
What is BMI?
Body mass index, or BMI, is a ratio-based measurement of your body that factors in your height and weight. It’s simple; it applies to both male and female; and it’s an excellent tool for you to use to track your body’s health. Some call it the Quetelet Index, named after its inventor, Adolphe Quetelet. He idealized a measuring method that would relate one’s weight and height to an ideal or standardized weight. In other words, he wanted to codify the system of body mass measuring, to make it easier for people to know how “normal” their body mass is compared to others.Why does BMI matter?
Your body-to-weight ratio is extremely important, because there has over and again been a correlation between a high BMI and a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes II, high blood pressure, gallstones, and more. Measuring your body mass is also an excellent predictor of what your health may be in the future, especially when applied to children. You can track the pattern of body mass acquisition to take action early and prevent unhealthy habits later in life. (If you’re taking the BMI of minors, please consult the growth chart for more accuracy, as children’s body mass better correlates with standard growth charts.)
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Should I even care?
Now, don’t take BMI as gospel. An unfortunate part of your BMI calculation is that it doesn’t factor in muscle. Let me iterate: if you actively lift weights and have a more muscular composition than someone who better resembles a couch potato and hasn’t heard of a guy named Gym, you may have the same BMI than she, but one of you looks drastically different. Take, for example, the following chart. Each of the figures is, surprisingly, 5′ 7″, weighs 145 lbs, and has a BMI of 22.8. Does that look true? It is true, because again, BMI is not a panacea for measuring your body status vis-a-vis other bodies. You should still care about your BMI because there is one thing it highlights: your excess fat, which, unless you’re pregnant or are facing the most inclement conditions and tend to be out of food for long periods of time, is just that: excess. Excess, of anything other than those cinnamon Poptarts (kind of joking), is usually bad. (Read more about general excess here.)Address your body mass
Now that you know your body mass (or if you don’t, click here); and since the national obesity level (your BMI being 30+) is around 37, we need a solution to high body fat–or to losing weight healthy, effectively, and [it would be nice if it’s] quickly. Have you ever typed in “how to lose weight” in a search engine? We did, and what we saw immediately was not surprising.