OK, OK.  I give in.  Sometimes I’m as confused as you about all these technical terms in life that people around us spout off like they were born with that vocabulary.  Seriously though, there are a few terms that we just need help with.  And with everyone wanting to lose some weight, gain some muscle or just down right want to know what the heck is a “BMI” then I’m here to help you today!

BMI stands for “Body Mass Index” and in a nutshell provides an estimate of how much your weight is muscle and bone and how much is fat…yuck.  Now let me just say right now that BMI is a better health gauge than weight alone, but it’s not perfect so we’ll discuss other more accurate measurements in a later post.  A normal BMI is 18.5 to 24.9 with 25 to 29.9 being overweight.  A BMI of 30 or greater is considered to be obese.  I have a great post coming that really shows you how we in the United States are doing from State to State as reported by the CDC.

To calculate your BMI do this; divide your weight in pounds by height in inches squared.  Then multiply that answer by 703.  OK, we’re back to math aren’t we and we all hated that in school, and least some of us any way.  So a 5 foot 9 inch man weighing 190 pounds would have the following BMI.  69 inches times 69 inches equals 4761.  190 pounds divided by 4761 equals .0399.  Multiply .0399 times 703 and we get a BMI of 28.  Now here’s the inaccuracy of it.  A heavily muscled person could be classified as overweight or obese when obviously they’re not.  So take your own physical condition into account when doing this.

If you deal only in metrics, send me a short message or reply here and I’ll do it in kilograms and meters squared… that ought to be fun!

Coming soon we’ll talk about Body Fat measurements using calipers ….

Enjoy!

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