What Is the Formula for Body Mass Index?

The Body Mass Index, commonly refereed to as BMI, is considered a more accurate measure of body weight in relation to your overall health.The Wii Fit measures the BMI of gamers and uses it to determine the persons ideal weight and if that person is overweight or obese. While the BMI is a valuable tool, it should not be relied upon as a determination of your overall health.

What is your BMI?

• To determine your BMI, you need to know only two things: your weight and your height, in inches. Take your weight and multiply it by 703. Then divide this number by your height, in inches. Take that answer and divide it by your height once again. The resulting answer is your BMI. Example: If you are 5-foot 6-inches tall (66 inches) and you weight 150 pounds, your formula would look like this: Step 1---150 x 703 = 105,450; Step 2---105,450 divided by 66 = 1,597.72; Step 3---1,597.72 divided by 66 = 24.20.

What Is an Average BMI?

• In the United States the average woman is 5-foot 4-inches (64 inches) tall and weighs 152 pounds. Her BMI is 26.08. The average man is 5-foot 9-inches (69 inches) tall and weighs 182 pounds. So the average man in the U.S. has a BMI of 26.87.

What is considered healthy?

• The American Heart Association has found a direct link between heart disease and excess weight and therefore considers monitoring your BMI level important. By the Heart Association standards a BMI of 18.5 or less is considered underweight. A BMI in the range of 18.5 to 24.9 is considered normal. Anything over 25.0 is considered overweight with anything over 30.0 considered obese. Extreme obesity is a BMI level of 40.0 or higher.

Is A Good BMI A Sign Of Good Health?

• While your BMI is a good monitoring tool, it may not be a true indication of a person's overall health. If a man is 6-foot 3-inches tall and weights 225 pounds, his BMI level is 28.12. This is considered to be overweight and unhealthy. The BMI level must also be considered for the individual. For an average person, 28.12 is too high. For a professional athlete who is 6-foot 3-inches tall and weights 225 pounds but has a very low percentage of body fat and a high muscle content, a BMI of 28.12 is not overweight. While your BMI score is important, it must be properly applied to each individual in order to determine its relation to his overall health.

What Is Considered Attractive?

• A survey conducted by the University of London and Newcastle University studied what body types people found most attractive. The study found individual likes very widely, but there seemed to be a common thread for all figure types which were found to be attractive to the participants. The study found the majority of those questioned found a person with a BMI of 20.85 to be their idea of an ideal figure. While not considered underweight, this is considerably below the BMI of the average American.