Heart disease, diabetes and hypertension are typically thought of as conditions that affect older adults. However, children are suffering from these and many more conditions formerly confined to adulthood as a result of childhood obesity. The American Heart Association estimates that one-third of U.S. children are considered obese, and 70 percent of those children are destined to be obese as adults. These alarming statistics may leave you wondering, what is a healthy body weight or body fat percentage for a child?
BMI
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, body mass index, or BMI, is the most common method for evaluating body fat in children. While it does not directly measure the amount of body fat present, it does correlate well with body fat. It is easy to assess, as you only need the current height and weight of your child to calculate.
Calculation
There are two standard formulas used in calculating BMI. If you are using kilograms and meters as your units of measure you simply take your child's weight in kilograms and divide it by their height in meters-squared. If you are using the English measurements of pounds and inches, you take the weight in pounds and divide it by the height in inches squared multiplied by 703.
Percentiles
When you take your child for their annual check-up your pediatrician most likely graphs your child's BMI on a growth chart which is then translated into a percentile. The percentile assigned to your child's BMI tells you where your child falls in relation to other children of the same age and gender. It also categorizes your child as underweight, healthy weight, overweight or obese.
Healthy Ranges
If your child's BMI plots less than the 5th percentile, she is considered underweight. The percentile range that is considered healthy is between 5 and 85. Your child is considered overweight if they fall between the 85th and 95th percentile, and obese if they are above the 95th percentile. If your child falls in to a category other than healthy weight, your pediatrician may recommend further evaluation of body fat.
Drawbacks
It should be emphasized that interpretation of BMI is not an exact science. Your child could be athletic with a greater amount of muscle mass that causes him to weigh more than others his own age. This may plot into an unhealthy BMI range category. In these instances, your child's pediatrician will probably use an alternative method to measure body fat such as skin-fold measurement or body scans. The Family Education website recommends a percentage of body fat between 14 and 21 percent for girls and between 9 and 15 percent for boys ages 6 to 18 years old.
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