BMI (Body Mass Index) is a measurement of the fatness or thinness of a human body. BMI came into popular use around 1972 as an easy to calculate measurement of the amount of fat relative to the height and weight of an individual in order to assist in medical diagnosis.

The introduction of BMI as an aid to assessing a medical condition of the human body came about as Western society became more affluent with a rise in obesity as a consequence.

What Is BMI?

BMI is calculated by dividing a persons’ weight by the square of their height to give a reading that ideally should be between 20 – 25.

Why Check Your BMI

Above 25 suggests overweight, above 30 can mean obesity and over 40 becomes dangerous, life threatening obesity. Under 20 indicates underweight, possibly due to malnourishment or disease.

However, it must be emphasised that the Body Mass Index is only a guide to the amount of body fat in the human frame, it is not an accurate fat measurement tool nor should it be considered in isolation in any medical diagnosis where obesity or underweight may be a factor.

Despite this some medical practitioners and others tend to rely in their judgements on the index. For example taller people may give a high BMI despite being obviously slim, in such a case it is due to a mathematical aberration involving the BMI’s inverse proportion to the square of the height. (too complicated to discuss here).

Age, gender and ethnic origin all play a part.  Asians with a BMI of over twenty three are considered to be in overweight territory.

You may come across BMI Prime, this is a simple change to measuring a body’s BMI against BMI 25 (i.e. upper limit of good fat level) to give a reading above or below an optimum fat level of 0.99.

Those with a BMI Prime of 1% or over are overweight, between 0.74% – 0.99% have no fat problem, and below 0.74% are underweight.

How To Check Your BMI

It is easy to calculate your BMI as long as you know your weight and height.  Download this tool to calculate your Body Mass Index (BMI) and give you an indication of your fitness. It saves the results in a file, so you can through the program look at the file, and compare your results from day to day, which gives you an overview of your weight development over time.

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It takes dedication to lose a large amount of weight, but losing too much too quickly can leave the body with loose skin that just never seems to go even with targeted exercise.

Areas that are noticeably difficult are the tummy and underarms.

Loose Tummy Skin

As for the skin on your tummy, you should know that it differs from skin elsewhere on your body as it contains subcutaneous tissue whose purpose is to store fat.

It is recommended that weight loss should be restricted to well under 3 lbs a week to give time for your stomach skin to adjust.

Aiming for just 1 lb a week is preferable.

However here are a couple of exercises that may help your stomach problem :

• Lie flat on the floor facing down, legs extended and feet about two feet apart .
• With your palms placed beneath your shoulders, lift your body from the knees upwards until your arms are fully extended. Your lower legs and arms will be taking your weight.
• Arch your back and lift your head so that you are looking up as high as you can and hold for a count of ten, relax back to the floor and repeat after a further ten count.

You may find that it will take time before you can fully carry out this exercise. If so, you can start with your elbows bent or not fully arching your body and over a period gradually, and without over straining, you should get the maximum benefit from this routine.

• Adopt the same position as above. This time when you extend your arms, keep your legs straight and fully extended so that your knees are raised and your weight is taken on your feet tops.
• Arch your back and look towards the ceiling and, as in exercise 1, take a ten count, relax to the floor and repeat.

This is important! If you have any back problems you should not attempt these exercises without first getting fully qualified medical advice. Also be carefull not to overdo the work out, just gradually work up to about twenty minutes a day and stop if you feel any discomfort in your lower back.

Loose Underarm Skin

Tightening the skin under your arms is a more difficult problem.

While there are a number of techniques that may work, we have no personal experience or access to anybody who has had success in curing the problem or can recommend a proven remedy,  unless you opt for surgery. Exercising the arms is likely to build up muscle that will begin to fill out the skin but is not likely to significantly reduce the excess skin look.

If you are young your skin is still elastic so you can try increasing the circulation by stroking, buffing, manipulating etc., the flabby skin to get the blood flowing. This will encourage new skin cells to grow and become thicker which can make the skin look firmer.

You can buy firming creams that contain collagen, an essential group of naturally occurring proteins. Massaging the loose skin with these creams may help to plump up the skinand give it a firmer look.

