The Apocalyptic Diet and Safe Weight Loss

Last week I posted an
article on how many calories the obese need. 
And that got me to thinking about calorie needs for all people.  When we reach the point where we carefully
have to monitor consumption of food stores within our families, we really need to
know what is acceptable for weight, height, and fat. 

Over the years, many height-weight charts have been
published with the aim of providing a quick, easy reference to indicate whether
a person is at an ideal weight or needs to gain or lose some pounds.  However, we are all unique individuals, and
there just isn’t a chart that can address all our differences and yield
anything close to a reasonable guideline for healthy weight.  To complicate matters further, now we’ve even
got to deal with categories for people who identify as something other than
their biological sex. 

For better or for worse, most Americans have opted to
develop their pre-positioned food stores in the form of excess weight.  That food storage program will come into play
when it’s time to start the apocalyptic diet. 
And most everyone on the apocalyptic diet (move over Weight Watchers and
Jenny Craig!) will be anxiously checking the charts for the time when they
reach their healthy weight and are then able to consume a few more calories to
maintain that weight.

Following are a few different weight charts as well as other
factors to be taken into account.  We’re
only addressing adults here.  Children
should be far less regulated in their calorie consumption.  Once the video games and other technology
disappear, they’ll become far more active and will need more calories and
nutrients to grow and develop properly.

Body Mass Index (BMI)

BMI is perhaps the most popular metric for measuring a
person’s weight relative to height. 

The following chart is from the National Institutes of
Health.

The BMI chart has some significant limitations.  If you’ll notice, it doesn’t distinguish
between men and women.  Men tend to have
more body mass and denser bones.  Nor does
the chart differentiate by age or race. 
All these factors play a role in weight. 
Nor is any allowance made for athletes who are extremely fit—muscle
weighs more than fat. 

The following chart from Metropolitan Life Insurance uses
frame size as part of the height-weight metric. 

Quickly approximate your frame size by wrapping your thumb
and index finger around your wrist.  If
they overlap, you have a small frame. 
Touch—medium frame.  Don’t
touch—large frame. 

Frame size is more accurately determined using the wrist
circumference:

Keep in mind that most physicians agree that losing 1-2
pounds per week is healthy.  Losing
weight more rapidly than that may have a detrimental effect on health.

As we shed pounds on the Joe Biden diet, we might become
concerned that we or our family members are losing too much weight.  After all, many of us are not accustomed to
being at a healthy weight.  These charts
can help us understand what is healthy and help us make better decisions.

References:

https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/BMI/bmi_tbl.htm

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323446#body-mass-index-bmi

https://www.livestrong.com/article/328220-the-average-height-and-weight-by-age/

https://www.calculator.net/ideal-weight-calculator.html?ctype=standard&cage=56&csex=f&cheightfeet=5&cheightinch=6&cheightmeter=180&printit=0&x=43&y=22