Difference Between BMI and Bodyfat Percentage; and Which One Should I Pay More Attention to?

Trainer Tuesdays

Welcome back to the weekly edition on Trainer Tuesdays. Make sure to check in at our blog every Tuesday evening to learn the expertise of our great staff. Aside from being fantastic exercise coaches, they are also extremely knowledgeable in many aspects of health and fitness; so, it's time that you get to know them a little better! Each week, we will post a frequently asked, or sometimes just a fun fitness related question followed by the answers of each of the trainers at Fitness Together Brecksville.

What’s the difference between BMI and Bodyfat percentage and which one should I pay more attention to?

Adam Teplitz:  Both BMI and bodyfat percentage are great tools to assess an individuals overall health. However, they need to be dejected based on who is getting measured , the purpose of the measurement and the individual's overall goals.

BMI stands for body mass index. It is a height to weight ratio. The formula consists of taking your

Fitness Together Personal Trainer Adam Teplitz working with a client

weight in pounds and dividing it by your height in inches squared, then multiplying it by 703. A BMI of 25 or above indicates the individual is overweight.  The benefit of this formula is that you can calculate a large demographic of individuals in a short amount of time and get a good estimate of their overall health risk. The downfall of using this method is that it does not take into consideration those individuals who have a low percentage of bodyfat and a high percentage of lean body mass.

A great example would be a professional football player who is 6 feet tall and weighs 250 pounds, with 8.5 percent bodyfat. According to the BMI calculation , he would have a BMI of 34, and be considered obese. This is clearly not the case.

When it comes to individuals who are very active, BMI is not the best route to go. Calculating bodyfat percentage would be the better option.

Bodyfat percentage is how much of your body is composed of fat ( adipose tissue) and how much is composed of muscle , bone , internal organs, skin, etc.  Various methods used to calculate this are Bioelectrical  Impedance analysis , infrared analysis, skin fold calipers, and hydrostatic weighing.

Personally, I feel like calculating bodyfat percentage is a more accurate calculation and indication of your overall health.

Kelly Bailey: BMI, or Body Mass Index, is a simple height to weight ratio that assesses

Fitness Together Personal Trainer Kelly Bailey working with clients

normal, over-, or under-weight individuals. For many years BMI has been the gold standard for determining whether a person falls within a "healthy" or "obese" weight category. However, more recently, BMI is falling out of favor because it doesn't take into account the ratio of fat to muscle (and other lean tissue, like organ and bone) in a person's body. For example, the BMI of a very short, but very muscular person may put that person into the obese category, regardless of how little body fat he/she actually has. In another example, certain folks who are very thin, but have very little muscle mass may have a BMI in the normal range, but can actually have high levels of body fat. A better way is to measure body composition by determining percentage of body fat. Body fat percentage is usually determined by using skin fold calipers or a special bioelectric impedance scale. Your percentage of body fat will allow you to separate how many pounds of your weight is body fat and how many pounds is lean tissue (organ, bone, muscle).

When people set out to "lose weight", what they really want to do is lose FAT and maintain or gain lean tissue. The only way to know if you are losing fat weight and/or gaining lean muscle tissue is to measure your body fat percentage. In addition, knowing these numbers can help alleviate frustration if you're working out, but not seeing the number on the scale (or the BMI number) go down. It's not an uncommon occurrence for your weight (and BMI) to stay the same if you've lost fat weight, but gained lean muscle tissue (which, by the way, is the holy grail of body recomposition!).

Taylor Burns: BMI stands for Body Mass Index. The two factos used to determine your BMI are your height and weight. Doctors often use BMI as a simple and easy way to measure if a person is healthy, underweight or overweight. Body fat percentage is the weight of a person's fat divided by the person's weight. It lets you see how much of your body is made up of fat, and how much is bone, muscle, blood and organs. There are many ways to calculate the percentage such as calipers, high-tech scales and underwater weighing. Many people get their body fat percentage measured if they are into sports or trying to measure their progress while losing weight. Body fat percentage is a much more accurate measurement in determining if you are healthy. BMI does take into consideration how much of your weight is muscle and bone, and how much of it is fat.

Lisa Clark: People have many misconceptions as to what the difference is in BMI and body fat percentage. In my opinion BMI should not even be calculated or looked at as a means of telling a person how much fat or lean muscle mass they have. BMI is strictly based on a person’s height and weight and takes no consideration for amount of muscle the person may have. If you took two people weighing in at the exact same weight and measuring the same height, they would technically have the same BMI number. However their measurement could be completely off. One could be solid muscle which we all know is more dense than fat and therefore could look significantly smaller than the one who doesn't work out and has a higher fat percentage. For insurance and medical reasons they are both considered to be obese. Is that a fair measurement?

In contrast to that we also measure people's body fat percentage which can be done using several measurement techniques. Any of these techniques measures the amount of actual fat and lean muscle in a person’s body giving much more accurate results!

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