If you are looking to lose weight, maintain a healthy weight or looking to be in overall good health, you should take into consideration your BMI, or body mass index. It gives you a more detailed picture of your heath versus just stepping on a scale. There are many websites that offer BMI calculators. Knowing your BMI can help you determine if your current weight may be putting you at risk for disease. Once you know your risk you can make the necessary changes to better your health.
Identification
BMI is a ratio that is obtained using your height and weight. It does not directly measure the amount of body fat you have. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), your BMI provides a fairly accurate alternative to measuring body fat percentage. This can help to determine your risk for health problems based on your weight. Directly measuring body fat such as with hydrostatic weighing can be expensive and challenging. Calculating your BMI is a much simpler technique to give you a general idea about your health.
Benefits
The CDC states that "calculating BMI is one of the best methods for population assessment of overweight and obesity.... The use of BMI allows people to compare their own weight status to that of the general population." According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) a high BMI correlates with a high percentage of body fat. Too much body fat puts you at risk for high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other chronic conditions. Lowering your BMI will help to lower your risk.
Misconceptions
Calculating your BMI is not the only tool you should use to determine your risk of disease based on your weight. For example, an athlete may have a high BMI, indicating that they are overweight and at risk. In reality, the athlete may have a large amount of muscle, which increases his or her weight, while the percentage of body fat is actually very low. Conversely, a person who is at a healthy BMI could be at a healthy weight but may have too high of a percentage of body fat, which places them at risk.
Significance
For adults over age 20, BMI results are interpreted as follows. A BMI below 18.5 is considered underweight. If your BMI falls between 18.5 and 24.9, you are considered at a healthy level. A BMI of 25.0 to 29.9 places you in the overweight category. If your BMI is 30.0 or higher you are considered to be obese and at a high risk of disease.
Children and Teenagers
The same basic formula to calculate BMI for adults is also used for children. However, the results need to be analyzed differently. For children, you need to take into account their age and gender as body fat changes with age and is naturally higher in girls. Visit the link below for the CDC website for BMI for children and teenagers for a chart for children and teens and more information
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