How to know your healthy weight?

 How to know your healthy weight?

What is healthy weight? How to calculate it? And should we really take this into account? The answers with Stéphanie Dufant, dietician.

"Healthy weight". Almost everyone has heard this expression, which is both perfectly clear on the lexical level and very imprecise on the scientific level. But then what to call it? And can we really identify this famous weight? Stéphanie Dufant helps us see more clearly.

Does healthy weight really exist?

First, let's solve the naming problem. The expression "healthy weight" in fact refers to a notion of the ideal relationship between height and weight. A concept too vague to be honest: "Personally, I rather call it" genetic weight ", but one can also speak of ponderostat, explains the expert. We are all programmed to make a certain weight according to our height, and That's what it's about."

And why isn't this a healthy weight? Quite simply because it is not always set at the right level: "I am thinking in particular of people who suffer from genetic, monogenic or polygenic obesity, in whom it is very high. Which does not mean that they are in good health."

Moreover, if certain hormonal variations (due to pregnancy or menopause, for example) can cause this famous predefined corpulence to fluctuate, it is very difficult to escape it: "if one weighs 70 kilos spontaneously and the 'we fall to 65 by doing a lot of sport and by imposing a restrictive diet, the weight will quickly rise to 70 after slackening the efforts. " Very good, but you still have to know that you are more or less destined to weigh 70 kilos. And that's where your health record comes into play.

How to know your genetic weight

"There is no scientifically validated formula to precisely calculate the genetic weight of each, explains the dietician. We tend to say that it corresponds to a BMI (Body Mass Index) between 20 and 25, but This is only a recommendation. In fact, you can have a BMI of 17 or 27 and be in perfect health. " Besides, BMI has its limits: "It doesn't take into account body composition. It relates weight to height, without knowing whether the weight comes from fat, muscle or water. So you can have a very high BMI because you are very muscular, for example. "

So how do you do it? Take out the health record that we were talking about above, and quite simply observe its monitoring curves between 0 and 18 years to identify its target weight or locate, in adulthood, "the weight that we have done the longest in his life. " While being aware that in some cases the information will not be taken literally: "a top athlete, for example, will have a generally lower weight throughout their athletic career."

But one thing is certain: for the dietician, the main thing is not there: "if I listen to my patients and help them achieve their weight goals, I always put forward that the most important is to be in good health and in good health, regardless of the number on the scale .