How much over your ideal weight is safe?

Answer 1

It really depends on your body composition, that is, what percent fat or muscle you are. A measurement called BMI is often used to determine if someone is overweight. You take the person's weight and their height, plug it into a formula, and out comes a BMI. 18.5-25 is considered "normal" and anything above that is overweight or obese. While this works reasonably well in general and requires no special equipment to measure, it doesn't take into account differences in body composition. Someone could be very lean, muscular, and athletic such as Lance Armstrong, yet (at 5'9.5" and 174 lbs) be considered overweight according to his BMI measurement. Clearly people with the physique of a seven-time Tour de France winner are in the minority, but it does illustrate that BMI is, like any construct, imperfect to some degree. But in general, BMI works, more or less. If someone's 285 pounds and 5'11", chances are they're morbidly obese and not the body builder Ronnie Coleman. So while BMI's not perfect, it's certainly beats the "eyeball-yourself-in-the-mirror" approach as the free "Is my weight OK?" tool. So figure out your BMI- http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/ and play around with various weights to see what puts you out of your ideal range. Assuming you aren't a very low body fat, it should give you a rough idea of how much you should weigh.