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Once a week measure your chest, waist, hips and thighs. Some Fat Flushers like to measure their arms, above the elbows. Remember, losing inches is the key to a slimmer you, not pounds on a scale. Inch loss reveals true fat loss, a real assessment of your progress. The scale will tend to move up and down occasionally for other reasons—such as having a period, for example.

If you’re a stickler for accuracy, you may want to also assess your body mass index (BMI), which is used to determine how much fat you are carrying. This simple assessment helps you determine whether you’re at an ideal weight, overweight or dealing with obesity. Although the BMI is a useful tool, it can overestimate the fat percentage in more athletic or muscular individuals. I would not suggest calculating the BMI of children or adolescents. To determine body fat, your BMI is calculated like this:
  1. Multiply your weight in pounds by 0.45.
  2. Multiply your height in inches by 0.025.
  3. Take your answer from step 2 and square it (multiply it by itself ).
  4. Divide your answer from step 1 by your answer from step 3.
The result is your BMI. For example, let’s say you weigh 175 pounds and are 5 feet, 6 inches tall. Then:
  1. Multiple 175 (your weight) by 0.45: 175 x 0.45 = 78.75.
  2. Convert 5 feet, 6 inches (your height) into inches: 5 x 12 = 60 + 6 = 66.
  3. Square your final answer in step 2 by multiplying the number of itself:
    1.65 times 1.65 = 2.72.
  4. Divide 78.75 (your answer in step 1) by 2.72 (your answer in step 3)to get your BMI: 78.75 divided by 2.72 = 28.95.
According to the 1998 federal Obesity Clinical Guidelines, a BMI between 25 and 29.9 is considered overweight. Anything greater than this (30 and over) is labeled obesity. If your BMI is 25 or higher, you are not alone. Approximately 114 million adults in this country fall into that category. A BMI between 19 and 24 is ideal whereas a BMI below 19 may indicate that an individual is underweight.


 
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