BMI can be a sensitive topic — and maybe you don’t care to pay it any mind. Some medical professionals support that choice. “Unfortunately, there is no perfect tool [to measure one’s health],” says Anisha Abraham, MD, interim chief of the division of adolescent and young adult medicine at Children’s National Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland. Instead, there are several measurement tools, such as blood pressure, BMI, and blood sugar, that tell us different things but are pieces of a larger puzzle, she says. Body fat percentage is another one. Frank Contacessa, MD, an internist with Northwell Health Physician Partners in Armonk, New York, says that it’s a better factor to consider in a holistic health assessment, but it’s more difficult to measure than BMI. All the same, you may be wondering what your BMI suggests about your present and future health — and how much stock should you put your number? Here’s an overview of how and why BMI is used, and what yours may mean. To measure health risks across a population, BMI can be advantageous, especially because it’s more widely used than other weight measurement approaches, says William Yancy, MD, a professor of medicine at the Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina. You can avoid doing manual math by plugging your stats into an online calculator, like the one from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). To see how your weight stacks up against your height, you can use the body mass index table from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (PDF). Here are the ranges and how the CDC describes each:
BMI below 18.5 is underweight (too low).BMI 18.5 to 24.9 is normal weight (just right).BMI 25 to 29.9 is overweight (high).BMI 30 and higher indicates obesity (very high).
On the other hand, some healthcare professionals choose not to focus on BMI. “I do not focus on a patient’s BMI when I counsel them on being healthy,” Dr. Contacessa says. “There is no single indicator of total health. You have to look at the totality of a person, including a family history, lifestyle review, and physical exam.”
The more fat you have around your middle, the more your health may take a hit, regardless of BMI, echoes Patrick M. O’Neil, PhD, the director of the weight management center and a professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. These details about what makes up your body weight and where on the body it’s distributed matter and are needed to determine potential health risks. “One could have a higher BMI and yet be free of health conditions,” Anegawa says. “On the other hand, some individuals with lower BMIs have very significant weight-related diseases, such as prediabetes and type 2 diabetes, hypertension, or abnormal cholesterol.” Put differently, when it comes to BMI and your actual risk for health issues, it’s complicated.
Rather than shoot for a specific BMI, what may be most important is maintaining — or starting — healthy habits.
