Most physicians prefer to look at body weight in relative, rather than absolute terms. In this way of look at things, body weight is looked against the height of the individual. And thinking about it seriously, it is a better way of looking at the whole issue of weight because what might be an ideal weight for a four foot person would surely not be ideal for a six foot person. Similarly, what is considered being overweight for a four foot person might be what will be considered the ideal weight for a six foot person.

The body mass index – which is a physician’s guide to understanding body weight, is obtained by dividing the weight of a person by the person height’s and the figure obtained this way is what a physicians use in advising people about their weight. This is why a person’s assertion that they are 90 kilograms won’t usually amaze a physician, until the person makes a revelation about their height, because 90 kilograms might not be too much for the tallest of people.

To make body mass index calculation simple and accurate, a standardized body mass index table has been developed, which is basically a schedule with height (measured in inches) on the vertical axis and the weight on the rows against the height, with the body mass index for each height and weight combination occurring on the first row – such that for every combination of body height and body weight, a body mass index is easily obtainable.

Since body mass index is a relative – rather than absolute measure, it becomes possible to make conclusions based on the figures it reveals, especially when the figures are in turn seen against the person’s waist size. For instance, where a person’s body mass index (BMI) happens to be 18.5 and less, such a person is said to be underweight – and driven to the extreme, this too can be considered an hazard, just as being overweight is. A body mass of between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered normal and optimal, especially when it happens to coincide with a waist size of 40 inches (and below) in men and 35 inches (and below) in women. A body mass index of between 25.0 and 29.9 is considered overweight and comes with an increased risk of diseases linked to weight and waist size whereas body mass indexes between 30.0 and 39.9 constitute obesity and come with a very high risk of diseases that come with being overweight, especially when they happen to coincide with a waist size that is greater than 40 inches in men and 35 inches in women. A body mass index that is greater than 40 – regardless of the person’s waist size is considered extremely high and needs to be treated as a serious health hazard.

Apart from the body mass index that is published in form of a table, various programs to calculate body mass index given an input of weight and height have also been developed and if you prefer to make use of one of these, you can enter the Internet search term ‘body mass index’ on your favorite search engine and it will lead you to at least one of these.

Being extremely underweight can be just as distressing as being overweight.

When you are extremely underweight, for one, people tend to take you ‘lightly’, quite literally. A huge body is seen as a sign of ‘strong presence,’ and huge bodied people are seen as dominant, which can be an attractive feature is some situations. A person who is extremely underweight will often find himself or herself having to assert themselves in situations where a bigger person would have gotten along quite effortless –all on the account of their small body forms.

Unknown to many people, the healthiness of body weight is measured using a relative unit referred to as body mass index (BMI) – rather than in absolute terms – and being too underweight for your height can be seen as just an unhealthy as being overweight. It is not unknown for people seeking to serve their nations in the armed forces to be denied the opportunity on the account of their being underweight, as the military is known to impose strict body weight thresholds in their recruitments, meaning that a severely underweight person has just as small a chance of joining the army or the air-force as a severely overweight person.

Furthermore, being severely underweight can make you just as conspicuous as being severely underweight, and as we all know, being conspicuous for the wrong reasons always feels uncomfortable. Being severely underweight is also subconsciously seen as a sign of poor health, and if you are in the dating game, it would be not be particularly surprising for you as a very thin person to be rejected by a partner on account of your thinness.

From those situations, one can see the kind of motivation one might have in looking for help in gaining a healthy weight. The tricky thing with this situation is that there is very little help for the person seeking to gain a healthy weight, as the relevant professionals who would help someone with this have their eyes trained on helping people lose unhealthy weight – which is a more common problem in today’s developed world.

Nonetheless, a frank chat with your doctor would be the first step in looking for help with gaining a healthy weight. As it were, looking to gain weight, just like looking for weight loss, has very serious medical implications and it is advisable to seek the input of a qualified health professional before making a step in that direction. Such a chat with a doctor is also likely to establish whether your desire to gain weight is medically justified – seeing that many people who are seeking to lose weight or to gain weight turn out to be people who have ‘body image’ rather than ‘body weight’ issues.

Having gotten your doctor’s blessings for your weight gain endeavors, you need to ensure that you follow the right method to gain weight, or risk gaining unhealthy weight which will come to haunt you in the future. Like weight loss, genuine weight gain efforts will revolve around the use of diet and exercise – and if it is healthy weight you are looking to gain, you need to give the project adequate time since gaining healthy weight, like healthy weight loss, takes some time to bear results.

There is only so much you can conclude from your body weight figures. While the body weight, for instance, as seen against your height in body mass index can give us some sort of a picture of your state of health as far as body weight is concerned, the information that we get in this way is far from complete. The body weight does not, for one, reveal what the components that make it up are – and these could be more important than anything else in determining your state of health. It could, for instance, be true that you weigh so much, alright, but if your high weight is composed largely of muscle tissue rather than fat, then you are better off than another person of a similar weight and even height, but whose weight is composed more of fat than muscle tissue. Obviously, there is a need for a way going deeper and working out what the specific components of body weight are – so that we can make more informed decision based on it.

Enter the body fat monitors.

Body fat monitors are bioelectrical devices that conveniently work out the percentage of your body weight that is fat – which is a very useful revelation, because in fighting excessive body weight, the thing you need to target is this excessive fat – rather than the other components of body weight like muscle tissue which truly serve a useful purpose. If you have been in a certain diet or exercise weight-reduction effort, and have indeed lost weight, but the body fat monitor shows that your fat percentage has remained constant, then it might be that your weight loss effort has not been entirely successful. In a similar manner, if you have been in a weight loss effort where you have not lost very much in terms of overall body weight, but have lost significantly in terms of body fat percentage, then chances are that you are being successful with your weight loss effort (in spite of the relatively low overall weight loss achievement) because it is body fat that is generally targeted in weight loss efforts.

And contrary to what you might fear, the use of body fat monitors is not intrusive. All you have to do to get a body fat monitor reading could be as simple as taking some three pinches at your skin (it is not painful – just an ordinary pinch like what you would make on your skin to look keenly at a mysterious pimple) or just stand on a body fat monitors that works like any bathroom scale.

The body fat monitors that require you to take three pinches at three different locations on the body work through electronic calipers which take the fat components at the three points where you take the pinches as samples, and from them work out a reasonably accurate body fat percentage figure. The body fat monitors that you stand on as a bathroom scale, on the other hand use a method called bioelectrical impedance analysis to work out the percentage of fat in your body and this can give highly accurate and consistent results. Bioelectrical impedance is obviously slightly more intrusive than the use of electronic calipers but the former (bioelectrical impedance) tends to be largely safe and anyone, expect a person using a pacemaker, can use it, with added advantage of consistency it comes with, at least as compared to electronic clippers which work through sampling.