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Overweight Body Mass Index |

Dr. Ronald Tolchin, Medical Director at Baptist Center for Spine Care, explains to consider someone is overweight, doctors can’t just use absolute weight as a criteria. “You need to look at their height, and their weight together, and we call that measurement BMI or body mass index,” he says.

He explains if someone weighs 200 pounds, and is 6 feet 5, that weight might be okay; but if the person is 5 feet 8, that would not be okay. You can know your body mass index calculating your height divided by your weight squared: “We call overweight is that calculation is 25 to 29.9, if you’re less than 25 you’re considered normal.”

Transcript

At what point do you as a physician consider someone overweight?, what’s your criteria?. > You can’t just use absolute weight as a criteria, you need to look at their height, and you need to look at their height and their weight together, and we call that measurement BMI or body mass index, so just looking at the weight 200 pounds on someone that’s 6 feet 5 might be okay, but someone who’s 5 feet 8 would not be okay, so when we use a calculation we use something called the body mass index, and that is basically your weight in pounds divided, I’m sorry your height divided by your weight squared, so there’s a calculation for the body mass index, and what we call overweight is that calculation 25 to 29.9, if you’re less than 25 you’re considered normal, overweight 25 to 29.9 BMI, and obese thirty to thirty nine point nine, and then morbidly obese greater than forty, that calculation of your weight in pounds divided by your height in inches squared, okay our height in inches times height in inches, is equal to the body mass index, what happens is that you can calculate that very easy for our listeners, you can do this by going online and doing a body mass index calculation, it’ll tell you where you’re at, and then you’ll know if you’re overweight, or if you’re in a normal range and where you stand.

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