Is BMI, Body Mass Indicator, A Valid Measure Of Fat?
Body Mass Index, or BMI as it is more generally called, is the most well known tool today for measuring if someone is carrying too much fat. BMI is a system that Adolphe Quetelet designed in the early 1800′s and so it is also given the name of the ‘Quetelet Index’. While it sounds somewhat formal it is nothing more than a system that measures the proportion of a persons weight to their height and then compares this to a set of statistical ranges. This is a great help when trying to lose weight.
To calculate your own body mass index, you should weigh yourself in kilograms and measure your height in metres. Divide your weight by your height and then divide the result by your height again. So for instance, if you weigh 70 kilos and stand 1.6 metres high, then your BMI will be 70 divided by 1.6 giving 43.75. Then divide this result again by 1.6 which gives the final result of 27.34.
But what does a body mass index of 27.34 basically mean? So as to know the meaning of your BMI you need to measure it against the ordinary range for healthy people. As a general rule your BMI should be between 18.5 and 25 to be catalogued as acceptable. If your BMI measures less than 18.5 then this would be considered under weight. While 25 to 30 is believed to be over weight, over 30 indicates a degree of weight issues.
The biggest problem with the Body Mass Index is that it’s too much biased towards weight. It cannot consider some of the vital aspects that affect a BMI reading, such as bone and frame size, age or muscle development. Pretty much certainly, any sporting person with well developed muscles as would be the case for rugby players, track athletes and so on, will have BMI measurements that are assessed as fat. This is due to the fact that muscle is heavier than fat and therefore the BMI formula will punish you for having lots of muscle in your body.
Youngsters are very difficult to gauge with BMI as they continually changing shape and sometimes quickly over very short time scales. Therefore the development of a universal weight for a specific child’s height is subject to lots of error. For this reason the Body Mass Index should be utilised with a good deal of care when measuring children.
Jenny Flowers runs a website that specialises in skinny thighs and reguarly writes articles related to weight loss, diets and keeping fit