Is BMI the best way to know if you are overweight?

BMI, short for Body Mass Index, is the most common way we tend to judge if we are a healthy weight or not. It’s usually just a measure taking your height and your weight and working it out on a scale from there. Some more complex measures will take into account your age, sex, ethnicity and activity level. But if the doctor works it out for you it will most likely be just based on age and height.

Is BMI a good measure?

It’s a good basic guide that anyone can easy work out themselves. But it really isn’t a good way to judge whether you are overweight or not. The main reason being it has absolutely no way of taking into account your level of muscle mass. So someone who has a higher level of muscle mass is always going to come out higher on the BMI scale.

It works the same way the other way round, you may be a naturally tall person with a lean body type and will therefore has a comparatively low BMI. This can be the case even if in terms of body fat you are overweight.

For example a body builder would come out as obese if not morbidly obese on the BMI scale. Even though by and large they have the bare minimum of body fat. This could be true in a less extreme way to you. I am 6 ft tall and 12 stones 4 pounds. And my BMI only just comes out in the healthy range. I would like to think my body fat percentage would be a lot lower than the majority of people with the same BMI. I certainly don’t do bodybuilding but I certainly do train a lot and a fair bit with weights so my muscle mass is a little higher than it otherwise would be.

What is a better way to measure being overweight?

Body fat percentage. Get yourself a set a scales that will measure your body fat percentage and base whether you are overweight or not on that. The scales don’t have to be expensive. At least then you will be able to enter all you vital statistics and get a more ‘measured answer.’ Not to say that the scales will give you a 100% accurate body fat reading. You would have to get into a water submersion tank for that. But you will a fairly accurate measure.

Conclusion

If you have no other way of measuring whether you are overweight or not BMI is a good guide. But I would certainly recommend trying to get a body far measurement for a more accurate result.

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