The Significance of BMI

When it comes to weight watching and fitness levels today, there is a new buzz word, or shall I say buzz acronym, on everyone’s lips from pediatricians who are cautioning parents about their children’s track to weight gain, to adult weight and health counselors who are counseling their patients about how to lose weight, to your local gym worker who is training you to reach your fitness goals. You see, BMI, or Body Mass Index, is a measurement like no other that can measure your body’s overall health and “portions” of the bad stuff vs. the good stuff.

It basically measures the fat content of your body, which should never go over a certain percentage that quite frankly seems to be pretty low at first glance, but when you consider that most of your body is soft tissue and muscles, and organs and all that good stuff, then you see why too much fat is a bad thing.

For one thing, visceral fat, which is the fat that surrounds and is between your vital organs like your stomach, your liver and kidneys and so on and so forth, is a major factor behind heart disease, as it’s been discovered over the past decade or so, and this is why doctors caution against a lot of belly fat and put patients on diets and recommend changes to them.

BMI is significant not only to how you look and how you feel, but it’s also important for your health and longevity. Since that has become painfully obvious, there are many gyms now that will measure your BMI for you. Heck, even the Wii Fit system measures your BMI for you and gives you rave reviews or high marks for getting a good reading. Either that, or it has your little gravatar holding it’s belly and looking depressed. All this has a point to get across, that if your BMI is at a healthy level, you will enjoy not only the fit and trim, fat reduced body that you deserve, but you will also enjoy a longer, more productive, more energetic life.