BMI is a rough estimate of how well your weight relates to your height, and for most people in the world a healthy weight range for them (given their physical composition) is the prescribed BMI range. Of course, BMI doesn't account for muscle mass so athletic people may have a BMI score that is higher than their healthy BMI range; but few people besides steroid pumping body-builders get to an obese BMI while having a healthy range of body fat.

The average man who is "Fit-ish" in the obese category will have (over) 30% body fat, and if they get to a healthy body fat level of 8% to 19% they will be in the normal to overweight BMI category.

yes well i do know what you mean aswell but balance is the key and as you say people eat too many calories,way too many for what they need

i think a lot of people are lazy and always looking for excuses and don't take responsibiltiy,i do not think buying vegetables and meat/fish is more expensive than junk,frozen and ready right now food myself

Obesity Index

15 BMI

National

Below Average, lower than 100% of males

Global

Lower than 97% of males

If everyone in the world had the same BMI as you, it would remove 104,718,395 tonnes from the total weight of the world's population

You are most likely someone from the DR CONGO

17 M/ 5'10"/105 lbs

Well then :I

I love how only our normal and under-weight members post their scores in this thread.

*Sigh* - why must the media keep perpetuating the myth that BMI and fat are related?

I have a BMI of 25, and I am less fat than quite a few people who would have a BMI closer to 20. I'm not hugely muscular, but I do work out, and have put on a decent amount of muscle mass. My fat levels have been dropping even more, recently, and yet my weight hasn't really moved.

Body fat percentage is informative. BMI is more a predictor of your body type than of your body fat. A so-called "ectomorph" might have a BMI of around 18 and still be relatively fat.

Slimebeast said: I love how only our normal and under-weight members post their scores in this thread.

Just for you, I'm "over-weight"

Obesity Index

26bmi

Did you know?

If everyone in the world had the same BMI as you, it would add 32,990,496 tonnes to the total weight of the world's population

Another pet peeve of mine, by the way, is the classification of the kg as a measure of weight. It's not. It's a measure of mass. Weight is measured in Newtons (N) in the metric system. The best you can do with kg in relation to weight is to say what your weight is at sea level.

I don't think anyone who understands BMI uses it as a measure of healthy you are, just as a relative measure of how big you are. It ends up being used as a proxy for how fit/fat you are primarily because of how difficult and expensive it is to measure body fat percentages accurately.

This is also the reason why waist to hip ratio is the new measure that is rapidly growing in popularity in health circles. If you take someone's BMI and their waist to hip ratio you can come up with a fairly good approximation of how "fat" they are with measurements which are (relatively) easy to take accurately.

I do love the BBC:

Your numbers

Obesity Index

23bmi 

BMI is an estimate of how "overweight" or "obese" a person is

I live in England, but I have the weight of someone from Lesotho :O

I'm also just 1kg heavier than the national average. Problem?

This is England. Weight is measured in pounds and stones, distance is measured in feet, yards and miles, volumes are measured in pints and galleons...

Things are changing over, but slowly. A lot of people use kilos and litres nowadays, for example.