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Robert H. Shmerling, MD Senior Faculty Editor, Harvard Health Publishing Do you know your BMI? Increasingly, people know theirs, just as they know their cholesterol. If you don’t know your BMI, you can use a BMI calculator available online, including this one at Harvard Health Publishing. All you need is your height and weight. Or, you can calculate it yourself, using this formula: BMI = (Weight in Pounds x 703) / (Height in inches x Height in inches). So, now that you know your BMI, is it worth knowing? What are you going to do with it? What your BMI...

PARIS (AFP) – Cardiovascular disease linked to obesity may be worse than thought while health problems associated with being underweight may have been overstated, according to a study published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on Wednesday. The paper, written by doctors in Britain and Sweden, seeks to finetune a well-known tool -- the body mass index (BMI) -- which is used to measure obesity and ill-health. BMI entails taking one's weight in kilos and dividing it by the square of one's height, in metres. A BMI of 25-30 is generally considered overweight. while a figure of above 30 indicates...

Aug. 7, 2006 — - Last week President Bush underwent his annual physical. It revealed he was in pretty good health, except for one thing. According to his body mass index, he's overweight. His BMI was 26, putting him in the lower range of the overweight category. He weighs 196 pounds, meaning he has gained 5 pounds since last year and his percentage of body fat has increased to 16.8 percent, which is, overall, pretty good for a man who just turned 60. (To calculate your BMI, go here). Still, the appropriate body weight range is 157 to 192 pounds...