Visual Body Mass Index Calculator Helps People Understand BMI

    REDWOOD CITY, CA, September 24, 2008 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Body mass index or BMI is an important health risk factor used by insurance companies and governments to measure overweight and obesity. Many diet, weight loss, and health websites offer a free BMI calculator in which the user inputs height and weight in order to calculate BMI.

For the first time, BMICalculator.me offers people trying to lose weight, diet, or improve their fitness a way to visually see the relationship between height and weight in calculating body mass index through an interactive visual BMI Calculator at http://bmicalculator.me.

By clicking and moving the mouse pointer over a body image on the web page, BMICalculator.me automatically adjusts the height and weight and shows the resulting BMI. BMI is calculated using the standard BMI formulas:

English BMI Formula
Weight in pounds divided by Height in inches divided by Height in inches multiplied by 703 = BMI

Metric BMI Formula:
Weight in kilograms divided Height in meters divided by Height in meters = BMI

Anyone can embed the BMI Calculator from http://bmicalculator.me in a website, blog, or social network by copying and pasting the embed code displayed in the visual BMI Calculator. This code then calls the script to display the BMI Calculator on the users own website, much like what happens when someone embeds a YouTube video on their blog, on Facebook, or on a MySpace page.

Although the BMI calculation occurs in the background, users can confirm that the BMI Calculator is calculating body mass index correctly by referencing the BMI tables also available on the BMICalculator.me website. The BMI can be calculated with either metric height and weight or English height and weight by clicking on buttons on the calculator.

The BMI results and from the BMI calculator and the BMI charts are intended for adults, either men or women. For children, BMI is more complex because the definition of normal BMI varies with age and development. One of the other related limitations of BMI is that the BMI calculation does not take into account percentage of body fat versus muscle. Many times athletes are incorrectly classified as overweight because they have a low body fat and lots of muscle, which makes them heavier for their height than someone less athletic.

BMI is an important health risk factor used by government agencies like the CDC (United States Centers for Disease Control) because it is easy to measure from data readily collected in the population. BMI does not necessarily indicate health, however, and there are many other factors in understanding true health risk. BMI is just a starting point and the BMI Calculator at http://bmicalculator.me makes it easier to understand the meaning of BMI intuitively.

Body mass index or BMI is a key health risk factor for obesity. Using the first visual BMI Calculator on the web at http://bmicalculator.me, people trying lose weight can understand BMI intuitively.

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