The Body Mass Index, commonly referred to as the BMI, is a tool used in the medical and health industry. It identifies whether an individual is in a healthy weight range or under/over weight. It is designed for an ‘average’ individual and will not provide an accurate position for an extremely muscular person nor someone with certain physical disabilities but in generally this is a good tool to be aware of.
You calculate your BMI by taking your weight (kg) and divide it by your height (m)3 but the easiest way is to use an online calculation tool that will let you input values in either metric or imperial measures. I like the BMI tool at Calorie King Australia which is nice and easy to use. While you are there you might want to take a look around the site, it has a lot of useful information and I particularly like the food database which is great for Australian and New Zealand products (they have a separate US site that covers US product).
I found calculating my BMI and where that placed me in the healthy weight scale was a good wake-up call – and it gave me something tangible to target, the numbers on the scale on their own don’t have as much meaning to me, using the BMI I can work out what is a healthy weight range to target.
