My Diet Plan - Second Step - Knowing about your BMI

What is Body Mass Index (BMI)?

Healthcare professionals around the world often useBody Mass Index (BMI) when determining whether patients are underweight, healthy weight, overweight or clinically obese. People who are clinically obese have a greater risk of developing diabetes, stroke, some cancer, and cardiovascular diseases.

BMI has its drawbacks however. It does not take into account the patient's body fat content versus lean tissue (muscle) content. A 6 feet 2 inch athlete may have a higher BMI than a couch potato of the same height - but the couch potato may be overweight while the athlete is definitely not.

How to calculate BMI - Adults

There are two methods for working out your BMI -metric and imperial systems.

Metric system - Divide the person's weight in kilograms by their height in meters squared.

For example:

• Weight 90 kilograms
• Height 1.9 meters
• 1.9² = 3.61
• 90 divided by 3.61 = BMI is 24.93

Imperial system - the person's weight in pounds, multiplied by 703, divided by the square of their height in inches.

For example:

• Weight 190 lbs
• Height 72 inches (6 feet)
• 72² = 5,184
• 190 multiplied by 703 divided by 5,184 = BMI 25.76

You can use our BMI calculator 1 , BMI calculator 2 help you work these figures out.

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How to determine your body weight status

Below are definitions recommended by the World Health Organization.

BMI less than 18.5 - Underweight
BMI between 18.5 and 25 - Healthy weight
BMI between 25 and 30 - Overweight
BMI between 30 and 40 - Obese
BMI over 40 - Very obese, morbidly obese

Now you know your BMI , you may know where your target should be .So your aim is to reduce weight to be in healthy weight range , which is 18.5 to 25.