A thorough health evaluation should include many measures to assess overall health because no single test provides an accurate picture of your total health.
At Weston Medical Health & Wellness, our skilled internal medicine physician, Dr. Andrea Bretal, uses many tools to assess health and wellness, including your body mass index (BMI).
The BMI is a calculation that estimates body composition and health risks. Your BMI can help us decide what other tests we should perform to get a better picture of your health and risk of chronic disease.
Here, we want to tell you about BMI, what your number means, and how we use your BMI to evaluate health.
BMI: Medical screening tool
BMI is a medical screening tool that compares your weight to your height to estimate body fat. It doesn’t directly measure body fat, but provides clues about your body composition.
Excess body fat increases your risk of developing chronic health problems like Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. In most cases, the higher the BMI, the more body fat you have. However, it’s not a perfect tool and can overestimate or underestimate body fatness.
Where do you fall?
Your BMI is a number. We determine your BMI by dividing your weight in kilograms by your height in meters squared, which looks like: weight in kg/[height in meters]2.
If you’re 67 inches tall (1.7m) and weigh 170 pounds (77.1kg) your BMI is 25. You can also use an online BMI calculator to figure out where your BMI falls.
Your BMI number shows us your weight type, which is classified as:
- Less than 18.5: Underweight
- 18.5 to 24.9: Normal weight
- 25 to 29.9: Overweight
- 30 to 34.9: Class I obesity
- 35 to 39.9: Class II obesity
- More than 40: Class III obesity
BMI is a simple tool for assessing body fat and health because we only need your height and weight.
Beyond your BMI
We like BMI because of its simplicity, but it’s not perfect. There are many factors that influence your body composition such as your age, sex, and ethnicity. And your BMI may not truly reflect your body composition because it doesn’t differentiate between fat and muscle.
An older adult may have a normal BMI, but have more body fat than muscle. And a bodybuilder may fall into the overweight weight type category, but have very little body fat.
Because BMI isn’t perfect, it’s not the only tool we use to measure health and risk of future disease. We may measure your waist circumference or do skinfold body fat testing to get a better understanding of your body fatness and how it can affect health.
We also run lab work to screen for weight-related health issues, such as a blood glucose test for diabetes and a lipid profile to check for high cholesterol and risk of heart disease.
Where your BMI falls gives you good information about your health, but it may not tell the whole story. If you have concerns about your BMI, weight, or health, schedule a visit with our experts by calling the office or requesting an appointment online.