Keep your body well hydrated by drinking plenty of water at all times. This helps keep your skin cells moisturized so averting any tendency for them to shrink and look flabby.

Drinking green tea is said to help rid the body of flab as it produces metabolic rises in the body both during exercise and resting periods. If you dont like the taste you can try peach, raspberry or   tropical.  This, in turn, may help to det rid of the loose tummy and underarm skin.

Those wedges of fatty tissue that collect at the sides of the waist above the hips are popularly known as ‘love handles’ and with a little imagination it is easy to see the reason.

The problem is that love handles are not an attractive feature on either women or men and, of course, perform no useful function when making love.

You know that the more you can hold them in your hands the more noticeable and unattractive your love handles are becoming. Even if you are only just beginning to notice a small bulging above your hipbone you should take immediate action.

The longer you delay the larger and more prominent your love handles will become and the harder it will be to lose them or to disguise them.

All routines that are effective in toning and trimming the body need self-discipline to achieve and maintain a satisfactory end result. Although this is the number one priority it does not mean a life of total dedication, nor does it mean that you should not enjoy a good life style.

All things in moderation is the pathway that will remove those dreaded love handles while at the same time making you feel healthier, more energetic and restore your figure to looking its best.

First of all you must realise that your diet will have the most effect on the overall look of your body. This is not so much a question of quantity, although that is an important aspect, but more about the quality of what you regularly eat.

At the top of the list is to eliminate or cut back drastically your intake of saturated fats. All processed foods such as:-

• margarine,
• sausages
• any tinned, frozen or packaged foods

will have nutritional information printed so nowadays there is no excuse for not knowing what you are eating.

If in doubt just think about saturated fats as being solid at room temperature.

Butter or the fat on cold meat and bacon are examples.

Watch your intake of carbohydrates as the body can turn them into fat if not burned off by exercise. Remember to eat your five vegetables or fruit a day as these add trace elements and vitamins essential to the body’s healthy function.

The amount of food we consume daily will vary with every person.

Some will have a tendency to put on weight faster than the norm, others seem to be able to eat enormous quantities, including foods like French fries and sugary pastries and still remain wafer thin.

It all depends on each individual’s rate of metabolism, most often inherited. Only you can best figure out the quantity of food you need to keep trim, and not feel bloated after a meal.

As a very rough guide three meals a day consisting of about three portions each meal combined with some exercise should not prove excessive. A portion to suit you is more or less the amount of food that can be held in the palm of your hand.

Drink about four or five pints (2-3 litres) of water throughout the day to flush bodily wastes and keep the skin supple and moisturised.

Once you have established a diet that suits your ambition to get rid of your love handles you can quickly move on to a simple but effective exercise regime. Put aside 30 -40 minutes four or five times a week to get the heart pumping harder, to burn off fat and trim up the muscles around you waist.

Running, cycling, using a step machine and aerobics are some of the cardio vascular exercises that get the heart rate up.

One of the most effective specific exercise to obliterate those love handles is side crunches. Also good for getting a flat tummy.

• Lie on the floor with your hands behind and supporting your head, elbows flat on the floor, knees together and bent.
• Starting from the waist keep your knees together and roll them to one side so that they touch the floor at the same time lifting your head from the floor assisted by your hands.
• Try to get your chin to touch the top of your chest or as near as you can without discomfort.

Start with 10-12 repetitions or less if this becomes uncomfortable and then change to rolling your waist and knees to the other side for the same number of reps.

You can build up the reps as it gets easier. For variety try a few regular sit up crunches. You will soon start to notice the effect on your obliques, the muscles underneath your love handles. As they get toned up your tummy will become trimmer and the love handles will begin to disappear.

There are a number of other exercises to tone up the obliques, for example using a large exercise ball to support you as you stretch and bend sideways from the waist.

Always a good way to stay in control of your mind and body is to get a good nights sleep. Eight to nine hours a night should come easily if you stick to your diet and exercise routine and allows your body and mind to rest and recuperate so you can face the day with renewed vitality confidence and enthusiasm.

Stick to this regime and your love handles can surely ‘Rest In Peace’

Cellulite. Not a nice word or sight. It mainly affects women but some men are afflicted as well. Unfortunately the majority of women develop the dreaded cellulite sooner or later in their lives.

