Body mass index (BMI) tells you about how much you should be weighing according to your height. Calculating BMI is very easy and helps a lot to know if you are underweight, overweight, obese or normal. It precisely tells you how much weight you need to gain or lose to look healthy. It applies to people of all ages. It very precisely indicates the total body fat.
There are also a few limitations that apply to it. For athletes, it might indicate that they weigh a lot more than they should where as for really old people it might indicate them as underweight. Similarly people that have a good height that is the people who are quite tall are shown to have a high BMI value but in fact they are not that over weight.
The increased value is due to their muscularity. In women, at the same BMI value as men, they have more body fats as compared to men. It is also not accurate for women who are pregnant or breast feeding their kids.
While finding our BMI we actually divide our weight with the square of our height. It results in a value that tells us about the fats in our body which helps us determining what we need to do about our weight. If the value is less than 16.5 or it is between 16.5 and 18.5, you are in the category of being underweight. If it is between 18.5 and 24.9, your weight is absolutely normal.
If the value is between 25 and 30 you are over weight but if the value exceeds 30 you are definitely obese and you really need to lose weight or it might cause a lot of problems for you. Being underweight is also not good because that might cause problems too and in fact it actually indicates condition of extreme starvation. However the risk for obese people to develop any disease is also related to their waist circumference because the abdominal fat determines a person's obesity.
BMI is not an accurately reliable way to check for excess body fats but it is especially helpful in case of children. Doctors use BMI to check a child's growth ratio. At frequent intervals they check his BMI plot it on a graph and compare it with BMIs of different children of the same age.
This also helps them to determine if the kid would face weight problems when he grows older and if he does, they make sure to have the level controlled before it causes problems. They do so by either controlling or checking what he eats and developing the habit of exercising in him.
The BMI ranges differ a lot for according to different demographics. BMI has always been criticized. There are a lot of government agencies and public health organizations that have consider the interpretation through BMI wrong. Thus it is important that when you calculate your BMI, before believing the results you should let your family health doctor or any other physician help you interpret the results.
Use the tool below to calculate your BMI. The results of the BMI calculations will be displayed below...
Your BMI is:
| What your BMI result indicates |
Female |
Male |
| Underweight |
< 19 |
<20 |
| Acceptable |
19 - 25 |
20 - 25 |
| Overweight |
25 - 30 |
25 - 30 |
| Obese |
30 - 40 |
30 - 40 |
| Morbidly Obese |
> 40 |
> 40 |
PLEASE NOTE: The BMI indicator is just a guide and may provide
misleading results. It does not take into account different body frames,
muscle tone, etc. It's important to speak with a physician about your
individual weight if you are unsure.
The health calculator given here do not provide medical advice and do not replace the advice of a medical professional. Care has been taken to make sure the calculator is generating correct results, but no guarantee is made that the results are accurate. The health tools use professionally accepted and peer reviewed algorithms to calculate their results or simple mathematical equations.
Based on Daily Calorie Needs Calculator
