How Do I Know if I'm at a Healthy Weight?

Weight is why the diet pill and exercise equipment industries make billions every year. Social media and advertising almost seem designed to make us feel bad about our bodies. There’s always someone ready to say they think you weigh too much or too little. 

Here at Advantage Spinal Dynamics & Innovative Medicine in Meridian, Idaho, we focus on offering weight loss support that helps you understand your healthiest weight and achieve and maintain that weight without stressing over it.

What a healthy weight looks like

There’s no magic formula for the perfect weight. For years medical scientists tried to come up with a standard, but body mass index (BMI) doesn’t account for the extreme variations between humans, their physiologies, and hundreds of other factors.

A healthy weight might seem like a number you aspire to, in pounds on the scale or inches around your waist. But your metabolism, age, level of athleticism now and in the past, waking and sleeping habits, diet, genetics, and more can all affect your weight.

Even your mental health can affect what’s a healthy weight for you. If you’ve ever suffered from an eating disorder, your goal weight could be different than some might expect. 

When it comes down to it, your health is about more than your weight. It’s about your psychological and emotional states. It’s about your stress levels. It’s about your body image. It’s about any chronic illnesses you may have.

A healthy weight ideally prevents you from having weight-associated mobility issues. It doesn’t exacerbate existing health conditions. You feel good about yourself and don’t worry about what anyone else thinks or says. 

What an unhealthy weight looks like

An unhealthy weight significantly and adversely affects your health. It’s not a magic number or level of body fat. An unhealthy weight can be too low for your body and physiology or too high.

Making sure you don’t concentrate on weight as the key to all health or the cause of all health problems is key to finding the healthiest weight and staying close to it. 

Risks of being overweight or underweight 

Being overweight or obese can increase your risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke, high cholesterol, gallbladder disease, sleep apnea, and more. However, being overweight doesn’t guarantee you’ll develop any of these.

If you’re young and overweight but otherwise healthy, your only concern should be whether your weight could cause problems as you age. The impact of your weight on your joints could be a problem, as could the potential strain on your heart and other organs. 

Conversely, being underweight can increase your risk of bone mass loss and broken bones. It can also disrupt your reproductive cycle if you’re a woman. Your hair and teeth could fall out, and you could have issues regulating your body temperature.

At Advantage Spinal Dynamics & Innovative Medicine, we can help you set a weight goal and talk about how to reduce the impact of unhealthy weight on your body.

How weight loss specialists can help

Weight loss doctors can help you successfully and safely lose or gain weight to hit your goal. Ideally, identifying your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the starting point. That can be combined with data about your age, gender, and familial history to customize a weight adjustment plan.

Balance is key when it comes to what food you eat and how much you move your body. Your weight journey should be ongoing, occurring over time as you find what techniques work best for you.

Weight gain or weight loss should happen slowly to avoid stress on your body, and it’s important to have support from those around you.

The experts here at Advantage Spinal Dynamics & Innovative Medicine are ready to help design a customized program to get you to your healthiest weight. You can schedule a consultation by phone, or request your appointment online.