What information does Body Mass Index (BMI) provide?

Body Mass Index (BMI) is a valuable tool used to assess a person's body weight relative to their height, providing insight into potential excess body fat. The calculation is straightforward: it involves taking a person's weight in kilograms and dividing it by the square of their height in meters. This resulting number helps categorize individuals into different classifications such as underweight, normal weight, overweight, and obese, which can be instrumental in evaluating health risks related to obesity, such as diabetes, heart disease, and other conditions.

By focusing on height and weight, BMI serves as a general indicator of body fatness, although it does not measure body fat directly nor account for muscle mass, bone density, overall body composition, or racial and sex differences. Despite these limitations, BMI remains widely used in clinical settings due to its ease of calculation and the general relationship it has with body fat and health outcomes.