According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), approximately 300,000 deaths could be prevented annually in the U.S. if everyone maintained a healthy weight. People who are overweight are at a greater risk of high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, varicose veins and heart disease. The NIH says your body mass index (BMI) is a good indicator of whether your weight is in a healthy range in relationship to your height. While critics maintain the BMI is too simplistic, it has become a standard measurement of body fat in the last few decades.
Height and Weight Tables
According to Gastric Bypass Guru.com, prior to 1980, a normal weight was typically determined by separate height and weight tables for males and females.The standard table was set forth by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company based on minimum and maximum weights connected with the lowest rate of mortality among adults between the ages of 25 and 59. The mostly discarded weight tables of yesteryear generally match up to existing BMI guidelines.
BMI
According to bypassguru.com, in 1985, the NIH announced (as part of its Consensus Development Conference on the Health Implications of Obesity) that obesity is defined as a BMI higher than 27.8 for men and more than 27.3 for women.
More than a decade later, the World Health Organization (WHO) began using BMI as a standard method to determine whether someone is overweight. The WHO says levels ranging from 25 to 27 are common in North America and Europe. A BMI over 30 is regarded as obese.
Calculating BMI
The NIH says your BMI gauges what you should ideally weigh based on your height. You can determine your BMI by multiplying your weight in pounds by 703. For a woman who weighs 150 pounds that number would be 105450. That number is then divided by height in inches. If she is 67 inches tall that would be 1573. You divide that number by height in inches once again. This woman's BMI is 23.49 and falls into the healthy range of 18.5 to 24.9.
Effects
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the body mass index is one of the most simple and least costly methods of determining whether a person is overweight. Some of the other methods used to measure obesity, such as skinfold thickness measurements and underwater weighing, may require highly trained clinicians and can be more expensive.
Accuracy
The CDC says BMI is not a diagnostic tool and a person with a high BMI should undergo additional tests or counseling (health screenings, diet evaluation) to determine if his weight is an actual health risk. For example, since muscle weighs more than fat, exceptionally muscular people may have a high BMI, but still be healthy.
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