Luigi Fontana - The Path to Longevity Plan: Three Step Plan to Extend Your Healthspan by Years

START WITH THE SCIENCE
It should not come as news that
being overweight puts you at a higher
risk of getting sick and ageing faster.

Consuming more food, and therefore
calories, than we need to move and
think, and for our bodies to perform
basic functions, means those excess
calories are dumped into fat cells.

Those enlarged fat cells then produce
inflammation and hormones that
increase the risk of developing many
serious and debilitating chronic
illnesses. Im talking about type
diabetes, cancer, dementia, and
heart, liver and kidney disease, but
there are more.

CHECK YOUR BODY WEIGHT
BMI AND WHATS A NORMAL BMI?
BMI is a good start to assessing
your health status. BMI ( body mass
index) is a simple measure of body
fat. People within a normal weight
limit have a BMI of between 18.5 and
Anything over is overweight;
over and youre considered obese.

Below 18.5 is underweight.

Of course, maintaining a healthy
BMI of between 18.5 and doesnt
necessarily mean youll live a long
and healthy life. Slim people are
not necessarily fit, while someone
who is larger may, in fact, have a
predominance of muscle with very
little abdominal fat.

Its essential to combine a healthy
BMI with a healthy diet and regular
exercise to prevent chronic illness and
live a longer life.

WORK OUT YOUR OWN BMI
Divide your weight in kilograms by your height in metres. Then divide the
answer by your height again. So, if youre kg and 1.75 m tall, divide by 1.75.

The answer is 40, which you divide by 1.75 again to get 22.9. That figure is your
BMI. In this case, at 22.9, its in the healthy range. If you are using pounds and
inches, either use a metric converter or apply this formula to convert to metric:
weight ( pounds) 0.45 / height ( inches) 0.025.

WHY YOU SHOULD
MONITOR YOUR WEIGHT
Even if you have a normal BMI,
its important to monitor weight
fluctuations. For every kilogram
( pounds) of weight gained after
your eighteenth birthday, the odds
of living a long and healthy life are
thought to decrease by per cent.

Even small weight gains can
compound and take someone
from healthy to overweight, when
it becomes much harder to lose.

Dealing with weight gains quickly
stops them from spiralling to a
point that is much harder to reset
to normal.

If you dont reset your diet it is likely
you will suffer from the slow creep
of weight gain, where it is incredibly
easy to gain a kilogram or couple of
pounds every year.

WATCH YOUR WAIST
BMI isnt the only measure of body
fat. In fact, where body fat is located
is an excellent predictor of health.