Body Mass Index

Calculate and understand your BMI

Veronika Rauch

What is BMI

  • BMI - the Body Mass Index is a measure to indicate body fat. It is a number based on your weight and height and is often used as a tool to determine if your weight might be putting you at a health risk.

  • The BMI was invented in 1832 by Adolphe Quetelet. His aim was to identify the "nomral man" and hd nothing to do with weight related disease. Only after 1972 did the BMI take meaning for the health care industry

  • Generally BMI cannot be used as a direct diagnostic tool but there appears to be a high correlation between BMI levels and various metabolic and disease outcome. It is a widely used measure, as calucaltion is easy to do and requires only the input of height and weight. However the BMI should be used with care, as an individual's health status is dependent on many factors and many argue that direct measures of body fat percentage are much more insightful.

Example calcultaion

The Formula for BMI calculation is as follows:

\[Weight(kg)/Height(m)^2\]

Lets look at an example:

A person with a weight if 80 kilograms and height of 1.70 meters would have the following BMI score:

80/(1.7)^2

## [1] 27.68166

However what does this BMI score mean? In the shiny App created it will tell you automatically what weight level you are at, underneath the score itself. Lets have a closer look at the different categories in the next slide

BMI Table (for adults)

BMI Category
Below 18.5 Underweight
18.5 - 24.9 Normal Weight
25 - 29.9 Overweight
30 and Above Obease

So from the example above we can see that our in case with BMI 27.68166 would fall into the overweight category. This means there is increased health risk and and gives an indicator that this person should maybe aim to reduce their weight to heught ratio.

Thank you