If you want to lose some weight, should you diet?

They say you can't be too rich or too thin. Deborah Hutton, in her book Vogue Futures disagrees. She says "the load of flesh rebounding on the bones and the pull of muscles on ligaments provides a positive stress that stimulates the bone-producing metabolism and promotes the uptake of calcium.

Very skinny women might be a designer's dream but they are an orthopedic physician's nightmare - since their much envied small size puts them at greater risk of painful fractures, deformed spines and warped widow's humps."

On the other hand, if you are really fat, you are at higher risk of heart disease, diabetes and other such weight related diseases. In such cases, you really should do something about your weight.

How do you know if you are fat?

Take your weight in kilograms and measure your height in meters.

The Body Mass Index  

weight /( Height  x Height) should be between 18.5 and 24.9. More than that and you are fat, less than that and you are underweight.

The body mass index assumes that any excess weight is due to fat. It does not take into consideration that muscle is heavier than fat. Muscular, athletic individuals, children below 18 years of age, and pregnant women should not use this as a gauge.

Waist Hip Ratio

Measure your waist and your largest part of your hips.

The waist hip ratio is waist/hips if it is 0.8 or more, you are at higher risk of diabetes, heart and circulatory diseases, breast and endometrial cancer. 

Also, if your waist (women) is > 32 inches or 80 cm, you at higher risk of weight related diseases. For men, waist or  > 37 inches means they are at risk.

Should you diet?

A crash diet appears very effective initially with the pounds dropping off and tummy flattening rapidly. The problem is that you lose glycogen and water, not fat. Once you eat normally, you pack on the pounds quickly and these extra pounds are even harder to lose. You end up losing lean muscle. If that is your situation, don't fret. You can  Safely Rebuild Lean Muscle

When you crash diet, your body thinks it is starving and reduces your metabolic rate. You burn calories slower than before. When you eat normally, your body stores as much food as it can into your fat cells in case of another 'famine'.

What should you do

Try exercise instead. Lower intensity exercise for 30 minutes every day would help you shape your body. Try the  Orbitrek treadmill.

If that is too expensive, or too boring, try the exercise video on  Tae-bo

Changing your diet in the long run. No crash diets as you can't continue them for long. Go for behavior modification instead. 

It takes 100 days to forge a new habit. Try to eat healthily, with more vegetables and cereals and less fatty food. Keep a food diary to keep track of where the extra calories come from and work on it. Use skim milk instead of whole milk and treat yourself to low fat yogurt instead of ice cream are examples of what could be done.

Go for a gradual weight loss of 1 kg a month and make sure you do not pack it back on.

Get some support from like minded people at. Support Central: Your Weightloss Support Group 

By the way, if you live outside U.S. to sign up with them, enter city as Florida state as FL and zip code as 33442