Body mass index, or BMI, is an assessment of how healthy your weight is for your height.The scale alone, however, does not provide complete information about your health. Knowing your BMI does allows you to gauge your risk of developing chronic disease. In general, the higher your BMI, the greater your risk.
Calculate Your BMI
According to the Centers for Disease Control, or CDC, you can calculate your BMI by dividing your weight in kilograms by your height in meters squared. U.S. residents may find it easier to use the following formula: Divide your weight in pounds by your height in inches squared and then multiply the result by 703. You can also use an online BMI calculator, such as the one found on the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's website.
Evaluate Your BMI
Compare your BMI to a healthy range to determine whether your weight is healthy. For adults, a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered healthy, according to the CDC. A BMI between 25.0 and 29.9 is considered overweight, while a BMI of 30.0 or above is considered obese. According to BMI research from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, about 32 percent of adult men and 36 percent of adult women in the United States were obese between 2007 and 2008.
High BMI and Health
A high BMI generally indicates a high level of body fat. Carrying around excess body fat can have a negative impact on your health. If your BMI indicates that you are overweight or obese, your risk of developing a host of diseases---including diabetes, heart disease and stroke---increases. Because of this, many health care practitioners use BMI as a screening tool by to help identify a person's risk of disease.
Limitations of BMI
Not everyone who has a high BMI, however, is carrying around extra body fat. For example, because of rigorous training regimens, the muscle mass of professional athletes sometimes pushes them into the "overweight" range on BMI charts, while their actual body fat percentages remain low. BMI is only one of many ways to assess a person's health, and it must always be interpreted within the context of the individual, his lifestyle and other risk factors. Nonetheless, it is rare that someone with a BMI in the "obese" range would not have a high percentage of body fat.
BMI and Children
Although BMI is calculated the same way for children as adults, it needs to be interpreted differently. Throughout various stages of development, healthy children have different levels of body fat, which also vary by gender. Therefore, health-care practitioners use age-specific and gender-specific growth charts to evaluate a child's BMI. A child with a BMI between the 5th and 85th percentiles on the growth charts is considered to be at a healthy weight. BMI below 5th percentile indicates the child is underweight, BMI between 85th and 95th percentiles indicates overweight, and BMI at 95th percentile or above indicates childhood obesity. According to research of children's BMIs from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, about 17 percent of children between 2 and 19 years old were obese between 2007 and 2008.
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