Taking control

away from the correlations between BMI and health. However there are other important factors. The reason that increased body fat is such a problem is that it is an indicator of the visceral fat in your body. This means the fat that is in and around your internal organs. It is this fat that causes problems for your body’s function. When your body stores fat in and around your organs, it impacts their ability to do their job. The best external guide to this is the distribution of your body fat. Fat around your legs, arms and bottom are not really implicated when it comes to visceral fat. The fat around your middle –your tummy – is a reasonable indicator. This brings me back to obese healthy sportspeople. Generally, if your waist measurement is within normal limits, you will not have a lot of visceral fat. If I found a premiership rugby player with a raised BMI, it is likely that his or her waist measurement would be in the healthy range, hence BMI is not applicable to everyone.

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The measurements are 40 inches for men and 35 inches for women. To find your waist measurement you first need to find your anatomical waist. This is found halfway between the bottom of your ribs and the top of your hip bone. You should be able to dig in a bit and find them. You can mark them with a pen or eyeliner pencil. You then measure around your middle, in the middle of these two points. If you are not keen on weighing yourself, or it is going to send you into an obsessive frenzy, you can use waist measurement once a week to measure your progress. It may also help to measure your hips, thighs and chest to track the progress of your whole body.

Taking control

Before you start your medication, follow these steps: 1. Take some initial photos. You will thank yourself when you can see your progress

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2. Look in the mirror and find something you like. You need to do this. It might be your smile, or your hair, or your eyes. It doesn’t matter. You need self love. 3. Weigh and/or measure yourself. 4. Plan your food for the first week. Food should make us happy, but absolute emotional eating to try to solve a problem is not so different from using alcohol or drugs. The problem is waiting for you after the cake is gone, and the answer isn’t ever at the bottom of a Big Mac. It is a good idea to think about why you are eating. On a basic level, food is fuel. So, if you are eating something which will not help you achieve your goal, this is sabotage. Its ok to eat foods that are considered unhealthy sometimes but try not to think of it as a reward or treat as this re-enforces the emotional aspect. Also avoid thinking of food as “good” or “bad”. You are not “being good” you are eating healthily to make life more enjoyable and achieve your personal goals. If you are having a donut, own it.

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