Knowing your body mass index
BMI may indicate a risk of heart disease
There
are useful ways that allow women to keep track of their weight, and
thus check on their general health. Calculating the body mass index is
one of the most important methods. Trusted sources from the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) define BMI as a person's weight in
kilograms divided by the square of their height in metres.
BMI
alone can be a misleading measure of overall health, particularly for
women who are highly muscular, pre- or post-menopausal, or have belly
fat, but are of moderate weight.
BMI is one of the tools that
individuals and doctors can use to determine a person's risk of
developing certain diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and
stroke. However, it has some drawbacks.
For women, body fat
percentages change over time, and since BMI does not specifically
measure body fat, it may not provide some with all the information they
need about their risk of developing these diseases.
What are the disadvantages of BMI?
While
BMI can estimate whether a person is of moderate weight, it has some
limitations. While it correlates with levels of body fat, BMI does not
distinguish between weight that comes from fat, muscle and bone, so a
person with strong muscle mass can have the same BMI as people who are
overweight.
In addition, the proportion of muscle, fat and bone in the body usually changes with age, especially among females. The female loses approximately 13 pounds of muscle and bone between the ages of 25 and 65, while belly fat increases to four times the previous amount.