Within this category, you are statistically less likely to develop certain diseases. Normal weight for Body Mass Index is usually between 18.5 and 24.9 and is considered healthy. It allows people at risk to document their progress towards an ideal weight – for example, by getting more exercise and changing their diet. The BMI helps to identify all such risks to health in good time and reduce them. The body's metabolism and immune system may also be impaired. As the body is at risk of deficiency here, such persons have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis. If your BMI is below 18.5, you are underweight. A total of eleven weight classes can be shown here. An estimation of body fat using the skinfold method would be a more accurate choice.These categories are then broken down into different degrees and levels of severity. If you are a person with an athletic or muscular build, do not use BMI as the only method to assess your body composition.

Because muscle weighs more than fat, those who have well-developed muscles typically appear overweight or obese according to the BMI reference chart. However, since body weight (and not percent body fat) is used in determining BMI, there may be problems when using BMI to assess people who are heavily muscled (such as body builders) or who have an athletic body type. The table above provides established BMI norms based on various categories of health and fitness.įor most people, BMI is a quick and easy way to assess body composition, which is why it is so commonly used. Thus, working toward weight loss if you are overweight or obese can have a profound positive effect on your health. Obesity-related diseases include heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and stroke. Understanding your body composition is valuable because a person's level of body fat is directly correlated with health outcomes. This assessment compares your body weight to your height to come up with a value that indicates whether you are underweight, normal weight, overweight, or obese. A frequently used index to assess a person's body composition (or amount of body fat) is called the body mass index, or BMI.

Body mass index calculator