. I was about 180 pounds but my body fat percentage was in the single digits.
I was quite uncomfortable and at a loss for words. My Wife was also quite shocked at this but found it too also be quite funny to watch the nurse try to explain to me how I was way over weight.
I had read about this test in some text books while in college but I thought it was something that they used to use. I never imagined that there would be a time where a test such as this would actually impact my ability to get life insurance.
If you are curios, follow this link to a site called Health Discovery that allows you to input your height so it can determine your ideal body weight.
Put your numbers in and let me know what you come up with. It tells me I should weigh 150 pounds. I have not weighed that since my sophomore year in high school.
2 Comments on this post
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Josh Platt said:
Just a thought: If everyone has an ideal body wieght would you consider someone who is in excellent physical conditional, but technically overwieght, an unhealthy person? The example you used about yourself before sounded, and i think most would agree, like a very healthy active person to me. The body may be disigned to structurally support a certain amount of wieght but as long as you maintain muscular efficiency as you gain muscle mass and weight, i don’t see the negative repercussions of being “technically” overweight.
-Any thoughts?April 8th, 2009 at 8:12 pm -
Scott said:
I totally agree. The issue in the example is that our medical community does not agree. The Health Insurance company also did not think my weight was good. It made me more of a Health risk. Here is one repercussion that I can think of, by getting to a higher total body weight even if it is a part of a healthy body fat composition requires a higher amount of caloric requirements. So the danger is the precedence you set for yourself if you stop working out. Can you change your cravings and eating habits to match your lessening muscular stimulus?
April 8th, 2009 at 8:19 pm