It is very encouraging to see that a lot of people are already more mindful of their health. This is a very encouraging trend as it shows that people are increasingly becoming aware of the bad effects of having a sedentary lifestyle, eating ready-to-eat foods instead of home-cooked meals, and carrying extra pounds. The first step to starting a fitness program is to ask the question of “how much should I weigh.”

Your ideal body weight depends greatly on your age, height, and built. The most used formula to ascertain if your body weight is ideal is the Body Mass Index or BMI. BMI is calculated by dividing your body weight by the square of your height, producing a unit of measure of kg/m2. You can find many websites that have tools so you can compute for your BMI easily. You can find links to them by simply running a query on your browser using “how much should I weigh” as your keywords.

How much you weigh is dependent on your calorie intake and expenditure. Having said such, to meet your fitness objectives, you need to make some changes to how much you eat and exercise. If your fitness objective is to get rid of unwanted pounds, you can go on a calorie restriction diet with a 500 to 1,000 calorie deficit. There are plenty of calorie calculators online and these are based on the Harris-Benedict formula used by most nutritionists.

Nutritionists and medical professionals strongly advise against extremely low calorie diets, or those that reduce daily energy intake by more than 1,000 calories because these can result to a myriad of health issues ranging from frequent bouts of headache to fatal cardiac arrhythmias. To have a well-balanced diet, you must introduce more fiber into your diet by giving preference to fruits and vegetables instead of food made from simple carbohydrates. You also need to take in plant products that are rich in proteins, so you won’t be relying solely on meats for your protein requirements. In addition, avoid foods that are cooked in or with saturated fats. Rather than having three big meals in a day, try to eat six small ones instead so you won’t crave as much. Many experts and dieters also recommend keeping a food jog so you can monitor how much you have already eaten.

With regards to exercise, experts agree that in a week, adults require about 5 hours of moderate-intensity aerobic activity and muscle-strengthening activities on 2 or more days that work all major muscle groups. A 20 minute brisk walk, performed thrice a day, on 5 days of your week, will already provide you with five hours of moderate-intensity cardio. You can also do vigorous intensity workouts. Just remember that a minute of strenuous cardio exercise is the same as two minutes worth of moderate intensity cardio.