Easily calculate your Body Mass Index (BMI) using our calculator:
What is the BMI formula? The formula to calculate a person’s Body Mass Index requires only knowledge of a person’s height (in kilograms) and weight (in metres).
BMI = kg ÷ m^2 If you're using the formula to calculate (instead of our nifty calculator) What are the different BMI ranges?
For adults (over the age of 18) a healthy BMI is in the 18.5 to 24.9 range. Below are the BMI ranges according to the NHS.
Less than 18.5: You are in the underweight range This may be a sign that you are not eating enough or that you are ill. Between 18.5 and 24.9: You’re in the healthy weight range. Well done! You are likely living a healthy, balanced lifestyle. Between 25 and 29.9: You’re in the overweight range.
Between 30 and 39.9: You’re in the obese range.
Over 40: You’re in the morbidly obese range. Is BMI a reliable indicator of health? The BMI indicator has recently come under some scrutiny. How useful is it actually? On an individual level, BMI is not that reliable an indicator of health. That is because it simply measures the ratios between our height and weight—but the metric of weight does not discriminate between a kilogram of muscle and a kilogram of fat. It also doesn’t account for differences in body shapes, or fat distributions for example relating to gender or ethnicity. Hence, rugby players or body builders, despite carrying lots of muscle and little fat, can end up with a BMI which classes them as obese, despite them clearly being very fit. On the other end, there are many people who are underweight or normal weight and still suffer from health problems. Having said this, BMI is thought to be a good indicator of health across an entire population, and BMI has been shown to be linked to a variety of diseases. For example, across the entire UK population, the higher your BMI, the more likely you are of developing health issues such as: -Diabetes -High blood pressure -Liver disease -Arthritis -Certain types of cancer e.g. breast, colon, and prostate -High cholesterol -Sleep apnea
Ultimately, as an indicator of health, BMI is not perfect at the individual level. Nevertheless, it is a useful starting point for understanding certain health conditions that can become more likely when one is obese or overweight. Why do we use BMI at Habitual? As we’ve seen in the previous section, BMI can be useful for gaining a sense of health risks especially across a population in relation to weight, but it’s certainly not worth obsessing about. And that’s exactly how we approach it here at Habitual. We use it to assess on average whether a person is suitable for our program based on their weight and height. This is because on average, our patients lose 15kg over the course of the program. Therefore, when we ask you for your current BMI, we want to ensure that once you lose those 15kg, you are not falling below the healthy weight category in terms of your BMI. How can I lower my BMI? For a fully grown adult, lowering BMI can only occur through a reduction in weight (as sadly scientists still haven't figured out how to make us grow taller!). Many doctors and other healthcare professionals tell their patients to "eat less and exercise more", however at Habitual we know that achieving and maintaining a healthy weight is so much more complicated than that.
Over here, we focus on lowering BMI by changing habits—nutritional habits to make healthy eating choices, physical habits to make exercise a part of your life, and mental habits to cultivate the positivity and fortitude needed to be prepared for even the toughest of times. It's only by making changes across all of these aspects of life that long-term health is possible.
The Habitual program is specifically designed for people who would benefit from 15+ kilos of weight loss, so it's safe to say we've spent a lot of time thinking about how to safely and effectively help people lower their BMI. But we also know that health is about SO much more than weight! So if you do decide to join us, we hope you'll agree that taking the plunge into a program like Habitual is really about making positive changes to your health (and life!), not just about changing your weight (and thus BMI).
