Healthy Height and Weight Chart

Myth #12: “My weight is okay if I’m within the “Normal” Body Mass Index scale.”

We have been conditioned to believe that plump is healthy, and it is not. As an example, at 5’ 8 ½”, I weigh 130-135 lbs. on any given day. According to the Body Mass Index, I could gain another 35 lbs. without being overweight! It also tells me that the leanest I should be is 15%-19% body fat. I am below that, while totally healthy, all curves intact, and without an extremely thin appearance. And I don’t have “small bones.”

I guarantee you that if I gain even half of that 35 lbs., I am overweight and feel the effects of it: sluggishness, inability to run distances, decreased libido, and negative thoughts/moods, just to name a few of many symptoms.

This is not to discount the fact that heredity does play a part, that bone size plays a part, and that everyone is different. Certainly a person who is 5’8 ½” could have a different weight than I do and be very healthy—but if fat has collected around the belly, hips, neck, or thighs, that isn’t an ideal weight regardless of what a “healthy height and weight chart” says. The current charts are based on averages, and the averages aren’t healthy.

That someone can be “too thin” is certainly a possibility, especially if that person has an eating disorder, is eating an extreme diet that has is deficient in important nutrients, or has an unaddressed digestive disorder. Some problems of severe underweight do lead to questions of whether the person may have cancer, parasites, or serious digestive or nutrient-absorption problems.

But body fat—especially belly fat—is a danger to heart health, even a little bit of it. Just because one fits in the reassuring zones called “lean” of a government-designed healthy height and weight chart 12 Step Program does not mean one is at a healthy weight. Remember that the government wants to make standards do-able for the average person. Don’t make the mistake of

thinking that the lowest-common-denominator advice of the U.S. Government is definitive advice.

Click here for Part II of this report, with more accurate charts