How Useful Is The Body Mass Index (BMI)?

We all know that maintaining a healthy weight is a challenging task and getting the knowledge of what is healthy for you can also be challenging. Most people depend on the body mass index or BMI that means a measure of our weight with respect to our height. Many experts criticized this limited measure of health for the out body weight but it is still most popular among the people to judge healthy weight. Well, modern technology introduced so many tools to calculate weight, a BMI calculator is one of them.

Healthcare professionals use measuring tools to calculate a healthy weight of an individual, so it is particularly regarded as a handy tool when it comes to weight loss & understanding of your current bodyweight. In this article, we will find the answer to the question that bothers most of us and recent studies also showed that BMI is an accurate measure for weight and we also mention other information regarding BMI.

What is BMI:

Before discussing how useful BMI is, it is important to know what exactly the body mass index is. Body mass index is a calculation of your body size that uses your height and weight. It is complex to calculate BMI sometimes when it comes to manual calculation. So, you can use the BMI calculator for men & women that helps to let you know in which category your body weight falls.  In the past, a chart that asks you to measure your height and the left side then slide your finger to the right side to know about your ideal body weight from a list showing small, medium, and large frame sizes.

BMI Ranges:

BMI ranges can help you know whether the weight of an individual is healthy or not. Once you have measured your body mass index then, you can check it against BMI ranges to figure out how healthy or unhealthy your bodyweight is. Sometimes calculating BMI depending on its ranges might be complex & tricky, so you can use a BMI calculator for men & women who want to calculate their current body weight.  Body Mass Index ranges include:

• The range for BMI below 18.5 expresses the state of underweight.
• BMI range between 18.5 and 24.9 is said to be healthy.
• BMI ranges from 25 to 29.9 is considered to be overweight.
• BMI range between 30 to 39.9 represents the state of obesity.

Calculating body mass index according to its ranges might be critical but using a boy and girl BMI calculator can make it more simple instead of performing calculations manually on paper.

Limitations of BMI:

No doubt measuring your body mass index helps you to know whether you are overweight or underweight. While decreasing your BMI means that you are successfully losing weight. However, there are limitations to calculate BMI that you should always need to remember to know how healthy their weight is.

There are some notable limitations for BMI that indicate that it is not always a useful tool for measuring weight loss. For instance, it does not measure the bone density, mass of muscle, and gender, etc. BMI ranges are often misleading because of these factors, but you can consider the BMI calculator for kids & boys to get a precise calculation.

Importance of Waist Size:

Waistline becomes important and considerable at the time if using BMI to measure the weight loss. The reason is that it provides precise measurement of body fat relating to weight & height. For instance, individuals having a healthy body mass index range that has not considered the waistline needs to lose their weight.

Is BMI a Useful Tool:

There are so many limitations regarding the preciseness of body mass index, but the BMI calculator is still a useful tool for measuring weight loss, especially when other variables are taken into account. When you have a high BMI then, you need to lose weight where reducing weight shows that you are successfully losing weight. You need to consider other variables like gender, ethnic group, waistline, and muscle mass when you have mid-range BMI. Most of the professionals consider these factors along with the BMI measurement that will give an accurate representation of your weight.

Conclusion:

Body mass index is not a perfect measure of health as a single measure.  However, it is still considered a useful starting point for important health conditions, which becomes more useful when a person is overweight or obese. Body mass index becomes tricky when we do calculations by hand, so you can use the BMI calculator to know which body type your body is lying in.