BMI vs W2H Method (waist-to-hip-ratio)

Jillian Michaels says:

"Your body is trying to tell you something, but you're just not listening! To win at the weight-loss game, you've got to make some changes. One of the most important ones is to stop listening to anything but your body to establish a realistic weight for your specific build. Forget about what you see and hear from pop-culture sources.

Another thing not to rely on is the body mass index (BMI), which determines the amount of fat you have on your body according to your weight and height. Here's why you're not going to use it: It fails to distinguish between fat and muscle, so the BMI will ultimately give you an incomplete sense of the shape you're in.

Today, the medical industry has set its weight guidelines according to the waist-to-hip-ratio method, which is a much more accurate way of arriving at an ideal goal weight. Follow these steps to find yours:

Get a tape measure and measure your waist right at the belly-button line.
Standing with feet hip-width apart, measure your hips at their widest point.
Now simply divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement. This is your waist-to-hip ratio. (The ideal waist-to-hip ratios are 0.80 for women and 0.95 for men.)"

As for the secret to losing weight?

New England Journal of Medicine, whose findings confirm what a growing body of weight-loss evidence has already suggested: one diet is no better than the next when it comes to weight loss. It doesn't matter where your calories come from, as long as you're eating less. "We have a really simple and practical message for people: it's not so much the type of diet you eat," says Sacks. "It's how much you put in your mouth."

It's a useful lesson for American adults, two-thirds of whom are overweight or obese. Long-term weight loss has proved frustratingly elusive for many obese individuals, but study after study has shown that community and peer support help people take off weight — and keep it off. In this study, the participants who took advantage of group and individual counseling offered as part of the diets had far greater success than those who chose to go it alone. Over the course of two years, participants who went to at least two-thirds of the counseling sessions dropped about 22 lb., 13 lb. more than the average of the entire study population. "Losing weight and sustaining it for two years is difficult," Sacks says. "To help people do that, they need some level of support to keep their motivation and focus."

As for the secret to losing weight? There is none. "It's basic physiology," Loria says. "Eat fewer calories than you expend."

Read the whole article here

I did not know that...

Did you know there are now more than 2 MILLION people in the U.S. who are considered "Super Obese"?
That means 2 million people weight MORE THAN 500 pounds!

yup....

There's a lot of nonsense floating around regarding exercise and weight control. The only way to lose weight is to eat less than your body burns. Period.

How many calories should you eat....?

Here are a couple sites to help determine how many calories you need to be eating to maintain, gain or lose weight.
How Many Calories Should I Eat a Day?
and here is another site that does the same thing but with an easy fill in the blanks format. Both are based on a little different calculating system but with both you can pinpoint the number pretty good.