Even thin women develop it.

What Exactly Is Cellulite?

Cellulite is subcutaneous fat which is stored under the skin and, combined with fluid retention, gives a lumpy bumpy appearance.

This has given rise to the ‘cottage cheese’ reference.

It mainly appears on the thighs and buttocks but can appear all over the body in extreme cases.

It is formed when the connective tissue beneath the skin becomes damaged due to poor circulation and the fat swells with excess fluids and isn’t absorbed into the blood, leaving it to stagnate and settle into unsightly pockets.

The affected areas will feel cool to the touch. Early indications of cellulite apart from the developing visual signs are a slowness to heal from cuts and bruises in the affected areas.

Why Have I Got Cellulite?

Possible reasons are:-

• Inherited genes and a disposition towards the pear shape body with child bearing hips
• Toxin build up in the body caused by a sedentary lifestyle with too much fat in the diet
• Too much alcohol
• Hormone fluctuations
• Limited intake of water
• Poor blood and lymph circulation

How Can I Get Rid Of Cellulite?

Cellulite is very difficult to get rid of entirely but if you follow the plan below you can greatly reduce it

• Eat a healthy diet rich in fruit, vegetables and fibre.
• Reduce alcohol intake
• Cut out carbonated drinks
• Drink plenty of water to help eliminate the toxins from the body
• Take up an exercise regime and stick to it especially weights, which will keep the bones strong, and the muscles toned.

Exercise will not rid the body of cellulite and although raised metabolism will encourage the removal of stored fat, the damaged cellulite tissues cannot respond. Exercise will diminish the visual signs as the muscles become toned.

However with the vast leaps forward in clinical research in modern times there is now hope that certain products will help enormously.

Each person is different and will react in a different way to treatments. The only way to find the right one for you is trial and error and continue to follow the plan above for a health lifestyle.

If you have been exercising and dieting and there seems to be no visible effect, it could be down to your metabolism. As you age, your metabolism slows down and it becomes harder than ever to lose those stubborn pounds and flabby arms and legs. Try the skin pinch test.

However, when it starts to get you down and you think about giving up, just try a few of the following fast calorie burning techniques.

They are guaranteed to boost your metabolism, burn more calories and then the weight will fall off and you will be left with a much more toned body.

Graze throughout the day

Eat smaller than normal meals five or six times a day. This will increase your metabolism rate and burn twice as many calories as it takes to digest 2 – 3 larger meals per day. The body uses energy to aid digestion, therefore it makes sense to spread your meals out.

Eat Breakfast like a King, Lunch like a Prince and Dinner like a Pauper

Eating the right kind of breakfast will turbo start your metabolism. If you go without any breakfast at all, you will only eat more than you need later on in the day because you will be feeling hungry.

Eating a large meal at night is probably one of the worst things you can do. If you must have your biggest meal in the evening try and eat it before 6pm. If not, your digestion will not be able to work efficiently enough while you are sleeping and you will store the calories as extra fat.

Your exercise regime should include interval training

Interval trainings’ method of alternating short and fast bursts of exercise will burn 20 – 40 % more calories. This way is a favorite of many celebrities, including Madonna, and is used by personal trainers to get actors fit enough for some of the more demanding roles they have to portray.

Training with weights will tone your muscles

If your body has more muscle than fat ratio you will burn more calories. This even continues while you are sleeping. Added bonus – a more sculpted body.

Whether you have become disheartened because that body beautiful is not emerging or just starting out on a keep fit look – lean routine or even thinking about a change of exercise regime to keep yourself interested, these tips will help you go that extra mile and you will start burning those calories faster.

The speed that the body breaks down its food has a direct bearing on weight loss or gain. This speed is known as the body’s Metabolic Rate.

To put it simply the definition of metabolism is the physical and chemical changes that take place in a living body to build and maintain itself and the breaking down of the constituents of food, drink and nutrients to produce energy and other necessary body functions.

As we age so our ability to maintain our metabolic rate slows and the result is a tendency to put on weight unless we take care over our diet and keep exercising regularly.

Unfortunately, our genes also play a significant part in dictating our ability to metabolize our food intake efficiently.

