Читать книгу The 5:2 Bikini Diet: Over 140 Delicious Recipes That Will Help You Lose Weight, Fast! Includes Weekly Exercise Plan and Calorie Counter - Jacqueline Whitehart, Jacqueline Whitehart - Страница 25

Everybody is different: different weight, different height and different fitness. In this chapter we work out your Body Mass Index (BMI) and metabolic rate (BMR), which is how many calories you burn in a day. By calculating your BMI, we can set suitable and sustainable weight-loss targets. By working out your personal metabolic rate we can set a personalized calorie intake guide for the fast days, and, as we know, every calorie counts on a fast day.

Recently, there have been improvements to the way the BMI is calculated. This is because the old scale of BMI didn’t work very well if you were tall or short or more muscular than average; Brad Pitt, for example, at the time of Fight Club was very muscular and would have been considered overweight using the old BMI, so the new scale aims to be more accurate for everyone.

It doesn’t make much difference if you are relatively average, but if you are short it can make your BMI higher and if you are tall it can reduce your BMI a little. If you are tall, like me, it’s worth having a look at the new calculator – I dropped by 0.5 points from 21.6 to 21.1. But if you are average height it won’t make a difference.

The simplest way to calculate your BMI is to use an online calculator, such as:

http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/bmi_calc.html

• A BMI of less than 18.5 is considered underweight.

• A BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 is considered a normal healthy weight.

• A BMI of 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight.

• A BMI of 30 or greater is considered obese.