The Importance of Shape

What is your shape?
You may think you know when you look in the mirror, or you may be too busy trying to
cover up unshapely areas to really see yourself as you are. Do you know how much fat
you’re carrying, compared to how much muscle? Do you know where you tend to gain
weight–upper body, lower body or around the middle? Until you know the answers to
these questions, you are not ready to make your personal plan for losing weight and
keeping it off. Understanding your body is the first step to reaching your best personal
shape. As someone who teaches both doctors and the public about obesity, I believe
weight loss has been overemphasized and body shape underemphasized. You have
probably read about the Body-Mass Index (BMI), which is a weight-to-height ratio. If
your BMI is greater than 25, you are considered overweight in the U.S., and if it is
greater than 30 you are obese. This ratio has been a powerful way for scientists to
document the obesity epidemic in this country and its effects on health and disease.
However, when it comes to you as an individual, it can be misleading. A football player
can be considered overweight on the BMI scale, but if the extra weight being carried is
muscle, he is not really fat. A thin woman can have a normal BMI, yet still be over-fat.
So shape counts.
Shapes are personal and go beyond the usual apple and pear. Women can have three
typical body shapes–upper body fat, lower body fat and both upper and lower body fat.
Men usually only get upper body fat. The upper body stores fat in times of stress and
some people can lose and gain weight rapidly in the upper body. The lower body fat in
women responds to female hormones such as estrogen and progesterone and stores
fat for breastfeeding a newborn baby. Women who have both upper and lower body fat
will lose their upper body fat first. Women with more upper body fat tend to have more
muscle than women with lower body fat and will need more protein in their diet to help
control their hunger. Losing weight is harder if you have lower body fat rather than
upper body fat, but the medical benefits of losing your upper body fat are greater.
Losing weight around your neck, face, chest and waist usually goes along with losing fat
on the inside as well. So as you look better, you are also improving your health
tremendously.
Finally, there are two more body shapes to consider: The shape you can change and
the shape you can’t change. It is important to know the difference and work on the
shape you can change, while adjusting your wardrobe and attitudes to the shape you
cannot change. Due to low metabolism, many women with lower body fat can’t lose
weight just by cutting calories. These lower body-fat cells are resistant to both exercise
and diet. Only a personalized program can help make sure you get enough protein to
control cravings and build or maintain lean muscle