Managing Your Weight

As a dancer one should take extra care of our bodies both by how we exercise and in what we eat. Many dancers are tempted by crash diets, which enables one to "loose weight quickly". However this involves losing essential water and muscle as well as fat. So, although the scales may read less, your body has not lost much fat. When you stop the crash diet you are likely to not only regain the weight that you have lost but you may also put on even more weight. Loosing weight slowly is the safest and most effective long term way to lose weight.

Should you lose weight anyway? Although dancers tend to aim for an athletic build, one should always bear in mind ones age and health. This website has a BMI (Body Mass Index) calculator and can show you whether your current weight is healthy (for adults). Most of you will fit in the Normal category. This means that most of you don't need to loose weight!

However, eating healthily is always very important, especially for dancers and athletes. The British Heart Foundation has some excellent advice on eating healthily. Download their publication entitled "So you want to lose weight for good" (pdf) - which has good advice on what a balanced diet is and how to eat healthily for life.