How Does Your Height Compliment Your Weight?
The Body Mass Index is a measurement of the weight and height to determine if a person is overweight or not. It is such a simple tool that doctors have been using it for years to determine if a patient is overweight or obese who may in turn be at risk of the complications usually associated with high body fat.
A BMI score is the weight divided by the square of his or her height. Because of the physiological difference of a man and woman’s body, as well as children there are differences in the values set for BMI scores or categories.
A BMI score of under 19 is considered underweight, a BMI score of 20-25 is considered healthy while a BMI score of 26-30 is considered overweight while a score of 30 and above is considered obese. The World Health Organization have considered the difference of body structure of among Asians and the Western World causing an adjustment of the BMI score.
Whereas a BMI score of 27 was considered normal before, it was brought down to the current score of 25, putting most Westerners on the overweight class. There are other limitations of the BMI. As mentioned above, the BMI does not take into account the weight of the muscles, thus causing highly fit athletes to be considered as overweight.
Although there are limitations, using the BMI is still the most preferred choice to determine if a sedentary individual is underweight, overweight or obese. Aside from the height to weight chart one can have their BMI calculated online.
