![]() "Health is not a number on weight scales" Simon Chapman, Paediatrician, Child and Adolescent Eating Disorders Service, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust You can't tell if a person is (or will be) healthy or ill based on a BMI number. Statistically, populations in the 'underweight' and 'overweight' BMI ranges are associated with poorer health, but like most things statistical, that doesn't say much about any individual. They have labelled various BMI ranges as 'healthy', 'underweight', 'overweight', and so on. Statisticians have done big population surveys of people's BMIs and produced tables and charts. It's the person's weight (in kilos) divided by the square of their height (in metres). For a given height, the bigger the BMI, the heavier you are. If you're wondering what BMI means, or '95 percent'weight-for-height' and, why there's a problem with the way these are used, read on. In another post I explain the problem with that. Particularly worrying is the trend for schools to send letters to parents, warning them that their child should lose weight, based on BMI.Īnother common situation, if your child has anorexia or another eating disorder which caused them weight loss, is for a therapist to set your child's target weight based on body-mass index (BMI) or weight-for-height (FWH). A child can wrongly be declared healthy (or not), based on their BMI or Weight-for-height. Unless it's terribly low (but then just eyeballing your child would tell you that).
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