2.1 About Body Weight Gain

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2.1: Body Mass Index and Healthy Longevity - Update 01 November 2021. The following column of topic contents.

Slimness leads to Healthy Longevity

Basal Body Weight (BBW)

Body Mass Index (BMI)
waist circumference

Calorie

Anorexia and Bulimia nervosa and Binge Eating

Slimness leads to Healthy Longevity  Eating that keeps an animal a little below normal weight yet contains a balance of nutrients for normal development will give longest, healthy life. (Based on experiments also involving humans.) A reason to stay alive – to wake and live daily each one day more – is expectation of body enjoyment, and the goal of rational life once a formula for its daily happiness succeeds is to experience that state longest. My first goal in eating is to stay slim (like WW2 Hollywood director’s Howard Hawks wife, Slim Hawks) in order to live most enjoyably, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, longest in good health.

Basal Body Weight (BBW): Morning, just after waking up, with no clothes, before putting anything into mouth and right after morning excretions, step on a body-weight scale. Be sure the scale is accurate and has been zeroed. The number you read in kilograms (kgm) or in avoirdupois pounds (lb) is BBW (1 kg = 2.2 lb and 1 lb = 0.45 kg).
Body Height: You or assistant measure height at home, standing against and facing away from wall, looking straight ahead, and pencil-marking a line tangent off top of head. Adults do not change height much. Measure height in meter or inch (1 meter =39.37 inches and 1 inch = 0.0254 meter). 

The Body Mass Index (BMI) tells if your weight is healthy or not. By using BMI, one may compare body weights. Calculate BMI by dividing the BBW by Body Height times itself as BMI = W÷H^２. In calculating BMI, you either use kilogram divided by the meter times meter product to get BMI metric or you use avoirdupois pound divided by inch times inch product and the result is multiplied by 703.3 to convert your pounds per square inch to BMI metric. I weigh now, as BBW, 56 kilograms (kg) or 123 pounds (lb) and my body height is 1.78 meters (m) or 70 inches. I calculate my BMI 56 ÷ (1.78 x 1.78)=BMI of 17.72. Round off the BMI number to nearest double-digit; = BMI 18. 

Visualizing BMI 

BMI>30: Obese, fat like circus-fat women. 

BMI 30 to 25: “Chunky”.  

BMI 25 to 21: Normal for body image but not necessarily healthy. 

BMI 21 to 18: Slim like me, healthy.  

BMI 18 to 17: Mild underweight, may be healthy. 

BMI 16 or lower: Moderate (BMI 16) to severe (BMI below 16) underweight and at risk for disease. 

BMI<14: On verge of death from starvation. 

The BMI correlates with long life in persons without chronic disease. To live past age 80 – on your feet, with good brain, and enjoying self – as I do now - get your BMI to 20, or even a little lower!

Note: As an alternative to BMI the waist circumference measured at the iliac crests (top level of the pelvic bones) is easy to do and a fairly accurate predictor of good health. Using it, obesity is >102 cm (c.40 inches) in men and >88 (c.35 inches) in women. 

In using BMI or waist circumference as guide, it is important not to use it just as the number and forget the person. Persons with BMI below 20 may be one of two sets: the healthy who achieved low BMI by eating low calorie with good mix of protein, vitamin and mineral, and vegetable fibers, simple carbohydrate and polyunsaturated fats; or, in worst cases, the unhealthy with chronic illnesses like cancer, heart failure, gastrointestinal inflammatory disease, and also heavy cigarette smoker with lung disease, who lost the weight because too ill to eat well. When I say: “Get down to low BMI!” it is in context of a healthy person who presently may have BMI 25 or higher and gets BMI down by eating a healthy, low calorie, high vitamin & mineral  mix of food.  

Practically, you will want to know what should be the BBW (Your morning body weight) in pounds avoirdupois or kilograms to achieve your BMI because your adult Body Height is fixed; so, it will be your daily or weekly weigh-in that is modifiable. Staying in metric and assuming you strive for BMI 20, the BMI=BBW/ (Meter Height)²; so, aiming for your BMI at 20, you should plan for a BBW in kgm=20 x (Your Height in Meters)^2.. If you are a 5 foot, 9 inch, or a 1.75 m height American without chronic illnesses, you should compute a BBW of 132 lbs (60 kg x 2.2) to give BMI 20. (Note with this system using BMI, no difference is made between men and women)

How to Achieve Ideal BBW and Stay There:  You need a rational aim (attainment of healthy longevity within the context of happy life) and a goal in BMI or, at a little lesser accuracy, an appropriate waist circumference. Also be physically active.

About Slimness as Goal: In losing weight rationally, the focus ought to be on its aim and on body weight or waist circumference. One strives to get below the usual American BMI 25 first. Then over years one works towards BMI 20. Once one achieves it, one starts healthy eating to maintain weight. Record your BBW weekly from early age and do not accept a BMI towards 25. And one should strive for BMI 20. It is easier to reach if one starts early, rather than what happens to most (We ignore BBW, and years later find ourselves 10, 20, 30 pounds (5, 10, 15 kilograms) overweight and crash diet to get healthy BMI). 

What about “Calorie”? Although the public uses “calorie” and sees it in most diet advice, the measurement is actually KiloCalorie (Kc), or sometimes just the big C vs. the small c. It gives accuracy in comparing the amount of food we eat in a snack, a meal, a day, or a week in terms of food's weight-gaining potential. For example, if in one day John ate 2000 Kc and Jane ate 1000 Kc, you should know John is eating twice the weight-gaining potential of food compared to Jane. That is the Energy Input (EI) side of calories as food unit. (The useful fact of calories is when you're shopping in the supermarket and you see two attractive servings at almost the same price but need to decide which you should buy, the answer ought to be, all things being equal, you should buy the serving with lower number of calories.)

Factors That Affect Body Weight are responsible for the world epidemic of overweight. These include the genetic and environmental causes of why we are overeating. You may check these factors on Internet.

Anorexia and Bulimia nervosa and Binge Eating are DSM V diagnoses for an attitudinal condition that mainly affects young women who have a morbid fear of weight gain and a huge desire for an unrealistic, unhealthy slimness. “Anorexia” is a misnomer, as the patients actually have normal appetites but consciously limit their food intake. In anorexia nervosa the women have an abnormal eating pattern that plunges the BMI below 16 and has a significant death rate. In Bulimia nervosa patients lack the willpower of anorexia nervosa so they show a pattern of fasting or low calorie intake broken by binge overeating and then purging by induced vomiting or diuretic-caused excess urination and do not drop BMI much. Simple binge eaters become very obese. The best treatment is by a sympathetic counselor who is not necessarily a doctor but who uses CBT (Cognitive-Behavioral-Therapy of Aaron Beck; see Notebooks 9, Psychotherapy chapter).  Note that getting involved in ballet as a child or young woman carries a 7 times risk of anorexia nervosa (plus ballerinas having very high incidence of deforming arthritis of the feet by age 40).

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