In general terms, overweight people simply do not convert their intake of food as effectively as the slim even if they take similar care over their diet.

Others can eat any amount of fatty foods, ice cream, fries, etc., do little or no exercise and never seem to put on weight. It’s just that nature has endowed them with a super efficient metabolism often inherited from a parent. But as they get older many of these lucky ones will also succumb to overweight as the aging process takes its course.

Whatever your age or weight it is not too late to make the effort to fire up your metabolic rate to take off surplus pounds and get yourself feeling better and looking trim.

The first step is to create a diet for yourself consisting of certain foods that aid the metabolic process. Details can be found on dedicated websites but to give an idea eggs, salad vegetables, whole grains and lean steak are staples, and the idea is healthy eating not a starvation diet!

To get the body speeded up excess fat must be lost and muscle tissue built up so exercise is most important. At the same time it is a must that you eat sufficiently to maintain the energy levels required for your essential exercise program.

In other words forget about crash diets or famine level meals, they can only lead to unwanted physical and health problems.

The answer is what you eat – not how much you eat!

Be sure to drink plenty of water throughout the day, at least four glasses as a minimum. As the water passes through your body it helps eliminates waste products, which in turn helps maintain a healthy efficient metabolism.

Combining a routine of exercise and a diet designed to improve your metabolism is the surest path to health, longevity and looking good that you can take – go for it!

Most people don’t realize that it isn’t diet or exercise that is going to help them but a combination of both.

In order for your body to burn fat you must be taking in less calories then what you expend.

Yes, for some, diet modification will help in the beginning, but in the long run it is going to require  regular exercise to continue to burn the fat and to actually build muscle tone. Not body builder muscle tone just normal healthy muscle tone.

So eating healthily is a vital component to weight loss. The other component is exercise.

What are the best ways to burn fat and tone up?

Cardios’ Role in Fat Loss

We can start by telling you that the less cardio you do in your workout routine the fewer calories that you are going to burn per workout. As I have already stated that weight loss, or the amount of fat you burn, depends largely on calories.

You need to be burning more calories then you take in. So here is an example for you.

A 30 minute cardio routine burns about 150 – 300 calories.

Talk to a nutritionist or trainer and they are going to tell you that we know that in order to burn one pound of fat we need to burn 3500 calories.

The USDA has guidelines that suit all people.
They recommend that all people should get 60 – 90 minutes a day of accumulated moderate – intensity physical activity most days out of the week. Note that is accumulated, so if you can’t get it all in at once then break it up through the day.

Here are a couple of the best cardio workouts:

1.  Running – doesn’t require expensive equipment and can be done anywhere. Burns serious calories especially if done on sprints or up hills. The average person weighing 145lbs. can burn up to 300 calories at 5.2mph in 30 minutes.

2.   Boxing for cardio strength – this is considered the best cardio workouts. This workout requires the heart rate range to be 50-70% of a person’s maximum heart rate.

3. Swimming – is the also one of the best workouts. Involves nearly all major muscles and therefore is the best whole body workout. Aquatic exercise can help and has become very popular as an exercise program.

Weights and Fat Burn and Tone

Yes, you need to include the use of weights in your routine to really see your body tone up.

There are principles, 3 of them to be exact, that need to be adhered to in order for you to build muscle and tone up. Following these three synergistic principles will help you make continuous gains any time you want.

These three principles are:

• smart weight lifting
• quality nutrition (there is the diet again)
• quality rest

Keeping these in balance will optimize your muscle building and toning. So how do we fit the cardio and the weights together?

You should do your cardio after your weight lifting. Yes, you need to warm up for 5-7 minutes prior to your weight lifting, but your main cardio workout should be done after you lift weights.

This will help you burn two to three times more fat during your cardio routine because your metabolic rate will already have sky rocketed.

This next suggestion is one that causes great controversy.

Your weight lifting routine, when it comes to toning and fat burn, should be a light weight lifting routine.

This is because you need to have the energy to do the cardio as well. So a good 20 minutes of weights and then your cardio will super charge your metabolism and heart rate. Make sure you snack prior to your workout, primarily on fruits.

A combination of cardio and weight lifting is the key to burning fat and toning up. As well as having a balanced healthy diet.