BMI Chart for Men & Women: Is BMI a Misleading Metric?

Body Mass Index (BMI) uses both an individual’s weight and height in estimating the person’s level of fatness. For the majority of the population, using the BMI calculator is a fair enough gauge, a noninvasive method to perform, and a simple measurement to apply. A BMI that’s higher than 25 means you are overweight. When it is over 30, that indicates obesity. It’s what helps doctors evaluate a patient’s risk of developing diseases like hypertension, cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, and type 2 diabetes as quickly as possible. Although BMI can help within a clinical setting, it is certainly not infallible. As a matter of fact, it can under- or overestimate people’s fatness.

BMI, more often than not, can go wrong. It’s already known to flag the athletic and particularly muscular as obese or overweight incorrectly. Myriads of studies have been conducted which all have revealed that the metric misses another category of individuals: those that have fat in dangerous places of the body but are labeled as normal. They are the people who walk around thinking they are perfectly healthy even when they are at a higher risk of suffering from diabetes, heart disease, and even premature death.

Now that you know BMI is unreliable, you’d start questioning all its other limitations. Also, you’d wonder if a measurement that’s accurate exists. Before we talk to you about other means to determine your current health status, let’s first educate you on BMI and all the reasons why it can be misleading.