Forget BMI: Try BMR and RMR

The initials BMI stand for Body Mass Index. It has proved to be one of the most unreliable tools to determine whether a person is overweight or obese. Sports figures, extremely tall people, extremely short people, bodybuilders, gymnasts, and others are very likely to have high BMI's. Most of these people are extremely healthy. A bodybuilder cannot lift hundreds of pounds without muscle, which he or she gets from exercise. When was the last time you saw a football player who weighed 165 lbs.? Relying on BMI to determine weight loss is like relying on the fox to guard the henhouse. It's a very unreliable situation.

BMI fails to take into account things like body fat, muscle, bonetructure, and who knows what else. Better options for weight loss are BMR and RMR; those intitials stand for Basal Metabolic Rate and Resting Metabolic Rate, respectively.

These are but tools to aid you in weight loss, and like BMI, could use improved accuracy. BMR and RMR measure metabolism. In the weight loss, they measure the rate at which you burn calories.

Metabolism is "...the 'big picture' of all the energy being created and burned by your cells. Add together all those chemical reactions and you have metabolism in a nut shell."[i]

The website fitNRG<[ii has a calculator that you can use to estimate your RMR.

One of the things you can do to improve your metabolism is exercise. Some good suggestions come from a video by TV's "diet doctor" Melina Jampolis.[iii]

The basic rule of weight loss is that outgo should exceed income. If you're trying to make money, the opposite is true. It's just that, a basic rule or even just a guideline. Exercise and nutrition are simply tools that we use to attain our weight loss goals.

Weight loss helps us in other indications of overall health. If you are losing waist, but not weight, that is a good thing. It means you are gaining muscle. Proper form, as promoted by so many personal trainers, helps you to maintain posture and avoid injury. Eating right helps you to keep a balanced "diet". But proper nutrition also helps with your overall physical health.

Eating three full meals and two small snacks a day helps improve metabolism. If you do not have a condition, such as gout, where your body does not metabolize protein properly increasing the percentage of protein with every meal and snack could help you burn a few extra calories.

[i]http://www.how-to-increase-your-metabolism.com/what-is-metabolism.html , par. 2, sent. 2.

[ii]http://www.fitnrg.com/public-rmr-bmr-calculator.php

[iii]http://fittv.discovery.com/fansites/dietdoctor/video/video.html