What is BMI?

BMI is a reasonably reliable measure of the amount of fat that a person has. However, it isn't always entirely accurate as a measure of diagnosis, due to the fact that it doesn't take into account the amount of muscle in a person's body.

BMI is measured by dividing an individual's height (in centimeters) by their weight (in kilograms).

For a more accurate measure of the amount of fat in your body, there is a way of measuring percent body fat manually. However, this method takes a considerably larger amount of time to complete and is not useful in all cases. BMI is mostly useful as an indicator of general health due to the ease through which it can be evaluated.