What is a healthy weight?

There are different ways to assess if a person is a healthy weight including measuring Body Mass Index (BMI) and waist circumference, these are further outlined below:

Body Mass Index (BMI)

BMI is generally a good indicator to check if a person’s weight is healthy. You can work out someone’s BMI by taking their weight in kilograms and dividing it by their height in metres squared (m2).

e.g. if a person weighs 76 kg and is 1.6m tall here is how to calculate it: 76 kg/1.6 m2 = 29.7 kg/m2

There are different BMI ranges which indicate a person’s weight classification as shown below:

Please note that BMI isn’t accurate for everyone – this applies to the following groups:

• Pregnant women because of the expected weight gain
• Children because they are still growing
• Some ethnic groups because they may be at a greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
• People who carry a high muscle mass and very little body fat such as athletes

Waist measurement

Carrying too much fat around the waist area can present health risks such as type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease. Taking a waist measurement can be challenging so here is a video on how to do this:

To read further on BMI and waist measurements, click here.