Why You Should Stop Worrying Too Much About Your BMI

What do you know about the BMI? The BMI in full is the body mass index. This is a tool that health care providers use to measure the fitness status of an individual. It is calculated by dividing the mass of an individual (Kgs) by the square of their height (H2) in meters.

Often, individuals take the BMI as the absolute measure of their fitness. I have been there too. You look at your height of, say, 1.7 m and your weight of 75kg and find out that your BMI is 25.95. According to the health care information available, this is classified as being overweight. It is even more frustrating that you have been hitting the gym consistently, and yet your BMI suggests that you are quite unfit. Well, that is not the entire truth. Take, for instance, Dwayne Johnson (The Rock). He has a weight of 118 Kg as at the time of writing this and a height of 1.96m. That brings his BMI to 30.7, qualifying him to be obese. Come on that is laughable, don’t you think? Dwayne Johnson is one of the fittest people on earth (fig.1). So why is his BMI so high?

Figure 1: Dwayne Johnson (The Rock)

The answer is simple: BMI is not the absolute answer! BMI does not consider that your weight could be due to fat or muscle. Most bodybuilders like Dwayne Johnson, tend to have massive weight because of being muscular. Muscles contribute significantly to your weight. Having a lot of weight that stems from being muscular is healthy. However, it only becomes a problem if it is the fat that is contributing to much of your weight. Probably this comes as a relief to the individuals who constantly work out, but their weight and BMI remain the same or even higher.