What is the best BMI for a woman


 

While it correlates with body fat levels, BMI does not distinguish between the weight that comes from fat, muscle, and bone. Therefore, someone who is muscular could have the same BMI as someone with overweight.

You can use bmi calculator for women with age  to calculate your BMI

Additionally, the proportion of muscle, fat, and bone in the body typically changes as people age, especially among females. The average female loses roughly 13 poundsTrusted Source of muscle and bone between the ages of 25 and 65, while belly fat increases to four times its previous amount.

A 70-year-old female who still weighs what she did when she was 25 may, therefore, have a BMI that falls in the healthy range despite having a much larger percentage of body fat.

A high body fat percentage has an adverse effect on health. A 2014 study found that people with a “normal” BMI but a high percentage of body fat had a higher risk of developing metabolic syndrome. Those with excess fat around the belly had a higher risk of mortality.

In another studyTrusted Source, researchers found that some postmenopausal women with a body fat percentage of 35%, which doctors consider a sign of obesity, were not in the “obese” category according to their BMI.

As such, BMI alone may be a misleading measurement of someone’s overall health, particularly for people who are very muscular, are peri- or postmenopausal, or have abdominal fat but are otherwise a moderate weight.

Diagnostic tests that a doctor may perform include:

  • Densitometry: This involves a doctor measuring someone’s body weight while they are in water. The test compares their weight measurements on land to their measurements in water to calculate body fat percentage. Densitometry generally only takes place in a research setting.
  • Dual energy X-ray absorptiometry: X-rays move through fat, muscle, and bone at different rates, so this approach passes two low level X-rays through the body to calculate relative percentages.
  • Bioelectrical impedance (BIA): BIA estimates someone’s body fat percentage by passing a low level electric current through the body.
  • Isotope dilution: In this test, a person drinks water that contains isotopes and then provides samples of bodily fluids. These samples give a doctor information on the individual’s body composition.

Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian astronomer and statistician, developed BMI 180 years ago. However, BMI didn’t gain much popularity among researchers until epidemiologist Ancel Keys identified it as an effective way to track body fat proportions at a population level (1Trusted Source).

BMI uses a person’s height and weight to estimate their body fat.

Issues with BMI

Using BMI as a marker of health is problematic for a number of reasons.

Even though some health professionals use BMI to categorize individuals based on body fat, it doesn’t actually take body fat or lean body mass into account. This means BMI doesn’t recognize the difference between muscle and fat (2Trusted Source).

For this reason, BMI might categorize someone with a very high percentage of muscle mass as having excess weight or obesity, even if they have low body fat levels.

Another shortcoming of BMI is that it doesn’t indicate where fat is stored on the body. Therefore, it doesn’t account for variation in fat distribution between sexes or different body types. It also doesn’t consider age-related decline in muscle mass.

The system may classify a small-framed person in a healthy BMI range, even if they have a significant amount of belly fat. However, this person may actually be at risk because belly fat is significantly linked to many chronic diseases and early deathTrusted Source.

In other words, it’s possible that a person with a “healthy” BMI may actually be at significant risk of disease, surgical complications, and increased mortality (4).

Additionally, health is multidimensional. There are many factors a person should consider when assessing their overall health and risk of disease.

Experts argue that BMI is much too simplistic a measure to use as an indicator of health.

BMI is one of the tools that individuals and doctors can use to determine a person’s risk of certain diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. However, it has some drawbacks.

For women, body fat percentages change over time. As BMI does not measure body fat specifically, it may not provide someone with all the information that they need about their risk for these diseases.

BMI for women is still a convenient and useful tool for measuring overall body weight, but a person who wishes to track their health may benefit from combining BMI with other metrics, such as WHR.

Комментарии

Популярные сообщения из этого блога

Instant Fat Loss Formula review

How Long Does It Take to Lose Body Fat

Body mass index calculation