Body Mass Index

I located a BMI calculator on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website. I will put the link at the end of the post for those of you who are interested. The site gave the following information:

BMI Categories:

·         Underweight = <18.5

·         Normal weight = 18.5–24.9

·         Overweight = 25–29.9

·         Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater 

So I put in my height which is 5 feet 2 1/2 inches (to be exact) and my current weight as of today 159.8 pounds. My BMI computation came to 28.8. That puts me in the overweight category. At my starting weight of 186 pounds, I was surely in the obese category (33.5 BMI). Doesn’t make me feel good at all.

So out of curiosity, I plugged in my height and my goal weight of 136 pounds. That put my BMI at 24.5 which in the normal weight range but as you can see it’s barely in that range. Another.5 (which would be 139 pounds) would put me in the overweight category. That is crazy to me. If only you could see how thin I look at 139 pounds.  

I have to do more research on this topic as it does not seem to take into consideration the size of a person’s frame and I personally have a large frame. What I mean by frame size is the size of your bones. One test of frame size is to wrap your thumb and middle finger around your wrists. If your fingers overlap you have a small frame. If your fingers touch, you have a medium frame. If your fingers have a gap between them, you have a large frame.  When I do this test, I have a gap. More to come on this topic.

BMI Calculator: http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/