The Body Mass Index - Is it Useful Or Useless?

The Body Mass Index (BMI) is a tool that is used to determine if a person has a healthy weight for their height. To calculate it you take your weight in kilograms and divide that number by your height in meters. You take that figure and then divide that by your height in meters again. This will give you a number and you can use the table below to see how you fair.
BMI
Underweight Below 18.5 Normal 18.5 - 24.9 Overweight 25.0 - 29.9 Obesity 30.0 and Above
Whenever you go to a doctors or health club for an assessment this has a habit of cropping up - so is it really any good?
As with a lot of tools in the health and fitness industry you will have strong advocates who swear by it and you have strong advocates who swear at anyone who uses it.
The truth, as with most things, is somewhere in the middle.
By itself, the BMI is quite limited and needs to be used in conjunction with other assessments to gain a full picture of your health.
The main reason for the limitation is that it doesn't take into account the persons body type by that I mean if someone has a skinny-fat type body it's possible they can have a figure in the healthy range whilst someone who actively works out and is lean could be in the overweight category due to the extra muscle.
From the above two types, which sounds the healthiest to be? skinny-fat but at a healthy weight or lean and muscular but registering slightly over weight
So what else should you use with the BMI to gain a better picture?
1)For a start take your waist measurement - no sucking in either! For men anything over a 40 inch waist circumference is bad - diabetes and heart disease territory. In women it's anything over 35 inches.
2) Take your blood pressure. You can get a home kit quite cheaply or pay a visit to your doctor for a check up. As a guide a reading of 120/80 is normal and consistently reading over 140 / 90 is classed as high blood pressure.
3) Measure your heart rate. Take a stop watch and time yourself for 30 seconds to see how many times your heart beats and multiply that figure by 2. In adults the average is around 70 for males and 75 for females.
4) If you go to a gym, they can administer a body fat test. This will give you a rough indication of the amount of body fat you are carrying in proportion to lean mass. I say roughly because no method is 100% accurate.
By itself, the BMI is one dimensional and doesn't have any real meaning. By incorporating the four tests described in this article in conjunction with the BMI, it will give you a more accurate picture of how you are doing health wise